Book ID: CBB944318327

Diet and the Disease of Civilization (2018)

unapi

Bitar, Adrienne Rose (Author)


Rutgers University Press


Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 244
Language: English

Diet books contribute to a $60-billion industry as they speak to the 45 million Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don’t just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we should live. Diet and the Disease of Civilization interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if it’s not calories—but concepts—that should be counted?Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets retell the “Fall of Man” as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and offer diet as the one true cure. Bitar reads each diet—the Paleo Diet, the Garden of Eden Diet, the Pacific Island Diet, the detoxification or detox diet—as both myth and manual, a story with side effects shaping social movements, driving industry, and constructing fundamental ideas about sickness and health. Diet and the Disease of Civilization unearths the ways in which diet books are actually utopian manifestos not just for better bodies, but also for a healthier society and a more perfect world.

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Reviewed By

Review E. Melanie DuPuis (2019) Review of "Diet and the Disease of Civilization". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (pp. 654-656). unapi

Review Michael S. Kideckel (2019) Review of "Diet and the Disease of Civilization". Agricultural History (pp. 776-778). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB944318327/

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Authors & Contributors
Parr, Jessica M.
Charissa S. L. Cheah
Haushofer, Lisa
Nan Zhou
Rasmussen, Nicolas
Ehrenberger, Kristen Ann
Concepts
Nutrition; dietetics
Health
Weight management
Obesity
Public health
Food and foods
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century, late
21st century
Modern
20th century
Places
United States
China
Great Britain
Germany
Finland
Institutions
United States. Food and Drug Administration
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