Health Freaks
eBook - ePub

Health Freaks

America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness

  1. 272 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Only available on web
eBook - ePub

Health Freaks

America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation's collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease, Weisse argues that millions of Americans sought "fad" diets—such as the notorious Atkins program which ushered in the low-carbohydrate craze—to wrest control of their health from pessimistic doctors and lifelong pharmaceutical regimens. Drawing on novel archival sources and a wide variety of popular media, Weisse shows the lengths to which twentieth-century American dieters went to heal themselves outside the borders of orthodox medicine and the subsequent political and scientific backlash they received. Through colorful profiles of the leaders of four major diet movements, Health Freaks demonstrates that these diet gurus weren't shady snake oil salesmen preying on the vulnerable; rather, they were vocal champions for millions of frustrated Americans seeking longer, healthier lives.

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Information

Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Year
2024
ISBN
9781469683010
Topic
Medicine
Subtopic
Nutrition, Dietics & Bariatrics

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Illustration List
  7. Introduction: The Mise en Place
  8. 1. A Farewell to Chitterlings: Dr. Alvenia Moody Fulton, Soul Food, and the Advent of Black Veganism
  9. Entremets I: Ceding Healthy Food
  10. 2. Zen and the Art of Macrobiotic Maintenance: Michio Kushi, World Peace, and a Cold War Treatment for Cancer
  11. Entremets II: Quacking under Pressure
  12. 3. Death’s Door People: The Pritikin Program and the Natural Antidote to Aging and Debility
  13. Entremets III: The Gastro-Medical Industrial Complex
  14. 4. Let Them Eat Meat: Dr. Atkins’s Complementary Medical Revolution and the American Blood Sugar Epidemic
  15. Conclusion: Life, Death, and the Future of Dieting
  16. Acknowledgments
  17. Notes
  18. Index