The Art of Not Eating

A luminously original exploration of the deep roots of diet culture by an award-winning historian.

'A courageous and beautifully written exploration of a vitally important subject' – The Herald

'Fascinating' – Katherine May

'These books ... deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live...' – New Statesman

'Beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching' – Charlotte Fox Weber

'Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking' – The Telegraph

The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne – an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as 'Dr Diet' – it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women's appetite, and a personal unravelling.

In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels, and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters, and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing, and the body.

In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today's diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.

Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire, rationality, and oppression, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat.