Thinking with La Cocina: fats in Spanish kitchens and dietary recommendations

In Spain, dietary recommendations for “healthy eating” hinge on the nutrient content of foods. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in domestic kitchens, I argue that this essentializing approach fails to attend to the multiple “registers of valuation” of foods – and especially of fats – that are at work in the practice of cooking. This argument has policy implications: for dietary recommendations to transform eating practices it is necessary to take into account how, while cooking, actors draw on these various forms of valuation. Such a re-focus will make dietary recommendations more sensitive to the social and material conditions under which cooking is done and better attuned to the eating practices present in mundane culinary contexts.