Book ID: CBB001200874

Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years (2012)

unapi

Foxcroft, Louise (Author)


Profile


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: 232 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening inches. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have been struggling with what to eat, when, and how much ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch. Meticulously researched, surprising, and sometimes shocking, Calories and Corsets tells the epic story of our complicated relationship with food, the fashions and fads of body shape, and how cultural beliefs and social norms have changed over time. Combining research from medical journals, letters, articles, and the dieting bestsellers we continue to devour (including one by an octogenarian Italian in the sixteenth century), Foxcroft reveals the extreme and often absurd lengths people will go to in order to achieve the perfect body, from eating carbolic soap to chewing every morsel hundreds of times to a tasteless pulp. This unique and witty history exposes the myths and anxieties that drive today's multi-billion dollar dieting industry---and offers a welcome perspective on how we can be healthy and happy in our bodies.

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Reviewed By

Review Bourke, Joanna (2012) Review of "Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years". The Lancet (pp. 994-995). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001200874/

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Authors & Contributors
Malatesta, Maria
Geddes da Filicaia, Marco
Henry Notaker
Rzeznicka, Zofia
Karen Throsby
Kokoszko, Maciej
Concepts
Nutrition; dietetics
Weight management
Obesity
Medicine
Public health
Food and foods
Time Periods
Early modern
Modern
Medieval
Ancient
Renaissance
21st century
Places
United States
Europe
China
Great Britain
Cambodia
England
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