Module EW2420-KP05

Duration

1 Semester

Turnus of offer

each summer semester

Credit points

5

Course of studies, specific fields and terms:

• Bachelor Nutritional Medicine 2024, optional subject, Nutritional Sciences
• Bachelor Nutritional Medicine 2018, compulsory, interdisciplinary competence
• Bachelor Nutritional Medicine 2016, compulsory, interdisciplinary competence

Classes and lectures:

• Bioethics (seminar, 2 SWS)
• Bioethics (lecture, 1 SWS)

Workload:

• 75 hours private studies and exercises
• 45 hours in-classroom work
• 30 hours written report

Contents of teaching:

• Basic terms, methods and key concerns of ethics as moral philosophy
• Significance of cultural and historical contexts for bioethics
• Social functions, politics, culture and cultural history of eating
• From dietetics to medical designer food and molecular nutrition
• Producer-consumer-relationships and the food industry
• Ethical dilemmas of product design and PR (allergies, GM)
• Social aspects of eating and nutrition (rituals, dietary rules, interculturality, identity)
• Sex and gender in nutrition (social roles, eating disorders, metabolism)
• World population, hunger and food security
• Ethics of medical dietary alternatives (diets, liquid food, infusion)
• Ethics of research with humans and animals

Qualification-goals/Competencies:

• Students can recognize and formulate ethical problems
• They understand relevant ethical aspects in their historical, social and cultural contexts
• They can apply methods of ethics to cases of nutrition sciences
• Starting from cases and examples they can recognize ethical problems and develop nuanced arguments
• They can defend ethical arguments in discussions, demonstrate them by using concrete examples and also understand and respect the counter arguments
• They can formulate the ethical rationale of a scientific trial for the research ethics committee.

Grading through:

• portfolio exam

Responsible for this module:

• Dr. phil. Birgit Stammberger
• Prof. Dr. phil. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

Teacher:

• Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies
• Prof. Dr. phil. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter
• Dr. phil. Birgit Stammberger

Literature:

• Stephen Mennel : Die Kultivierung des Appetits: die Geschichte des Essens vom Mittelalter bis heute Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988.
• John S. Allen : The omnivorous mind: our evolving relationship with food Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2012
• H-J. Kaatsch et al. (Hg.) : Ethik der Agrar- und Ernährungswissenschaften Lit Verlag, 2008
• Gregory E. Pence (ed.) : The Ethics of Food. A Reader for the 21st Century Rowman & Littlefield, 2001
• Eva Barlösius : Soziologie des Essens. Eine sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung in die Ernährungsforschung 3. Auflage – Beltz Juventa Verlag, 2016
• Kikuko Kashiwagi-Wetzel, Anne-Rose Meyer (ed.) : Theorien des Essens Suhrkamp, 2017

Language:

• offered only in German

Notes:

Last Updated:

14.10.2026