Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have been struggling with what to eat, when and how much, ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch.
Meticulously researched, surprising and sometimes shocking, Calories and Corsets tells the epic 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 (including one by an octogenarian Italian in the sixteenth century), Foxcroft 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 pound dieting industry - and offers a welcome perspective on how we can be healthy and happy in our bodies.
- 320 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1. Introduction: ‘The Price of a Boyish Form’
- 2. The Origin of the Diet
- 3. Luxury and Sloth
- 4. Strictly Avoid Frightening Ideas
- 5. Advice to Stout People
- 6. Fads and Feeding
- 7. Keep Your Eyes Open and Your Mouth Shut
- 8. Half a Grapefruit and Two Olives
- 9. Skeletons and Sweater Girls
- 10. Modern Industrial Dieting
- Bibliography
- Illustration Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Index
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Yes, you can access Calories and Corsets by Louise Foxcroft in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & World History. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.