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A review by sgstasi
The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America by Virginia Sole-Smith
4.0
Health food. Junk food. Comfort food. Fast food. Whole food.
America today is steeped in food culture, and eating has become a national obsession. Each of us possesses a particular set of eating habits that stem from a combination of nature and nurture. But for many folks, eating is a difficult and emotionally fraught necessity. You may be vegan, paleo, fast-food addicted, or a conflicted clean-eater. Yet, regardless of the factors that inform your food choices, have you ever stopped to ask yourself, “How did I learn to eat?” Virginia Sole-Smith’s book “The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America” takes a fascinating deep dive into how Americans eat and the myriad of ways that modern life and culture impact our ability to simply nourish our bodies with food.
Sole-Smith dedicates each chapter to a different eating behavior including extremely “picky” eaters, folks who have chosen weight loss surgery or those who are obsessed with eating only healthy, clean foods. Sole-Smith treats her interview subjects with compassion and respect. She is careful to not favor one way of eating over another and instead presents her interview findings in relation to a review of the current scientific literature. Most importantly, Sole-Smith asks important and revealing questions about where we are, how we got here and where we might go from here. What if we could approach eating differently?
“Without judgement. Without guilt. Without ranking picky eaters as somehow less that adventurous eaters, corner stores as less than farmers markets, meat eaters as less than vegetarians, fat as less than thin?” p.238
But how do we learn honor our hunger? To eat to nourish our bodies instead of for a myriad of other reasons? Sole-Smith makes it clear that the answer is highly individual, and is tied to a complex array of issues that we must examine and consider for ourselves.
“Recognizing ourselves as capable eaters means identifying the factors that caused us to lose that identity in the first place– the particular mix of biology, psychology, socioeconomic positioning, and life experience that is different for everyone.” p. 239
I recommend this read for anyone who has ever had a challenging relationship with food, not as another set of recommendations for how to behave but as a tool for deeper understanding of why we struggle so much with food in the first place. Overall, it seems that the key to a better relationship with food may be a kinder, more gentle relationship to ourselves.
You can read a longer review on my blog:
https://sarastasiwrites.home.blog/2019/07/25/food-ritual-a-book-review-of-the-eating-instinct-by-virginia-sole-smith/
America today is steeped in food culture, and eating has become a national obsession. Each of us possesses a particular set of eating habits that stem from a combination of nature and nurture. But for many folks, eating is a difficult and emotionally fraught necessity. You may be vegan, paleo, fast-food addicted, or a conflicted clean-eater. Yet, regardless of the factors that inform your food choices, have you ever stopped to ask yourself, “How did I learn to eat?” Virginia Sole-Smith’s book “The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America” takes a fascinating deep dive into how Americans eat and the myriad of ways that modern life and culture impact our ability to simply nourish our bodies with food.
Sole-Smith dedicates each chapter to a different eating behavior including extremely “picky” eaters, folks who have chosen weight loss surgery or those who are obsessed with eating only healthy, clean foods. Sole-Smith treats her interview subjects with compassion and respect. She is careful to not favor one way of eating over another and instead presents her interview findings in relation to a review of the current scientific literature. Most importantly, Sole-Smith asks important and revealing questions about where we are, how we got here and where we might go from here. What if we could approach eating differently?
“Without judgement. Without guilt. Without ranking picky eaters as somehow less that adventurous eaters, corner stores as less than farmers markets, meat eaters as less than vegetarians, fat as less than thin?” p.238
But how do we learn honor our hunger? To eat to nourish our bodies instead of for a myriad of other reasons? Sole-Smith makes it clear that the answer is highly individual, and is tied to a complex array of issues that we must examine and consider for ourselves.
“Recognizing ourselves as capable eaters means identifying the factors that caused us to lose that identity in the first place– the particular mix of biology, psychology, socioeconomic positioning, and life experience that is different for everyone.” p. 239
I recommend this read for anyone who has ever had a challenging relationship with food, not as another set of recommendations for how to behave but as a tool for deeper understanding of why we struggle so much with food in the first place. Overall, it seems that the key to a better relationship with food may be a kinder, more gentle relationship to ourselves.
You can read a longer review on my blog:
https://sarastasiwrites.home.blog/2019/07/25/food-ritual-a-book-review-of-the-eating-instinct-by-virginia-sole-smith/