This is an enlightening and entertaining social historical past of how now we have tried (and failed) to battle the bulge over two millennia. At present we're urged from all sides to slim down and form up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with dimension may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, however as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft exhibits, we've got been battling what to eat, when and the way much, ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch. Meticulously researched, shocking and generally surprising, "Calories and Corsets" tells the epic story of our complicated relationship with meals, the fashions and fads of body form, and the way cultural beliefs and social norms have changed over time. Combining research from medical journals, letters, articles and the dieting bestsellers we proceed to devour (including one by an octogenarian Italian within the sixteenth century), Foxcroft reveals the extreme and often absurd lengths folks will go to in an effort to obtain the perfect body, from eating carbolic soap to intentionally swallowing tapeworm. This unique and witty historical past exposes the myths and anxieties that drive as we speak's multi-billion pound weight-reduction plan industry - and offers a welcome perspective on how we may be wholesome and completely satisfied in our bodies.
