Short description:

'Drawing on the extensive writings that have grown up around, food, body image, nutrition theory and gender, she draws an altogether more voluptuous picture of the state of our relationship to our bodies' - Susie Orbach, Times Literary Supplement

Long description:

In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking analysis of the sociocultural and personal meanings of food and eating, Deborah Lupton explores the relationship between food and embodiment, the emotions and subjectivity. She includes discussion of the intertwining of food, meaning and culture in the context of childhood and the family, as well as: the gendered social construction of foodstuffs; food tastes, dislikes and preferences; the dining-out experience; spirituality; and the `civilized' body. She draws on diverse sources, including representations of food and eating in film, literature, advertising, gourmet magazines, news reports and public health literature, and her own empirical research into people's preferences, memories, experiences and emotional responses to food.

Food, the Body and the Self's strong interdisciplinary approach incorporates discussion of the work of a number of major contemporary social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, Elias, Kristeva, Grosz, Falk and Foucault.

`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