num_pages: 304
description: An exploration both personal and deeply reported of how we learn to eat in todays toxic food culture.Food is supposed to sustain and nourish us. Eating well any doctor will tell you is the best way to take care of yourself. Feeding well any human will tell you is the most important job a mother has. But for too many of us food now feels dangerous. We parse every bite we eat as good or bad and judge our own worth accordingly. When her newborn daughter stopped eating after a medical crisis Virginia Sole-Smith spent two years teaching her how to feel safe around food again  and in the process realized just how many of us are struggling to do the same thing.The Eating Instinct visits kitchen tables around America to tell Sole-Smiths own story as well as the stories of women recovering from weight loss surgery of people who eat only nine foods of families with unlimited grocery budgets and those on food stamps. Every struggle is unique. But Sole-Smith shows how theyre also all products of our modern food culture. And theyre all asking the same How did we learn to eat this way? Why is it so hard to feel good about food? And how can we make it better?
language: English
title: The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America
publisher: Henry Holt and Co.