Bodies made of grass made of earth made of bodies: organicism, diet, and national health in mid-twentieth-century England.

Abstract This paper considers the relationship of diet and national health proposed by organicists in mid twentieth century England. After introducing the theoretical and historical context of dietary debate it discusses organicist diagnoses of the relationship between soil and health, and describes local experiments undertaken in Cheshire and Peckham. The paper then outlines the principles of wholeness and freshness underlying the desired organic diet, and considers the organicists» proposals for the use of animal and human wastes. Throughout the paper the geographies of organicism are emphasised; the constitution of national argument through imperial research and local experiment, the geographies of food production and consumption, the dialectical geography of dung. Organicism should be understood as part of a body culture claiming values of nature and nation in a critique of modernity, and working through particular formulations of gender, race and class.