EAT once a day, sleep on a hard bed and walk naked for as long as possible. Such was the advice of the Greek physician Hippocrates to anyone wishing to shed a few pounds. There鈥檚 nothing new about people being worried that they are getting fat, notes cultural historian Sander L. Gilman.
His book examines how shifting cultural values have shaped our view of obesity since ancient times. Different societies have blamed it on weak character, poor diet, bad genes, poverty and sin. Now we have a new narrative, says Gilman, a 鈥渕oral panic鈥� over a global obesity epidemic that has fat threatening society as a whole. As with global warming, developed nations have destroyed their environment and are corrupting the rest of the world; the cure is seen as a return to the 鈥渘atural鈥� and 鈥渟low鈥� foods (and values) of the past. It鈥檚 a thought-provoking perspective on one of our most urgent health problems.
Obesity: The biography
Oxford University Press