Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder (Societas) - Softcover

Lyons, Rob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845402162 ISBN 13: 9781845402167

Publisher: Societas, 2011

Synopsis

The availability, range, cost and quality of food in Western societies have never been more favourable, yet food is also the focus of a great deal of anxiety. There are concerns that our current diets will mean we will get steadily fatter and more unhealthy while consuming 'junk food', with consequences for our quality of life, our children's behaviour and even the environment. This book challenges these ideas and places the food debate in a wider context. As the political imagination and the scope of social policy have narrowed, the focus on the personal and corporeal has filled this gap, creating an inward, individualised perspective that breeds a personal sense of vulnerability and distracts from issues of broader social importance. The book also examines the current use of ‘food as metaphor' – the way that ‘bad food’ and obesity, for example, have become code words for an elite disdain for the masses, implicitly promoting the idea that the consequences of poverty are the fault of the poor, and that a solution to the problems of social inequality lies in the consumption of five fruit and veg a day. The author also discusses how health fears around food are used as a lever for greater official control of our everyday lives, from lunchbox inspections and school food crusades, to endless media health advice and scientifically-dubious ‘healthy labelling’ initiatives. The upshot of these connected trends is misplaced anxiety and wasted effort fixing what, for the most part, does not need to be fixed. Our modern food system allows us to be healthier than ever before, while transforming food from fuel into a source of entertainment, pleasure and choice. Rob Lyons is Deputy Editor of Spiked Online.

About this title

Review

"Now, think about your workmates and friends. Would you really regard a quarter of them as obese? I'll bet few of them match up to the typical picture that accompanies every story about obesity: a morbidly obese person, whose clothes are straining to hold in their tummies. Such very overweight people only make up about two per cent of the population."

Source: Yorkshire Post

"While one might sympathise with the idea that fears about food have been blown out of all proportion and are being used to attempt to control peoples eating habits, the overall argument of this book is somewhat perverse... This may be provocative, but it is also perverse."

Source: Scientific and Medical Network

"Panic on a plate looks at how many feel robbed of the enjoyment that food gives us when in fact we should be embracing food when there are so many in other countries still starving and undernourished."

Author: Ibadete Fetahu Source: Nursing Times

About the Author

Rob Lyons is Deputy Editor of Spiked Online.

Edition details

• Publisher: Societas
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845402162
• ISBN 13: 9781845402167
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128