Food, the Body and the Self

Deborah Lupton is SHARP professor in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, working in the Center for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Center and leading the Vitalities Lab. She is the author/co-author of 17 books, the latest of which are Digital Sociology (Routledge, 2015), The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016), Digital Health (Routledge, 2017), Fat, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018), and Data Selves (Polity, 2019). She is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and holds an honorary doctor of social science degree awarded by the University of Copenhagen.

`This is a book about a phenomenon that is making an impact at the present day in western societies - namely, the interaction between food and eating practices and the preoccupation with the body, self-control, health, risk, consumption, and identity, the last in particular being a currently active and even agitated subject of discussion among scholars. The author, a specialist in Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy with an emphasis on the links between health and culture, is well fitted to analyse the subject....This is an interesting book, which shows through the subject of food and eating the wide range of shaping forces that play upon any individual within the society of the present day′ - Review of Scottish Culture 11`As a beginner′s guide to the cultural and academic discourses around food and the self this is a helpful, well-annotated volume with a bibliography that is comprehensive′ - Times Higher Education Supplement`A worthwhile and welcome addition to existing commentaries on food consumption and practices′ - Sociology of Health & Illness`Brings together the cultural forces that have insinuated themselves into our experience of food and the body. Drawing on the extensive writings that have grown up around, food, body image, nutrition theory and gender, the author draws an altogether more voluptuous picture of the state of our relationship to our bodies. Her account focuses on the many significances of food in people′s lives today; the struggle to manage the contradictory exhortations of the food industry, the cultural practices associated with food, the meanings with which eating is imbued, the influences of family, gender and sexuality and how these shape the human body and its relationship to food′ - Susie Orbach, Times Literary Supplement

• IntroductionTheoretical Perspectives on Food and EatingFood, the Family and ChildhoodFood, Health and NatureTastes and DistastesThe Asceticism/Consumption DialecticConclusion