Calories and Corsets
Subtitle: A History of Dieting over 2,000 Years
Publisher: Profile Books Limited
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9781846684265
Subjects: Body image; Reducing diets; Weight loss
Description: This book tells the 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, the author 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.