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Louise Foxcroft

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Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years Hardcover – January 1, 2012

by Louise Foxcroft (Author)

4.0 66 ratings

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This is an enlightening and entertaining social history of how we have tried (and failed) to battle the bulge over two millennia. 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 deliberately swallowing tapeworm. 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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Profile Books; Main edition (January 1, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846684250
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846684258
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.67 x 0.98 x 8.74 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,056,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 66 ratings

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4 out of 5

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DSB

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2018

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This is fascinating history. I enjoyed the way history and anecdotes were woven together. I learned a lot from the social commentary and will be rereading many parts. This is great as background reading to working on body image issues.

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N Clifford

It was also tiresome to keep converting the weights given in the British ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2016

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Fat shaming through the centuries. There was very little about how the notion of what constitutes the idea of "slender" has changed over time and almost nothing about the ridicule heaped on those who were considered "scrawny". It was also tiresome to keep converting the weights given in the British stone (14 lbs). There were a few nice quotations but not a lot of really useful information.

One person found this helpful

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leah

interesting historical look at diets

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2021

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fascinating look at the history of diets though this would be triggering for someone who struggles w/ ED.

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2014

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very well written - I love books that have anything to do with food history . This book is great

6 people found this helpful

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Tim

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2015

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Fabulous!.. I've recommended it to everyone who'll listen.

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Lynda SSD

have not been able to read the entire book yey but feel it is a good

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2015

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Very interesting that things have not changed that much in dieting just available junk food, have not been able to read the entire book yey but feel it is a good read

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2015

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excellent read, timely transaction, packaging very appropriate

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2013

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This book provides a very comprehensive history of diets and diet-promoters. Those who, like me, have spent their lives on one diet or another, will be interested in how the "modern" approaches to dieting so often have very deep roots, and how the promoters of fad diets have used almost the same arguments and approaches for centuries.

6 people found this helpful

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Red Voltaire

Amusing, informative, and timely

Reviewed in Canada on February 11, 2015

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Dieting is as old as the hills, and has a thousands-of-years-long history of utter uselessness. This amusing and informative history of writings on the subject will put it all in perspective, and may even make you feel better about your so-called "failures". It's not YOU that's failed -- it's your diet! NOTE: This is not a book on how to lose weight, but rather one about the futility of food fads. Don't expect to find any detailed advice on how to eat, but do expect to see that you really CAN ditch the diets permanently.

One person found this helpful

Ben Jane

Great perspective on the DNA of diets

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2014

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I would recommend this book to any health and fitness professionals that work with clients that are interested in losing weight or avoiding the ever-present threat of weight gain. From the origins of the first recorded diets in Greek and Roman times through to Banting, Frumusan, and Fishbein, Fletcher (the great masticator), Hay, and Atkins, the author gives an interesting account of the mixed bag of charlatans, gurus and weight loss doctors that form the DNA of the diet industry that we know today.

The virtues of low carb, high protein diets, pills, potions and additives are nothing new and the book tells how familiar themes of discipline, self-worth, blame and ignorance have all been called upon as both solutions and the reasons why so many people have felt the need to be on a diet at some point in their lives.

I have worked with trainee fitness professionals for some years and many believe the generally accepted truism that fat people “just need motivating” and that they are probably lazy and/or undisciplined. This book goes some way to showing how these attitudes are ingrained in our psyche and goes a long way to helping these emerging professionals understand that there is very little new in the world of weight management and that just because the latest diet is the one that everyone is shouting about, it is no more likely to work than the last one.

Sluggishthrone

Mostly interesting but after a while I was a bit bored.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2017

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I found the parts on dieting to be mostly interesting although I have to admit that towards the end I was getting a little bored.

One person found this helpful

ACB(swansea)

A Study Of Frustration Through The Ages.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2012

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Louise Foxcroft has set out and succeeded in detailing the history of food formulae designed to achieve weight loss, fashionable shape and, presumably, happiness, satisfaction and success. She achieves this with a pacey,detailed, fact-filled account of numerous diets, many promoted by influential people and publications over centuries. The ups and downs of the physical and emotional effects of failure to achieve sustainable goals are in many cases grim but they are interspersed with humour, often allied to methods and appliances designed to aid the shedding of fat (and money).

Ms Foxcroft argues persuasively that diets over the ages have been fabricated to suit the perceived social and cultural styles in vogue in a particular era, especially more contemporary times when diet is a multibillion pound industry. Diet books are best sellers ironically sitting next to a plethora of cook books. Although these often harsh regimens were aimed at females and their vanity, they were usually devised by men from observation of personal successful weight reduction programmes. These were lauded and applauded by popular dissemination of the apparent benefits of shedding excess 'corpulence', considered 'horrible and disgusting' reflecting gluttony and loss of self-control.

The word 'diet' is derived from the Greek 'diaita' describing a whole way of life rather than weight loss per se. Hippocrates (460-570BC) supported this principle and advocated all round mental and physical health should be a balance between food intake and exercise or work aided by forced vomiting. Socrates (469-570BC) believed diet was the route to health and if abused the way to disease and death. The 17th century poet Sir John Harrington's idea of feminine beauty was "skin and teeth must be cleare, bright and neat [with] large breasts and hips' reminiscent of the erotic 'reproductive figures' of Rembrandt and Reubens fashionable art. In 1558 Venetian merchant Cornaro published 'Diet-Art of Living Long', still in print over 450 years later promoting self-control, eating little and frugally,'what is good for the palate cannot be good for the soul'. The forerunner of today's calorie restriction. Lord Byron (1788-1824) was 'a little fat', and whilst at Cambridge went on a severe diet to avoid the horror of fat that he associated with lethargy and dullness. He said romantic youth should drink vinegar to lose weight and eat rice to give a pale complexion. "A woman",he said,"should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it is lobster salad and champagne".(Hypocritical, as he remarked that Lady Caroline Lamb was haunting him like a skeleton after she lost weight when their marriage ended).
Brillat-Savarin was an early proponent of low-carbohydrate diets with avoidance of farinaceous foods, starches and sugars, eating instead green and root vegetables, light meat and water.Self-starvation also beneficial and "shun beer like the plague".Banting (1863), a London undertaker, who lost considerable weight on essentially a high protein, high fat low carbohydrate diet, produced a pamphlet of his methods with considerable success. 'Banting' became a synonym for dieting in the UK. So popular was 'The Banting System' he was satirised in 'Punch' (1869):
'I've done it said brave Mr Banting,
And so may each overfed Briton,
If he'd only adopt resolution severe,
All bread, butter,sugar, milk,'taters' and beer'.
These were the forerunners of today's fad diets (e.g Durkin, Atkins).
'The Great Masticator', Harold Fletcher (1849-1914), introduced 'Fletcherism' as an aid to cut food intake involving chewing each mouthful of food several hundred times. It still has its supporters.

Corsetry has been popular for hundreds of years. Women were prepared to be laced into whale bone garments causing discomfort, overlapping ribs, breathing problems and bad breath to achieve the 'wasp-like' effect. If they could put up with this, severe calorie restriction could also be tolerated. New foods, films, magazines,newspapers introduced media pressure to 'look good'. Film stars such as Jane Russell brought back busts from the boyish post-world war one look. Men were influenced by Sandow and Charles Atlas. Another tappable market. Benjamin Hauser was diet guru to the stars (as well as Greta Garbo's lover and a con man) but his directions were slavishly followed by the rich and famous.

Apart from corsetry including garments such as 'The Merry Widow' aids to a new bodyshape included laxative-laced chewing gum, cigarettes with appetite suppressants in them, cigarettes without,'Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet','Eat what you like if you smoke Lucky Strike', electric shock therapy, magnetic belts, pills and potions containing arsenic and strychnine and 'mother's little helper' containing amphetamines. Other unorthodox approaches were Edward Baron's 1960s LPs: 'Reduce through listening which helps you develop a dislike for fattening foods', and weight loss through prayer."We fatties are the only people on earth who can weigh our sin" wrote pastor Charlie Shedd.

Louise Foxcroft puts her own stamp on the study of diets over the centuries. How far have we really come with diets appearing then being rehashed? How much have we changed from Cornaro and Banting to Atkins, Durkan etc? She feels the need to return to the Greeks' true meaning of 'diaita', modernising it in the light of success and failures. Perhaps an evidence based dietary approach allied to exercise may be an answer? Who knows? Anything that removes misery, whether from perceived body shape or dieting would be welcomed. I found this an enjoyable, educational,sometimes painful in its content (not its writer),lightened by touches of humour. Very readable and recommendable.

7 people found this helpful

Lindylou

Excellent book on hitory of dieting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 9, 2021

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Well researched and readable overview of dieting over 2,000 years.

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