The eating instinct : food culture, body image, and guilt in America
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In this deeply personal and well-researched indictment of American diet culture, Sole-Smith explores hunger, satiation, and the myriad other reasons humans eat -- or don't. After a medical trauma left her month-old daughter Violet reliant on a feeding tube, the author realized that the primal instinct to self-nourish is "also surprisingly fragile," easily influenced by vegetable-pushing parents or the sugar-fearing wellness industry. In retraining her child to obey hunger cues, Sole-Smith found that most adults also need "a set of rules to follow, a literal recipe for how to develop this basic life skill." She profiles self-styled health gurus who have secretly suffered from eating disorders, and tracks how patients who have undergone bariatric surgery learn to love and listen to their bodies even "after having a part cut out of it." --,Adapted from Publishers Weekly.