This author explores the history and culture of American food, popular culture, and health. Their work delves into how 20th-century diet systems emerged as a response to the anxieties of modern life, framing civilization itself as a disease and dieting as the cure. Through an imaginative chronology of human origins, the author examines various dietary approaches, from Paleolithic and biblical diets to modern environmental detoxification programs.
Diet books typically don't just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who we are and how we all should live. Diet and the Disease of Civilization interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if it's not calories - but concepts - that should be counted?