Thesis ID: CBB001561378

Managing American Bodies: Diet, Nutrition, and Obesity in America, 1840--1920 (2008)

unapi

Levine, Deborah I. (Author)


Harvard University


Publication Date: 2008
Physical Details: 279 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation explores important changes in American public perception of and behavior toward diet and weight management. Focus in American public discourse on diet, nutrition, and obesity increased dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century. Certainly, there had been some level of continued concern about extreme fatness or extreme thinness throughout history. But as the nineteenth century progressed, a person's weight and approach to diet was explicitly recast as an outward indicator of the self-control and discipline required to succeed in American society. As reliance on medical expertise became a more integral part of healthcare, physician-prescribed dietary regimens and a person's ability to comply with them came to be defined both in clinical and popular literature as a reliable symbol of an individual's personal character. Diverse and distinct literatures, including clinical medical texts, scientific papers, domestic medical guidebooks, life insurance policies, popular advice literature, and newspaper articles all began to give more attention to nutrition, weight, and health. These texts did more than merely create a new philosophy of regulated eating. They created a discourse on diet and nutrition that resulted in a new way of understanding the body in nineteenth century America, and they employed an explicitly disease-oriented approach for understanding the problem of "overweight," or "corpulence." Increasingly, these texts referred to the problem of "obesity" in medical terms. This work sheds light on the complex tensions between professional and lay authorities and between moral and healthful ways of living that are responsible for this transition. By analyzing several literatures and archival sources that are convergent on nutrition, obesity, regimen, and the body, "Managing American Bodies" illuminates the origins of a disease-centered framework for understanding obesity while also increasing understanding of the history of American notions of nutrition, measurement, health and society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/04 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3312441.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561378/

Similar Citations

Book Segrave, Kerry; (2008)
Obesity in America, 1850--1939: A History of Social Attitudes and Treatment (/isis/citation/CBB000951770/)

Article Parr, Jessica M.; (2014)
Obesity and the Emergence of Mutual Aid Groups for Weight Loss in the Post-War United States (/isis/citation/CBB001550974/)

Article La Berge, Ann F.; (2008)
How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America (/isis/citation/CBB000774475/)

Book Sabrina Strings; (2019)
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (/isis/citation/CBB280233988/)

Book Karen Throsby; (2023)
Sugar rush: Science, politics and the demonisation of fatness (/isis/citation/CBB539001735/)

Book Biltekoff, Charlotte; (2013)
Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health (/isis/citation/CBB001452069/)

Article Stolberg, Michael; (2012)
“Abhorreas Pinguedinem”: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medicine (c. 1500--1750) (/isis/citation/CBB001221620/)

Book Christopher E. Forth; (2019)
Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (/isis/citation/CBB439415836/)

Book Nicolas Rasmussen; (2019)
Fat in the Fifties (/isis/citation/CBB964187680/)

Article Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina; (2005)
The Culture of the Abdomen: Obesity and Reducing in Britain, circa 1900-1939 (/isis/citation/CBB000660023/)

Book Foxcroft, Louise; (2012)
Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years (/isis/citation/CBB001200874/)

Article Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle; (2012)
Enflures et boursouflures. L'obésité au Moyen Âge (/isis/citation/CBB001420812/)

Book Wendy Mitchinson; (2018)
Fighting Fat: Canada, 1920-1980 (/isis/citation/CBB163094871/)

Book Vigarello, Georges; (2013)
The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity (/isis/citation/CBB001551002/)

Book Gilman, Sander L.; (2010)
Obesity: The Biography (/isis/citation/CBB001022748/)

Authors & Contributors
Rasmussen, Nicolas
Karen Throsby
Strings, Sabrina
Charissa S. L. Cheah
Nan Zhou
Parr, Jessica M.
Concepts
Weight management
Obesity
Public health
Nutrition; dietetics
Health
Human body
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
Early modern
Medieval
Places
United States
Great Britain
China
Canada
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment