The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne - an 18th 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.
As Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, she meets ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers. In doing so she uncovers a twisted three-hundred year history of harmful ideals and male domination that still influences today's diet culture.
Blending memoir with piercing historical insight, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at female want, beauty standards, the nature of rationality, and how it all got so tangled up with how we eat.
