Eighteenth-Century Studies

Abstract:

Eating acquired an unprecedented political resonance during the eighteenth century. This article uses the promotion of the potato as an Enlightenment super-food to trace the emergence of new models of political economy and governance, which stressed the importance of a healthy, well-nourished population to the strength and wealth of the state. Integrating the slower history of the potato's conquest of European dietaries with its frenetic promotion in the late eighteenth century illuminates the central role that everyday eating practices came to play in Enlightened models of statecraft.