Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc Race and nutrition in the New World: Colonial shadows in the age of epigenetics Jan Baedke a,b , Abigail Nieves Delgado a,b,∗ a Department of Philosophy I, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany b Centre for Anthropological Knowledge in Scientific and Technological Cultures (CAST), Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Epigenetics Humoralism Race Mestizo Nutrition New World Mexico ABSTRACT This paper addresses historical dimensions of epigenetic studies on human populations. We show that post- genomic research on health disparities in Latin America reintroduces old colonial views about the relations between race, environment, and social status. This especially refers to the idea – common in colonial humoralism and epigenetics – that different types of bodies are in balance and closely linked with particular local en- vironments and lifestyles. These social differences become embodied as physiological and health differences. By comparing Spanish chronicles of the New World with recent epidemiological narratives on Mexican populations in social epigenetics (especially on obesity), we identify four characteristics that both share in distinguishing races, such as indigenous or mestizos from Spaniards or non-Mexicans: (i) Race is not intrinsic to bodies but emerges as a particular homeostatic body-environment relation; (ii) the stability of one's race is warranted through the stability of one's local environment and lifestyle, especially nutrition; (iii) every race faces specific life challenges in a local environment to maintain its health; and (iv) every race shows a unique social status that is closely linked to its biological status (e.g., disease susceptibility). Based on these similarities, we argue that currently in Latin America the field of epigenetics appears on the scene with a worrisome colonial shadow. It reintroduces long forgotten exclusionary and stereotypic perspectives on indigenous and mestizos, and biologizes as well as racializes social-cultural differences among human groups. The McDonald’s Big Mac came to Mexico this week, causing traffic jams as hundreds of Mexicans lined up to buy hamburgers, but with chili sauce instead of ketchup. –New York Times, November 2, 1985 1. Introduction In the last three decades, global interest in heath disparities across socio-economic and ethnic groups has increasingly grown. Being poor, having a low level of education, preferring high-energy food, or being Hispanic seems to have an effect on one's health status. In recent years, developing countries in Latin America have come into the focus of health disparity studies, as in these countries diseases like obesity pose major national health problems. Especially in Mexico, overweight and obesity rates have grown rapidly in recent years. In 2015, 32,4% of the Mexicans adult population were obese (OECD, 2017). As part of this new focus of health inequality studies, the interna- tional research community in postgenomics shows increasingly interest in investigating epidemiological patterns of Mexican (or Mexican American) mestizos and indigenous Mexican groups from a perspective that focuses less on genes but more on environmental change and dif- ferential epigenetic gene expression (see del Rosario et al., 2014; Kulkarni et al., 2015; Horvath et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2017; Galanter et al., 2017; Oelsner, Guo, To, Non, & Barkin, 2017). These studies in the field of social (or cultural) epigenetics distinguish human popula- tions according to those environmental factors – ranging from geo- graphical settings, eating and sedentary habits, activity patterns, to socio-economic factors – that induce characteristic health (or disease) patterns, which then can be transmitted across generations through epigenetic mechanisms. In contrast to basic research in epigenetics on environmental responsiveness and extra-genetic inheritance in animal models, social epigenetics investigates the intra- and transgenerational effects of socio-cultural factors on particular human groups. The field seeks to explain how social differences become embodied as physiolo- gical and health differences as well as to develop suitable medical ap- plications (see Jablonka, 2016; Baedke, 2017). Recently, social science scholars have expressed worries that this https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2019.03.004 Received 6 April 2018; Received in revised form 29 January 2019; Accepted 5 March 2019 ∗ Corresponding author. Department of Philosophy I, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany. E-mail addresses: jan.baedke@rub.de (J. Baedke), abigail.nievesdelgado@rub.de (A. Nieves Delgado). Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci 76 (2019) 101175 Available online 16 March 2019 1369-8486/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T