Moshe Wilbushewich, 'Vitamin Bread,' and Rationalizing the Jewish Diet in Mandate Palestine

Dreams of good food, writes Aaron Bobrow-Strain, are powerful social forces, which "arise out of particular constellations of power and interests that can be analyzed and understood." This article focuses on a specific food item--Vitamin Bread (lehem hai), developed by Moshe Wilbushewich i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Jewish social studies 2023-01, Vol.28 (1), p.23-48
Main Author:	Hirsch, Dafna
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	19th century Agricultural production Analysis Arab people Bread Colonialism Colonization Consumption Diet Discourse Dreams Efficiency Food Fruits Inferiority Jewish people Nutrients Nutrition Nutrition research Recruitment Science Scientists Settlers Social aspects Social forces Szold, Henrietta Vitamins Womens health World War I Zionism
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Summary:	Dreams of good food, writes Aaron Bobrow-Strain, are powerful social forces, which "arise out of particular constellations of power and interests that can be analyzed and understood." This article focuses on a specific food item--Vitamin Bread (lehem hai), developed by Moshe Wilbushewich in 1920s Palestine--as embodying notions of "good food" premised on the tenets of rational nutrition. I show how the development of the bread was informed not only by a nutritional discourse, which counted energy units and analyzed nutrients, but also by a colonial discourse about Jewish and Arab physical and mental difference, about the role of science in colonization, and by the interests of Jewish settlement. For its inventor, Vitamin Bread embodied the attempt to compensate for the physical inferiority of civilized Jewish settlers compared to indigenous Arabs by means of their intellectual advantage, namely, by recruiting science in the service of improving Jewish nutrition.
ISSN:	0021-6704 1527-2028 1527-2028