The Art Of Not Eating: A Doubtful History Of Appetite And Desire

Description

A luminously original exploration of the deep roots of diet culture by an award-winning historian'A courageous and beautifully written exploration of a vitally important subject' The Herald'Fascinating' Katherine May'These books ... deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live...' New Statesman'Beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching' Charlotte Fox Weber'Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking' The TelegraphThe day Jessica Hamel-Akr discovered the ideas of George Cheyne - an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as 'Dr Diet' - it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women's appetite and a personal unravelling. In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akr follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today's diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire, rationality and oppression, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat.

Review: A fascinating exploration of the deep roots of our diet culture, and a very personal account of its current repercussions * Katherine May, author of Wintering *
A beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching exploration of our relationships with eating and food. Hamel-Akre takes us into the heart of human experiences. This book is psychologically illuminating and, most importantly, deeply fascinating * Charlotte Fox Weber, author of What We Want *
This is perhaps because I'm dismayed that these stories of danger and shame need to be told and retold, but they do, and these books by Sarah Moss and Jessica Hamel-Akre deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live - allow ourselves to live - in this hard world in our soft and beautiful flesh. -- Erica Wagner * New Statesman *
Jessica Hamel-Akre delves into complex emotional and philosophical territory. Deeply personal as well as highly political, her book dices with the thorny old conundrum about the relationship between mind and body, before reaching an unexpected conclusion about the human soul that, I confess, I didn't quite grasp. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy The Art of Not Eating: a courageous and beautifully written exploration of a vitally important subject. -- Susan Flockhart * The Herald *
Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking. * The Telegraph *
The book convincingly shows that the scrutiny of the female body, which can feel so unrelenting in the Instagram era, is far from new. Cheyne's milk and seed diet may seem eccentric but is it so different from the diets that have their moment in the sun today? -- Leaf Arbuthnot * Daily Mail *

Contents: Part I: The Benefits of Abstinence 1: A Text 2: An Invitation 3: A Memory 4: A Fiction Part II: Ouroboros 5: A Daughter 6: A Disappointment 7: An Imposter 8: An Observation 9: A Consequence Part III: Angel Food 10: A Question 11: A Plate of Ashes 12: A State of Nature 13: A Revelation 14: A Leap of Faith Part IV: A Right to Regale 15: A Thought of Wanting 16: A Performance 17: A Preservation of Self Appendix: Mrs ANN MOORE, the Woman of Tutbury, to the Satirist, or Monthly Meteor, June 1813

Author Biography: Jessica Hamel-Akr is an award-winning historian, researcher and cultural strategy consultant. She holds a PhD from the University of Montreal and was a postdoctoral scholar in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Newnham College where she conducted a seven year study on the history of appetite control. An expert in the history of women's health, literature and feminist thought, she has helped some of the world's biggest brands navigate emerging ideas around gender, digital wellbeing and beauty. Jessica co-created and presented on the BBC Radio 4 documentary The Unexpected History of Clean Eating.