Anxious Eaters
Why We Fall for Fad Diets
-
- $34.99
Publisher Description
What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? How did there get to be so many different ones, often with eerily similar prescriptions? Why do people cycle on and off diets, perpetually searching for that one simple trick that will solve everything? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition?
Anxious Eaters shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs—which is also why they tend to fail. Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for dieters. They demonstrate how fad diets help people cope with widespread anxieties and offer tantalizing glimpses of attainable self-transformation. Chrzan and Cargill emphasize the social contexts of diets, arguing that beliefs about nutrition are deeply rooted in pervasive cultural narratives. Although people choose to adopt new eating habits for individual reasons, broader forces shape why fad diets seem to make sense.
Considering dietary beliefs and practices in terms of culture, nutrition, and individual psychological needs, Anxious Eaters refrains from moralizing or promoting a “right” way to eat. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the popularity of a wide range of eating trends, including the Atkins Diet and other low- or no-carb diets; beliefs that ingredients like wheat products and sugars are toxic, allergenic, or addictive; food avoidance and “Clean Eating” practices; and paleo or primal diets. Anxious Eaters sheds new light on why people adopt such diets and why these diets remain so attractive even though they often fail.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Fad diets aren't a product of ignorance, lazy or wishful thinking, or purposeful mendacity" but "a product of deep and enduring cultural and psychological processes and needs" according to this sharp study from nutritional anthropologist Chrzan (Food Health) and psychologist Cargill (Food Cults). The authors contend that all fad diets—which they define as "a novelty diet that makes big promises and often has little scientific evidence supporting it"—are similar in that they're a response to a "set of concerns or anxieties," which makes them exceptionally easy to fall for. Chrzan and Cargill dig into Paleo eating (with its "firm belief that the problem is located within the cultural food system"), the Atkins diet (which "shifted the discourse about how and why people gain weight and how best to lose it"), and food addictions (a growing concern for people, despite not being recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association). The authors are especially sharp in their examination of "clean eating," which they note has no agreed-upon definition despite its ubiquity, and in pointing out that fad diets are so pervasive in America specifically thanks to a "cultural goal of conquering and mastering nature, self, and destiny." Students and scholars of psychology and nutrition will want to check out this smart and comprehensive survey.
