The Collective Gut: Experts Shaping Socialist Nutrition

Apart from calorie recommendations, authors contributing to PaN also underscored the importance of nutritional composition of food. In the same speech cited in the opening of the article, Josef Charvát claimed that people should consume carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, referred to as the “main nutrients”, in right proportions (1946(1): 6). According to him, caloric and nutritional requirements were likely to be self-regulated by the body itself through the senses of hunger and selective hunger (cravings). In contrast, the sufficient intake of vitamins could only be achieved through mindful and rational eating, as explained in the journal:

There is another important aspect of nutrition, and it requires planning and the intervention of a superior power. This is vitamins and other protective substances. These substances are an extremely crucial part of our living matter, or rather our internal chemism. (1946(1): 6)

This framing underlines the modern emphasis on the supremacy of reason over the body. It was, however, not just about individual minds and bodies but also about the collective. This collective dimension was addressed with the introduction of a journal supplement Nutrition in the Family, which targeted housewives as a way of disseminating knowledge about nutrition to households. Women were positioned as the stewards of family nutrition, responsible for implementing the rational diet. For them, rationalisation extended beyond calculating nutrients and vitamins and included the technological modernisation of the domestic space through processed foods, standardised preparation methods, and kitchen appliances. This modernised way of cooking was supposed to help women take care of their family’s nutrition despite being employed. The family collective became a target and vehicle of nutritional governance, with women at its helm (Borisova, 2025a).

Nutrition was a tool of the state’s biopower (Foucault, 2008) and, given the educational ambitions of the SRN, also biopedagogy (Wright, 2009). The title of the journal itself, People and Nutrition (Výživa lidu in Czech, where “lidu” is a declension of the nominative “lid”), reflects this focus on collectiveness: there is an important semantic difference between the Czech words “lid” (the people as a nation) and “lidé” (people as an aggregate of individuals). The needs of the nation’s body should thus be regulated by the mind of the socialist state, which will provide it with all necessary nutrients and substances it requires for its “internal chemism”. The bio(chemo)political project of rational nutrition therefore not only involved educating and disciplining the population but also entailed negotiating with the food industry, which was possible given the planned nature of the Czechoslovak economy and state ownership of production facilities.

One example of such negotiation is the development of a non-alcoholic beer called Pito, which was reported on in a 1976 issue of PaN. Given that Czechs are world-famous for their love of beer and that beer production is a treasured industry and an esteemed craft, motivating the population to drink less beer might seem an impossible goal to achieve. However, beer-drinking interfered with the productivity of workers, who were used to drinking beer on the job – an especially serious problem among professional drivers. In order to minimise alcohol consumption without depriving workers of their routine, the Experimental and Developmental Centre of the General Directorate of Breweries and Malthouses set out to develop a non-alcoholic beer in the early 1970s, in response to both government pressure and consumer demand. Called Pito, the beer was intended to reconcile the collectively shared habit of beer-drinking with the socialist ideals of productivity and labour morale.

Another example is the discussion around sugar consumption. The October 1986 issue featured an article emphasising the need to reduce sugar intake due to its adverse health effects. The author recommended cutting back on both the direct and indirect consumption of sugar. In the case of direct consumption, readers were encouraged to limit the amount of sugar they added to drinks and desserts. For indirect consumption, food manufacturers were called on to reduce the sugar content in processed foods:

The food industry can play an important role in reducing the indirect consumption [of sugar], given that the share of indirect consumption continues to rise. A number of measures have already been taken – changes to recipes for long-life bakery products, jams, etc. While this trend needs to continue, the possibilities have already been exhausted for some types of products and have been missed for others. (1986(10): 146)

The article concluded on a biopedagogical note, promoting self-discipline and self-control as key to achieving moderate sugar consumption. Still, the rationalisation of nutrition sought not only to change individual behaviour but also to transform the systems of food production and supply and public catering so that these services adhered to the main principles of this dietary paradigm. While socialist dietary advice placed a strong emphasis on individual responsibility and self-regulation, the above-mentioned examples also implied the need for accountability on the part of institutions. Unlike present-day discussions in Czechia about sugar consumption, where the underlying narrative is almost always that of consumer responsibility (Borisova, 2025b), there was more to “getting used to a less sweet taste” than just people making the effort to do so. What was required also was active support from the political and industrial actors who were expected to provide, in this case, less sugary products. In addition to disciplining individual cravings for sweetened products, the socialist government also sought to manage the collective gut through centralised oversight of food production.

This institutional focus became even more pronounced as Czechoslovak society began to witness a rise in civilisational diseases (civilizační onemocnění in Czech), particularly obesity. Out of the 27 issues analysed, seven (starting with the May issue of 1966) included articles highlighting the growing number of people who were overweight or living with obesity. While advertisements for dietetic products that were marketed as helping people to preserve a “slim figure” began to appear as early as the 1960s (Fig. 5), by the late 1970s the rising incidence of obesity was increasingly being reported as a matter of public concern, not only among clinicians but also in the Communist Party and state institutions (1976(5): 51). Several articles attributed this trend to a range of societal changes: the development of food technologies, the faster pace of life, the decline in physical labour, and the rise of sedentary occupations. These factors were seen as contributing to unhealthy eating habits, which in turn were blamed for making the Czechoslovak population “fat”. It was not merely individual “lifestyles” but “civilisation” itself that was identified as the root of the problem.

The journal issues from 1986 maintained this focus on the health implications of (im)proper nutrition, especially atherosclerosis, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. The authors unanimously agreed that civilisational diseases were spreading at an “alarming rate”, and, according to them, the solution required not only individual education but also intersectoral collaboration: the food industry was charged with the task of providing fat- and sugar-reduced products (such as dietetic eggs and skimmed dairy products), while institutional canteens were required to offer healthy options and dishes conforming to the updated nutritional recommendations.

The experts’ vision of how to fight for a healthier nation thus involved creating conditions that would make it more convenient for individuals to eat healthily and stay healthy. This vision, however, ran up against the limits of the production, supply, and accessibility of recommended products. Clinical and nutritional professionals recommended consuming fewer foods high in sugar and fats, since they were categorised as products contributing to weight gain. For the rising numbers of people considered overweight and obese, the Czechoslovak food production industry was supposed to come up with new “dietary products”:

It is necessary to introduce frozen dietary products into the market in boil-in-bags or aluminium bowls […] As for dairy products, we need to reduce the fat content […] we need to reduce the calories in confections by adding non-caloric components, lower the sugar content in fruit products, or, alternatively, replace sugar with health-friendly sweeteners. (1976(10): 158)

Notably, in contrast to current evidence identifying ultra-processed foods as one of the main culprits in weight gain (Hall et al., 2019), these foods, as well as the use of artificial sweeteners (Pang et al., (2020)), were considered a solution. According to experts, the weight gain trend could thus be reversed through further rationalisation (updated norms and recommendations) and industrialisation (new diet products), which echoed the modernist spirit of state socialism.

In her paper focused on the obesity discourse in socialist Czechoslovakia, Michaela Appeltová (2016) analyses how biomedical expertise at that time co-constructed a fat body as deviant, in contrast to a physically fit body, and contributed to its stigmatisation. She argues that in Czechoslovak public discourse, individuals with fat embodiment were seen as “slower and lazier, their work output [was] lower, and the collective [had] to compensate for that work loss” (2016: 18). Franc (2020) notes that the risk of weight gain was from the outset mainly associated with ageing women, and this assumption was inscribed into the first Czechoslovak anti-obesity campaign with the (ageistic) slogan “Getting fat means getting old”. While both Appeltová and Franc describe the responsibilisation of individuals in the Czechoslovak anti-obesity discourse, we argue that the socialist anti-obesity action strongly built on collective responsibilisation, in contrast to what is predominant nowadays (cf. Borisova and Stöckelová, 2024). The experts published in PaN appealed to the socialist government, food manufacturers, and public eating facilities to create a health-promoting environment by making healthy (according to the principles of rational nutrition) products available and accessible.

The negative outcomes of obesity were framed as negative for “society as a whole”, and obesity itself and other civilisational diseases represented a problem to be tackled by collective efforts. In this respect, the socialist body per se was viewed as collective. It was made through collective practices of working and eating together and through the unified selection of goods and foods. The collective conceptualisation of obesity resulted in anti-obesity measures that were designed as systemic rather than individual interventions. The need to change eating and cooking practices that in 1946 had been formulated as a response to postwar undernourishment was reframed in response to the rising incidence of excess weight and obesity. The key was to reduce calorie intake, limit the consumption of foods high in sugar and fats, and, in general, “eat moderately”, or, echoing Mol, “mind our plates”. The plates in question were those in households, factory canteens, schools, hospitals, and sanatoriums. As summarised in the May issue of 1986:

The population’s diet is not suited to its lifestyle, especially given the changes in occupations. Our nutrition is too fatty, too salty, overspiced […] Active measures need to be taken to make our nutrition healthier through the rationalisation of food consumption. (1986(5): 65)

At the same time, minding the plate went hand in hand with “minding the state”, which was supposed to improve socio-economic infrastructures so as to make healthy metabolic living possible in socialist Czechoslovakia. In the thinking of the socialist state, proper nutrition and the nation’s health thus depended not only on individual choices and efforts but, to a great extent, on the broader system of public alimentation, food production, and food distribution.