Diet and the Disease of Civilization
"Fake Meat: the Future of Food?" by Conan Milner
Epoch Times
Diet books, which have been bestsellers for over a hundred years, contribute to a $60 billion industry as they speak to the 45 million Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don't just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we all should live. Les mer
Diet books, which have been bestsellers for over a hundred years, contribute to a $60 billion industry as they speak to the 45 million Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don't just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we all should live. Diet and the Disease of Civilization interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if it's not calories-but concepts-that should be counted?
Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets recreate the "Fall of Man" as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and offer diet as the one true cure.
Bitar reads each diet-the Paleo Diet, the Garden of Eden Diet, the Pacific Island Diet, the detoxification or detox diet-as both a myth and a manual, a story with side effects igniting social movements, driving industry, and shaping fundamental ideas about sickness and health. These are fresh stories with broader concerns and higher stakes than we have previously understood. Diet and the Disease of Civilization unearths the ways in which diet books are actually utopian manifestos not just for better bodies but also for a healthier society and a more perfect world.
Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets recreate the "Fall of Man" as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and offer diet as the one true cure.
Bitar reads each diet-the Paleo Diet, the Garden of Eden Diet, the Pacific Island Diet, the detoxification or detox diet-as both a myth and a manual, a story with side effects igniting social movements, driving industry, and shaping fundamental ideas about sickness and health. These are fresh stories with broader concerns and higher stakes than we have previously understood. Diet and the Disease of Civilization unearths the ways in which diet books are actually utopian manifestos not just for better bodies but also for a healthier society and a more perfect world.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Rutgers University Press
- Innbinding
- Innbundet
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 244
- ISBN
- 9780813589657
- Utgivelsesår
- 2018
- Format
- 23 x 15 cm
Anmeldelser
"Fake Meat: the Future of Food?" by Conan Milner
Epoch Times
"Bitar looks at the ways the multi-billion dollar diet book industry not only delivers dieting advice, but also tells readers how they should live. Through historical and literary analysis, Bitar examines four diets that, in their language, tell a story beyond food. Instead, Diet and the Disease of Civilization points out that dieting systems portray anxieties about modernity and American culture, showing readers how diets can cure a national disease: civilization."
EcoWatch
"The Government's Role in the Rise of Lab-Grown Meat," by Adrienne Rose Bitar
Wired
"Gift Guide for Book Lovers" by the editors of Stanfordmag.org
Stanford Magazine
"Diets can do more than help you lose weight – they could also save the planet," by Adrienne Rose Bitar
San Francisco Chronicle
"Important Steps To Shaping A Healthier Future Of Food," by Julia B. Olayanju
Forbes.com
"Bitar’s fascinating thesis is that diet books are ways to understand contemporary social and political movements. Whether or not you agree with her provocative arguments, they are well worth reading."
Marion Nestle, professor emerita, New York University, author of Food Politics
"America's Weirdest Historical Fad Diets," by Jen Rose Smith
Huff Post
"For God So Loved the World He Gave Us Sundried Tomatoes," by Agnes Howard
Patheos
"Bitar creates a compelling argument about the connections between diets and national identity....[A]rtful and captivating, and they provide important lessons for the reader."
Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture
"MEATHEADS: How red meat became the red pill for the right" by Eamon Whelan
The Nation
"Inside the Knockdown, Drag-Out War on Saturated Fat," by Michael Easter
Men's Health
"What Is A Toxin?" by Erin Blakemore
Popular Science
"The Turkey Has Been the Subject of Thanksgiving-Day Arguments for Longer Than You Probably Think," by Adrienne Bitar
Time
https://time.com/5738997/vegeterian-thanksgiving-turkey-history/
«
"The Truth Found in Diet Books" podcast interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar
» Her podcast
http://radiomd.com/show/her/item/40205-the-truth-found-in-diet-books
"How Instagram brought nightmare retro food back to life" by Raquel Laneri
New York Post
https://nypost.com/2019/12/10/how-instagram-brought-nightmare-retro-food-back-to-life/
"Diet and the Disease of Civilization is a timely and beautifully executed piece of work, providing a distinctly new perspective on the histories of food, the politics of fitness, and the development of popular self-help guides."
Benjamin Reiss, author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created our Restless World
"Adrienne Rose Bitar lets you see contemporary American diet books as a continuation of the oldest, eighteenth-century American story: self-improvement as saving the world, and not vice-versa. She reads them as manifestos of a nineteenth-century American story, of America—of what was once called 'Americanitis'—as a disease: 'Modern life makes Americans sick.' Diet books are fictions, Bitar insists throughout, and not altogether negatively: many read them for the same reason we read novels. Which makes you wonder: if diet books were listed on the best-seller charts as fiction, would they drive out all the novels, or stop selling?"
Greil Marcus
"Diet and the Disease of Civilization is an important first foray into a critical analysis of contemporary diets that takes a cultural studies and literary criticism approach. I commend Bitar for bringing a new lens to this material and agree that these texts, and their corresponding subcultures, offer rich fodder for further study."
H-Net
«"A historical survey of American diet books has been waiting to happen, and Adrienne Rose Bitar has carried out this project with great success. She finds these books to be in dialogue with American culture and that, no matter which diet book you open, the theme is about civilization in decline."»
Journal of Interdisciplinary History.
«Diet and the Disease of Civilization spotlight on 360 Magazine Online»
360 Magazine
"Instead of evaluating diets by their ability to promote weight loss, Bitar reads them as powerful stories. She discovered that these seemingly mundane diet books reinvent history, measuring the success or failure of civilization by the health of body and body politic."
Cornell Chronicle
"Starting a New Year diet? Cornell historian explores American history through diet books" by Jeff Tyson
Cornell University Media Relations Office
"Diet and the Disease of Civilization on The Page 99 Test" by Marshal Zeringue
The Page 99 Test
«"Diet and the Disease of Civilization on Campaign for the American Reader" by Marshal Zeringue»
Campaign for the American Reader
"[Diet and the Disease of Civilization] argues that mythologies of the 'Fall of Man' underlie the Paleo Diet and three other regimes popular in the United States."
Chronicle
"Business for Breakfast," Money Radio interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar
Business for Breakfast - Money Radio
«Why Do Humans Diet? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets tell us an awful lot about our anxieties and fears, even beyond health.»
Clever Cookstr
"A multitude of controversial issues will encourage questions for discussion and analysis. This text is an appropriate addition to inquiry-type courses in food studies, the sociocultural aspects of food, and women’s studies. Complex language and ideas make this work best suited for advanced students. Recommended."
Choice
«Diet and the Disease of Civilization: An Interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar by David Gerstle»
Platypus Blog
"New Books Network Podcast" interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar
New Books Network
"Opinion: It’s past time for migrant children labor laws to grow up" by Adrienne Rose Bitar
San Jose Mercury News
"Bitar’s very well-researched and intriguing analysis is worth the read, perhaps to those more interested in American studies than in utopian studies. For those whose interests overlap in the two areas, Diet and the Disease of Civilization is ideal."
Utopian Studies Review
"An Unofficial History of Rich Women and Their Diets"
Town & Country
"Diet Books as Utopian Manifestos: A Conversation with Adrienne Rose Bitar"
Nursing Clio
"The Food Readers Organization 'Featured Author' Adrienne Rose Bitar"
Food Readers