Gretel Pelto with her collection of cookbooks recently gifted to Syracuse University Libraries.
Gretel Pelto, an internationally recognized scholar in nutrition and public health, recently gifted Syracuse University Libraries with cookbooks to add to the Libraries’ already significant cookbook collection. The Libraries’ cookbook collection supports academic programs and courses in health, food studies, history, anthropology, geography, literature and more. The collection is used for exploring social history and culture, international cuisines and diets, practicing cooking and baking techniques, revising recipes for community food distribution or modifying nutritional values, understanding people’s relationship to food and how it can be used to gather and build community, as well as restore and celebrate our connection to the land.
Anita Kuiken, librarian for Falk College, selected the titles from Gretel Pelto’s personal collection. Titles from this gift can be found in the Libraries’ catalog by searching “Gift of Gretel Pelto, 2022”. The cookbooks from this gift would normally be shelved in Carnegie Library, however, they are currently available on the fourth floor of Bird Library. Additional titles from the gift will be available at Falk College. The generous gift also includes additional food studies books that can be located throughout the collection.
Pelto is a graduate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology. She also taught in the Department of Nutritional Science at the University of Connecticut. Her work focuses on bridging the interface between academic research and actions to improve nutrition and public health in communities, and bringing social science methods, particularly those of ethnography, to bear on nutrition and child health research. She has written and edited several books and numerous articles on theoretical and empirical issues in the academic nutrition community. Pelto conducted field research in Mexico, Latin America and Finland. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki in recognition of her work and contributions to the development of nutrition research and teaching. Her experience led to an eight-year appointment at the World Health Organization as the senior social scientist responsible for creating research tools and implementing their application to improve household management of acute respiratory infection and diarrheal diseases in developing countries. She received the Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology and is a Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She was a founding editor of the journals Medical Anthropology and Reviews in Anthropology and collaborated with colleagues to establish a group within the Society for Medical Anthropology, now an independent organization (The Society for Food and Nutrition) that operates under the umbrella of the American Anthropological Association. She currently serves on the editorial board of several nutrition and health journals. Several books and articles written by Gretel Pelto can be found in the Syracuse University Libraries’ collection by searching Summon.
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Syracuse University Libraries provides expertise, information, and tools for students, faculty and staff, alumni, and the community. With over 4.8 million volumes of resources accessed by millions of physical and online visits annually, the Libraries provides information services, responsive collections, knowledgeable staff, and safe and accessible physical and digital spaces that encourage intellectual exploration. In so doing, the Libraries enable the creation of new knowledge, catalyze scholarly collaboration and cultural exchange, and advance Syracuse University’s teaching, learning and research mission.
