Bitar's fascinating thesis is that diet books are ways to understand contemporary social and political movements. Whether or not you agree with her provocative arguments, they are well worth reading. -- Marion Nestle * professor emerita, New York University, author of Food Politics *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is a timely and beautifully executed piece of work, providing a distinctly new perspective on the histories of food, the politics of fitness, and the development of popular self-help guides. -- Benjamin Reiss * author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created our Restless World *
Adrienne Rose Bitar lets you see contemporary American diet books as a continuation of the oldest, eighteenth-century American story: self-improvement as saving the world, and not vice-versa. She reads them as manifestos of a nineteenth-century American story, of America-of what was once called 'Americanitis'-as a disease: 'Modern life makes Americans sick.' Diet books are fictions, Bitar insists throughout, and not altogether negatively: many read them for the same reason we read novels. Which makes you wonder: if diet books were listed on the best-seller charts as fiction, would they drive out all the novels, or stop selling? -- Greil Marcus
Instead of evaluating diets by their ability to promote weight loss, Bitar reads them as powerful stories. She discovered that these seemingly mundane diet books reinvent history, measuring the success or failure of civilization by the health of body and body politic. * Cornell Chronicle *
Starting a New Year diet? Cornell historian explores American history through diet books by Jeff Tyson * Cornell University Media Relations Office *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization on The Page 99 Test by Marshal Zeringue * The Page 99 Test *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization on Campaign for the American Reader by Marshal Zeringue * Campaign for the American Reader *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization spotlight on 360 Magazine Online * 360 Magazine *
[
Diet and the Disease of Civilization] argues that mythologies of the 'Fall of Man' underlie the Paleo Diet and three other regimes popular in the United States. * Chronicle *
Why Do Humans Diet? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets tell us an awful lot about our anxieties and fears, even beyond health. * Clever Cookstr *
Business for Breakfast, Money Radio interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar * Business for Breakfast - Money Radio *
?An Unofficial History of Rich Women and Their Diets * Town & Country *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization: An Interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar by David Gerstle * Platypus Blog *
New Books Network Podcast interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar * New Books Network *
Opinion: It's past time for migrant children labor laws to grow up by Adrienne Rose Bitar * San Jose Mercury News *
A multitude of controversial issues will encourage questions for discussion and analysis. This text is an appropriate addition to inquiry-type courses in food studies, the sociocultural aspects of food, and women's studies. Complex language and ideas make this work best suited for advanced students. Recommended. * Choice *
Bitar's very well-researched and intriguing analysis is worth the read, perhaps to those more interested in American studies than in utopian studies. For those whose interests overlap in the two areas,
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is ideal. * Utopian Studies Review *
Diet Books as Utopian Manifestos: A Conversation with Adrienne Rose Bitar * Nursing Clio *
The Food Readers Organization 'Featured Author' Adrienne Rose Bitar * Food Readers *
The stories behind history's dumbest diets by Raquel Laneri * New York Post *
Fake Meat: the Future of Food? by Conan Milner * Epoch Times *
Bitar looks at the ways the multi-billion dollar diet book industry not only delivers dieting advice, but also tells readers how they should live. Through historical and literary analysis, Bitar examines four diets that, in their language, tell a story beyond food. Instead,
Diet and the Disease of Civilization points out that dieting systems portray anxieties about modernity and American culture, showing readers how diets can cure a national disease: civilization. * EcoWatch *
The Government's Role in the Rise of Lab-Grown Meat, by Adrienne Rose Bitar * Wired *
Gift Guide for Book Lovers by the editors of Stanfordmag.org * Stanford Magazine *
Diets can do more than help you lose weight - they could also save the planet, by Adrienne Rose Bitar * San Francisco Chronicle *
Important Steps To Shaping A Healthier Future Of Food, by Julia B. Olayanju * Forbes.com *
America's Weirdest Historical Fad Diets, by Jen Rose Smith * Huff Post *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is an important first foray into a critical analysis of contemporary diets that takes a cultural studies and literary criticism approach. I commend Bitar for bringing a new lens to this material and agree that these texts, and their corresponding subcultures, offer rich fodder for further study. * H-Net *
A historical survey of American diet books has been waiting to happen, and Adrienne Rose Bitar has carried out this project with great success. She finds these books to be in dialogue with American culture and that, no matter which diet book you open, the theme is about civilization in decline. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History. *
The Truth Found in Diet Books podcast interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar
http://radiomd.com/show/her/item/40205-the-truth-found-in-diet-books
* Her podcast *
What to Know Before Starting Intermittent Fasting, by Michael Easter
https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a29192545/intermittent-fasting-beginners-guide/ * Men's Health *
How Instagram brought nightmare retro food back to life by Raquel Laneri
https://nypost.com/2019/12/10/how-instagram-brought-nightmare-retro-food-back-to-life/ * New York Post *
The Turkey Has Been the Subject of Thanksgiving-Day Arguments for Longer Than You Probably Think, by Adrienne Bitar
https://time.com/5738997/vegeterian-thanksgiving-turkey-history/ * Time *
Bitar creates a compelling argument about the connections between diets and national identity....[A]rtful and captivating, and they provide important lessons for the reader. * Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture *
MEATHEADS: How red meat became the red pill for the right by Eamon Whelan * The Nation *
Inside the Knockdown, Drag-Out War on Saturated Fat, by Michael Easter * Men's Health *
For God So Loved the World He Gave Us Sundried Tomatoes, by Agnes Howard * Patheos *
What Is A Toxin? by Erin Blakemore * Popular Science *
Bitar's fascinating thesis is that diet books are ways to understand contemporary social and political movements. Whether or not you agree with her provocative arguments, they are well worth reading. -- Marion Nestle * professor emerita, New York University, author of Food Politics *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is a timely and beautifully executed piece of work, providing a distinctly new perspective on the histories of food, the politics of fitness, and the development of popular self-help guides. -- Benjamin Reiss * author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created our Restless World *
Adrienne Rose Bitar lets you see contemporary American diet books as a continuation of the oldest, eighteenth-century American story: self-improvement as saving the world, and not vice-versa. She reads them as manifestos of a nineteenth-century American story, of America-of what was once called 'Americanitis'-as a disease: 'Modern life makes Americans sick.' Diet books are fictions, Bitar insists throughout, and not altogether negatively: many read them for the same reason we read novels. Which makes you wonder: if diet books were listed on the best-seller charts as fiction, would they drive out all the novels, or stop selling? -- Greil Marcus
Instead of evaluating diets by their ability to promote weight loss, Bitar reads them as powerful stories. She discovered that these seemingly mundane diet books reinvent history, measuring the success or failure of civilization by the health of body and body politic. * Cornell Chronicle *
Starting a New Year diet? Cornell historian explores American history through diet books by Jeff Tyson * Cornell University Media Relations Office *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization on The Page 99 Test by Marshal Zeringue * The Page 99 Test *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization on Campaign for the American Reader by Marshal Zeringue * Campaign for the American Reader *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization spotlight on 360 Magazine Online * 360 Magazine *
[
Diet and the Disease of Civilization] argues that mythologies of the 'Fall of Man' underlie the Paleo Diet and three other regimes popular in the United States. * Chronicle *
Why Do Humans Diet? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets tell us an awful lot about our anxieties and fears, even beyond health. * Clever Cookstr *
Business for Breakfast, Money Radio interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar * Business for Breakfast - Money Radio *
An Unofficial History of Rich Women and Their Diets * Town & Country *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization: An Interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar by David Gerstle * Platypus Blog *
New Books Network Podcast interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar * New Books Network *
Opinion: It's past time for migrant children labor laws to grow up by Adrienne Rose Bitar * San Jose Mercury News *
A multitude of controversial issues will encourage questions for discussion and analysis. This text is an appropriate addition to inquiry-type courses in food studies, the sociocultural aspects of food, and women's studies. Complex language and ideas make this work best suited for advanced students. Recommended. * Choice *
Bitar's very well-researched and intriguing analysis is worth the read, perhaps to those more interested in American studies than in utopian studies. For those whose interests overlap in the two areas,
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is ideal. * Utopian Studies Review *
Diet Books as Utopian Manifestos: A Conversation with Adrienne Rose Bitar * Nursing Clio *
The Food Readers Organization 'Featured Author' Adrienne Rose Bitar * Food Readers *
The stories behind history's dumbest diets by Raquel Laneri * New York Post *
Fake Meat: the Future of Food? by Conan Milner * Epoch Times *
Bitar looks at the ways the multi-billion dollar diet book industry not only delivers dieting advice, but also tells readers how they should live. Through historical and literary analysis, Bitar examines four diets that, in their language, tell a story beyond food. Instead,
Diet and the Disease of Civilization points out that dieting systems portray anxieties about modernity and American culture, showing readers how diets can cure a national disease: civilization. * EcoWatch *
The Government's Role in the Rise of Lab-Grown Meat, by Adrienne Rose Bitar * Wired *
Gift Guide for Book Lovers by the editors of Stanfordmag.org * Stanford Magazine *
Diets can do more than help you lose weight - they could also save the planet, by Adrienne Rose Bitar * San Francisco Chronicle *
Important Steps To Shaping A Healthier Future Of Food, by Julia B. Olayanju * Forbes.com *
America's Weirdest Historical Fad Diets, by Jen Rose Smith * Huff Post *
Diet and the Disease of Civilization is an important first foray into a critical analysis of contemporary diets that takes a cultural studies and literary criticism approach. I commend Bitar for bringing a new lens to this material and agree that these texts, and their corresponding subcultures, offer rich fodder for further study. * H-Net *
A historical survey of American diet books has been waiting to happen, and Adrienne Rose Bitar has carried out this project with great success. She finds these books to be in dialogue with American culture and that, no matter which diet book you open, the theme is about civilization in decline. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History. *
The Truth Found in Diet Books podcast interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar
http://radiomd.com/show/her/item/40205-the-truth-found-in-diet-books
* Her podcast *
What to Know Before Starting Intermittent Fasting, by Michael Easter
https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a29192545/intermittent-fasting-beginners-guide/ * Men's Health *
How Instagram brought nightmare retro food back to life by Raquel Laneri
https://nypost.com/2019/12/10/how-instagram-brought-nightmare-retro-food-back-to-life/ * New York Post *
The Turkey Has Been the Subject of Thanksgiving-Day Arguments for Longer Than You Probably Think, by Adrienne Bitar
https://time.com/5738997/vegeterian-thanksgiving-turkey-history/ * Time *
Bitar creates a compelling argument about the connections between diets and national identity....[A]rtful and captivating, and they provide important lessons for the reader. * Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture *
MEATHEADS: How red meat became the red pill for the right by Eamon Whelan * The Nation *
Inside the Knockdown, Drag-Out War on Saturated Fat, by Michael Easter * Men's Health *
For God So Loved the World He Gave Us Sundried Tomatoes, by Agnes Howard * Patheos *
What Is A Toxin? by Erin Blakemore * Popular Science *
