We're consumers, we've been trained since early childhood. Those shiny tubes of biscuits ought to remind us we're tubes, too. But in this strange world, the art is to look like you never eat more than is good for you. But the less you look like a consumer, a digestive tube, the better. It's a kind of madness, an inescapable double-bind.
Women bear the brunt of it, but no man or child escapes.
Food is pleasure and guilt, terror and despair. But the shape inside our skins is a very simple shape, as The Miracle Diet shows. And no shape is forever. Carol Rumens is one of Britain's leading poets. She lives in Belfast.