Why Don’t Rich People Eat Anymore?

But diets as a form of categorical self-binding are threatened when the category changes over time as a result of market forces.

Flavors and odors are themselves a kind of food, just as important as protein and vitamins. When you eat inattentively, you miss out on these subtle nutrients. When you become aesthetically malnourished in this way, your body, craving more flavors, drives you to eat more and more food, and foods with stronger and stronger flavors. To put it in simp

The diet, fitness, and so-called wellness industries hence profit handsomely from the fatphobic hierarchies that make certain body types highly desirable, yet unachievable, for most people in our calorie-abundant social environment.

Maybe obesity rates have increased because food is more enjoyable than it has ever been, causing people to eat more. Rewards reinforce behavior, and the behavior of eating is rewarded by the palatability—the deliciousness—of the food. The increased palatability of food is not accidental. Societal changes have resulted in more meals being eaten away

What is clear, when the enormity of life and death is reduced to a question of thinness and fatness, is that it’s not really about health at all.