Wheat Bellies and Grain Brains
A Social-Historical Analysis of the Biochemicalization
of Dieting in Dieting Books
Master thesis Social Policy and Social Problems By: Jim Snoek
Reviewers: Barbara Da Roit & Thomas Kampen 3-7-2014
Table of Content
1. Introduction ...3 2. Theoretical framework ...4 3. Research questions ...8 4. Methodology ...9 4.1 Selection criteria………94.2 Gathering the data………10
4.2.1 Methodological issues and implications for reliability……….10
4.3 Analysis of the data………..11
4.4 Reliability and validity ………12
5. What is a Diet?...12
5.1 The ‘classic’ v.s. the ‘modern’ diet……….13
5.2 The lifestyle certainty……….14
5.3 Disciplining the mind through human technologies ………...15
5.3.1 Calculating subjectivities………..15
5.3.2 Establishing ethical authority………...15
5.3.3 Technologies of the self………...19
5.3.4 A promise not kept………..…21
5.4 The spill of the diet: Reducing food to its nutrient value………..21
6. The biochemicalization of dieting………..23
6.1 A biochemical revolution in the seventies………23
6.1.1 What changed in the 70’s?.………25
6.1.2 Atkins’ legacy………26
6.1.3 Atkins and Pritikin revisited………27
6.2 Aesthetics v.s. health: Has the biochemicalization of dieting caused a shift away from the slender bodily ideal?...29
6.3 Is fat bad?: Consequences of the biochemicalization of dieting for fat stigma……….34
6.3.1 The increase of ‘fat’ people……….………..36
6.4 Consequences of the biochemicalization of dieting for gender roles………..37
6.5 Is dieting a biochemicalized practice?...40
7. Concluding remarks………..43
7.1 Summary……….……..….43
7.2 Discussion……….……..46
7.3 Policy advice……….….………47
7.4 Suggestions for further research………47
8. Bibliography………47 8.1 References………..47 8.2 Internet sources……….51 9. Appendix………..51 9.1 Sample………..51 9.2 Code List………..54
1 Introduction
It seems like dieting has been around forever, and the different types of diets that claim to have the solution are in overabundance. We have had the ‘Atkins diet’, the ‘bread diet’, the ‘beer diet’, ‘juice cleansing’ and the ‘paleo diet’, to just name a few examples. What these diets al have in common is that they claim to have ‘the solution’, dependent on what you are trying to accomplish; lose weight, live a 100 years and so on. It would be impossible to tell which diet ‘is the one’, nor is it the intend of this research to find such a diet. The aim of this research is to compare, over a 40-year period of time, different books on dieting, to find the dominant discourses in these books and how these have changed over time. Mainly drawing on the work of Nicolas Rose (1996, 2003, 2007) I propose a shift in discourse towards a more biological and consequently internal understanding of bodily health and diet practice.
In the social sciences, there has been written a good deal on dieting. Ranging from a power-dominance perspective (See for example: Heyes, 2006), heavily drawing on Foucault’s work, to a micro-sociological approach aimed at understanding concrete diet practices (See for example: Halkier, 2009; Warrin et al., 2008). Methodologically this field of study is just as diverse. One can analyse policy documents (Schessler-Jandreau, 2008; Rawlins, 2008), popular media (Ouelette & Hay, 2008; Crawshaw, 2007), participate in weight-loss programs (Heyes, 2006) or watch and interact with people who put their diet in practice (cooking) (Halkier, 2009; Warin et al., 2008). Despite the vast body of work in this field, there are some gaps to be filled up, methodologically as well as
analytically.
In the field of dieting there are broadly two theoretical approaches to be distinguished. On the one side there is the power-dominance school, with a macro-sociological approach to dieting. Dieting is defined in Foucauldian terms, as something that ‘constructs the docile body’ (Bartsky, 1990; Bordo, 1993) and as something that has to be ‘performed’ (Butler, 1990). On the other side there are some writings on the actual diet practices of people. This group of scholarly writers explicate on the fact that in practice the dominance of diets and dietary advice on people is not always so straightforward. In their actual (cooking)practices people always find ways to alter the dominance asserted over them. Recipes can be altered (Halkier, 2009) or people find exceptions for themselves to keep up with the diet.1 Also standardized dietary advice and measurement tools(BMI for example) do not always resonate with people’s everyday lives (Warin et al., 2008; Mol, 2012). Despite their ontological and epistemological differences these two schools do have a common trait. What they have in common is the way dieting is operationalized. This is (broadly) done in two ways. Firstly, dieting concerns either complying to the dominant slender beauty esthetic or is part of the medicalization of ‘fatness’, and thus it is aimed at reducing ‘fatness’ in order to be healthy (citizens).
Either way, dieting is thus operationalized as a way to reduce bodily fat and is limited to the outer body. Secondly, dieting is mostly viewed as a highly gendered practice. As Samantha Murray (2008a, 2008b) has pointed out, the ‘fat’ body is mainly pathologized for women. Indeed, the slender bodily ideal for women has been around for quite some time, and since corsets are out of fashion, dieting is a means to an end (Featherstone, 2001). Be that as it may, recent scholarly work has paid some attention to dietary advice to men (Courtenay, 2000; Gough, 2006; Lohan, 2007; Crawshaw, 2007). This dietary advice is molded in a ‘manly’ way though, showing men how they can both diet and stay masculine.
The dominant definition of dieting, viewing dieting as a gendered practice aimed at reducing outer body fat, is what this research attempts to challenge. Mainly drawing on the work of Nicolas Rose (2003; 2007) the leading argument of this research is that people are increasingly defining themselves in biological terms. The consequence of this is that ‘being healthy’ concerns everybody, men and women, and does not stop on the outside, but is also a project of internal health.
Consequently the expectation is that a general discourse, aimed at both women and men will
develop. Furthermore, the battle against ‘fatness’ is not what will solely dominate the discourse, as it will also be directed to a more internal, biological understanding of dieting. This research will thus attempting to find a change in discourse; from a (outer) ‘fat’ perspective on dieting to a (internal) ‘health’ perception of dieting.
There is also a methodological gap in the literature on dieting, and it is a quite surprising one. There has been written a reasonable amount of scholarly work on the influence of popular media on dieting and health choices of people. These authors mainly focus on television programs and
magazines, while the most obvious influence on people’s dieting practices is being neglected, namely dieting books; self-help books, cooking books and (semi)scientific books which explicate on dieting. This can be considered quite a surprise, since dieting books seem like the ideal knowledge transfer in this field. Indeed, as my previous research experience in this field has shown, books on dieting are an inseparable part of this practice. 2 This holds for the start of the diet (getting main ideas of what is healthy) and putting it in practice (special cooking books). In this research books on dieting will account for the empirical data.
2 Theoretical Framework
Food is an inseparable part of our daily lives and interactions. But surprisingly social scientists did not write a good deal about it until the 1960´s (Caplan, 2013). Starting from the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1965, 1968, 1970), who’s structuralist approach led him to believe that trough food one can
reach “a significant knowledge of the unconscious attitudes of the society or societies under study” (1968: 87, cited in: Caplan, 2013: 2). Since the structuralist anthropological school of Lévi-Strauss and his followers (see for example: Barthes, 1975; Douglas, 1966, 1975) many schools in the social sciences have written on food and food consumption. Not surprisingly, the feminist movement has played a large role in showing the interrelatedness of food and gender. The performance of gender roles (Butler, 1990) in relation to food is, according to this school, still a quite traditional one; women are usually responsible for preparing the dinners for the family, and they find joy and meaning in doing this (Murcott, 1983). But an even more important difference between men and women in relation to food is the difference in ‘entitlements’ (Sen, 1990). As Bourdieu (1980) has mentioned, the kind of foods men and women are supposed to eat can vary significantly within and between societies. For example that men are supposed to eat red meat and that vegetarians are mostly women in large parts of the Western world (Bourdieu, 1980). This gendered division of food consumption partly explains why diets in the 20th century were predominantly directed towards women. But dieting, as well as food in general, is a multifactor phenomenon. As Featherstone (2001) has pointed out, it was not until the molded and corseted body stopped being the dominant beauty esthetic and was replaced for the slender body ideal, that dieting became an important means to accomplish the dominant beauty esthetic. However, dieting in the second half of the 20th century has come to encompass more than just bodily esthetics. As Schessler-Jandreau (2008) has observed trough a historical analysis, social policy throughout the 20th century, especially after WOII, was obsessed with dieting and mainly in reducing obesity. She relates this to an increased medicalized (Conrad, 1992; 2005) understanding of personal and social problems. People who are ‘fat’ were considered sick and needed treatment (Schessler-Jandreau, 2008). Furthermore, social policy has integrated dieting and the ´war against obesity´ (Rawlins, 2008) into new forms of citizenship. These new types of citizenship differ from the classical citizenship rights as formulated by Marshall (1950), mostly in the sense that there are more duties bound to the rights as well as the locking out effect on marginal groups. These new types of citizenship include cultural citizenship (Delanty, 2002; Pakulski, 2007), active citizenship (Tonkens, 2012; Tonkens & Newman, 2012; Vabø, 2012; Ilcan & Basok, 2004) and biological citizenship (Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2003). Especially the latter two types of
citizenship have become important in relation to the integration of dieting into social policy.
Biological citizenship is a term coined by Nikolas Rose, and can be considered as a ‘citizenship project’ (Rose & Novas, 2003). Citizenship projects are “the ways that authorities thought about (some) individuals as potential citizens, and the ways they tried to act upon them” (2003: 1). The citizenship project for the biological citizen has been one in which “specific biological
presuppositions, explicitly or implicitly, have underlain many citizenship projects, shaped conceptions of what it means to be a citizen, and underpinned distinctions between actual, potential,
troublesome and impossible citizens.” (2003: 2). In the case of dieting some scholars have integrated the idea of the biological citizen in their work. Samantha Murray for example states that:
“Medical narratives surrounding the Western “obesity epidemic” have generated greater fears of “fatness” that have permeated Western collective consciousness, and these anxieties have manifested themselves as a moral panic. The medicalization of fatness via the establishment of the disease of “obesity” has necessarily
entailed a combining of medical narratives/imperatives and historico-cultural
discursive formations of fatness as a moral failing and as an aesthetic affront.” (Murray, 2008b: 7).
The ‘obesity epidemic’ which Murray describes has been a useful tool in health care policy (Schessler-Jandreau, 2008). By addressing ‘fatness’ as obesity, a disease is framed, and citizens are called to ‘fight’ this epidemic. In Murray’s view this new discourse on fighting a disease helps to strengthen the stigma that hangs around ‘fatness’ in contemporary society. Indeed, as Brewis et al. (2011) have investigated in a cross-national survey, in almost every country people are fairly negative towards ‘fat’ people, even in countries that were traditionally considered ‘fat positive’. Undoubtedly being ‘fat’ is pathologized in recent health care policy, but the ‘war against obesity’ is not completed when ‘fatness’ is reduced.3 When an (intensive) dieting program comes to an end, one feels (or is learned how to feel) that it has become a ‘lifestyle’ (Heyes, 2006: 129). Moreover, what seems to be happening here is a convergence of two major trends in late modern society. Firstly there is the increased reflexivity in late-modern society, which consists on the one hand of reflexivity on people’s everyday life, the project of the self; everything we know about ourselves can be contested and people need to reinvent and construct their identity when necessary (Giddens, 1990; 1991). On the other hand reflexive modernity entails an increased importance of risk-assessment, people need to be reflexive about the risks of everything, even things as mundane as food (Beck, 1986). The second major trend in society is the earlier mentioned medicalization of society and biological citizenship. The way these concepts are operationalized until now does not do justice to the complicated and pervasive nature of the concepts. Indeed, as Rose and Novas have mentioned, biological
consciousness can be superficial (outer body fat), but can also be directed to more complicated internal biological functions (2002: 3). So one can expect that in these times of reflexive and biological consciousness, dietary advice has also changed in these directions.
Dieting in this research is understood in Foucauldian terms. As Sandra Bartky (1990) and Susan Bordo (1993) have explained it; dieting can be understood as an activity that constructs the
3
Trough examinations of health care policy in Amsterdam in a recent paper this observation has been made. The used policy documents are available at:
docile body. This is a rather ‘classical’ understanding of Foucault’s theory, in defining dieting as the continuous surveillance on one’s body, while becoming a subject and subjected at the same time (Heyes, 2006: 127). Cressida Heyes (2006) suggests adding Foucault’s late work (Foucault, 1988) to this operationalization of dieting. She explains it in the following way:
“Weight-loss dieting needs to be understood from within the minutiae of its practices, its everyday tropes and demands, its compulsions and liberations; and in turn, these cannot be resisted solely through refusal. To understand dieting as enabling is also to understand that we have reason to embrace the increases in capacities it permits without acceding to the intensification of disciplinary power it currently requires.” (Heyes, 2006: 127).
According to this definition of dieting, it cannot solely be understood in terms of power, dominance and subjection, but also in positive terms. Positive feelings derived from dieting can be increased activity or attractiveness. These feelings conversely welcome the subjecting disciplinary power into people’s lives. This is what Foucault (1988) has called ‘technologies of the self’:
“… permit individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality.” (Lemke, 1994: 225)
So dietary advice can be expected to use mechanisms of self-improvement (positive feedback feelings, the apparent possibility of choice) to accomplish subjectivication to dietary schemes. Indeed, the availabity of self-transformation can be an explaining factor of its popularity and function (Heyes, 2006). This of course suits the earlier mentioned proposition that people in late modern society are increasingly reflexive about ‘the project of the self’ (Giddens, 1990; 1991). According to Nikolas Rose (1996) there is a general mechanism to be discovered in works that employ
‘technologies of the self’ to calculate and regulate individual autonomy (Philip, 2009). Rose calls this mechanism ‘human technologies’:
“These human technologies can be loosely described as: (1) calculating subjectivities and measuring subjectivities (for example, via psychological tests and scales); (2) establishing
ethical authority (for example, through appeals to expert knowledge); and (3) technologies of the self (for example, the practice of confession).” (Philip, 2009: 156)
In the case of analyzing books on dieting this will entail that the books will employ: (1) ways of calculating and measuring your body to justify the subjectivities. A possible difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ dieting could be that measurements for ‘outer body fat’ (for example the BMI4) are replaced by measurements of ‘inner body fat’.5 (2) Establishing ethical authority. Dieting is an interesting field in this respect, because ‘expert’ is a term which is loosely assigned or adopted. Is
4 The Body Mass Index is an index which helps calculating the ratio between length and weight. The BMI is
often used to get an indication if someone is ‘obese’.
5
For an example see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536556/Get-in-touch-with-your-inner-fat.html
someone who writes ‘out of experience’ also an expert? It will be interesting to see how ethical authority will be employed by these authors. Moreover, one of the expectations is that the ‘expert knowledge’ in this field is increasingly contested. This could mean that ideas outside of the
traditional nutritional scientific knowledge also have a chance to establish ethical authority (for example from molecular biology or evolutionary psychology). (3) Technologies of the self could for example be a diary in which people record what they eat and what they weigh or writing ‘success stories’.
Although the definition made by Heyes will guide the analysis of the data for a large part, some additions need to be made. As mentioned earlier, this research is aimed at adding on the body of work on dieting in two ways. Firstly the proposition that dieting has changed from (mainly) losing weight to accomplish a slim/slender body, to dieting aimed at satisfying the ideals of the biological citizen; to be healthy in a superficial as well as in a complex biological way (Rose & Novas, 2002). Secondly and conversely, that dieting has become a less gendered practice, as everybody is (viewed as) a biological citizen. Authors like Heyes still define dieting in a gendered way and exemplify the stigma on ‘fatness’. Undoubtedly contemporary dieting is still highly gendered and anti-fat, as cultural practices can be very persuasive. Moreover, some scholars have recently written on the intricate relationship between men´s health and masculinity (Courtenay, 2000; Gough, 2006; Lohan, 2007; Crawshaw, 2007), focusing on the way men are governed to act more healthy, while at the same time maintaining their masculinity. However, the research carried out in this paper is on a general discourse, aimed at both women and men. It will be interesting to see how this previously gendered practice (slimming dieting for women and ‘masculine’ health for men) is being molded into a single discourse, aimed at both women and men.
3 Research Questions
The main research question of this paper is:
“How has the discourse in books on dieting changed into a more biological understanding of health and diet practice?”
The main question will be answered trough the following sub-questions:
1. Is there an archetypical diet book?
2. Are authors of dieting books disciplining their readers?
2.a What are the ‘human technologies’ that are being used in dieting books? 3. Do dieting books resemble the uncertain character of late modern society? 3.a Do authors of dieting books present their diet as a ‘lifestyle’?
4. Do dieting books employ the ideals of the biological citizen?
4.a Is dieting understood biologically in a superficial as well as a complex manner? 5. To what extend has dieting become less about pathologizing (outer bodily) ‘fatness’? 5.a Is ‘fatness’ less stigmatized in a biochemicalized perspective?
6. To what extend has dieting become a less gendered practice? 7. Do dieting books portray a medicalized perspective on dieting?
4. Methodology 4.1 Selection criteria
In this research books on dieting have been analyzed. Books on dieting can range from thick books with lots of scientific data to cooking books aimed at putting a specific diet in practice. The selection criterion here is that the aim of the book is introducing, explicating, celebrating, expanding or rejecting a specific diet or beliefs about dieting. Books on dieting are chosen over other types of informational media (such as (make-over)television, policy texts and magazines), because it is more likely that people using this medium are consciously looking for this information. Moreover, dieting books usually spike on top of best seller lists for books, indicating the far range these books have. Best seller lists have been used to determine which dieting books were the most popular in a certain time. Best seller lists also have the advantage of providing a better selection of books which attempt to change dominant discourse, as research has shown that best seller lists usually have a more positive effect on the sales of newcomers than the renowned authors (Sorensen, 2007). The New
York Times Best Seller list has been used to determine which books to analyze, for two practical
reasons. Firstly The New York Times Best Seller list is considered the preeminent best seller list in the USA6, and the USA can be considered a trend leader when it comes to consumption of culture. The second reason to choose this best seller list is because it is one of the oldest lists available, publishing since October 12, 19317, and since this research pursues a historical analysis, a best seller list with a long history is preferable. As a consequence of this historical perspective, the time-frame of the data selection is a rather broad one, from the 1970’s until the present. To make this time-frame more comprehensible, the selected books have only been analyzed for the introduction section. This does not necessarily has to be a large concession, as introductions usually give quite a comprehensive view of the discourse displaced; the author has to capture his/her reader in a few pages. Moreover, in order to capture his/her reader, the author has to show how ‘special’ this book is, giving an indication which discourse is challenged, perfected or celebrated. Additionally, images and graphs in the book will also be analyzed. To unravel the ‘human technologies’ (Rose, 1996) employed in these
6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Best_Seller_list
books, images and graphs are important because they exemplify the way the human body is viewed as well as how scientific knowledge and ‘proof’ is mobilized.
4.2 Gathering the data
The sample is comprised of 80 dieting books that were on the New York Times Bestseller List for 5 weeks or more. The choice for setting a minimum of 5 weeks on the list was made to make the sample more comprehensible, because the sample would be too large (up to three times larger) if a lesser number of weeks would be considered sufficient. In the appendix a table is added with all the books in the sample8, arranged by title, author, year(s) of appearance on the list, number of weeks on the list and it is mentioned when it was a number one bestseller9. The gathering of the data started out via the website hawes.com, since this website provides a neatly organized overview of all the listings since 1970 per week. The website of the New York Times provides lists that do not go back far enough in time. Furthermore, the archive of the New York Times is not consistent, as it misses some years of listings and in the years that are provided, the listings are often non-consecutive.
4.2.1 Methodological issues and implications for reliability
The gathering of the data started out via the website hawes.com, but during the gathering a problem occurred. Hawes.com provides two bestseller lists; fiction and non-fiction, and initially dieting books were listed on the non-fiction list. But, unfortunately, The New York Times decided in 1984 to split op ‘advice, how-to and miscellaneous’ books from the non-fiction list and put them in a separate list. This was done because this type of book was ‘crowding out’ other types of non-fiction books from the list. The website Hawes.com, however, has not published this list on their website, thus a methodological problem had arisen. The only option was to gather data from the online archive of The New York Times, but this archive is not consistent and shows gaps, as mentioned earlier. For the years 1984 and 1985 there was only a list available of the top-bestsellers of the particular year in the category ‘advice, how-to and miscellaneous’, while for the year 1986 no listings could be found. From the year 1987 until 2000 the list was accessible again per week via the archives, but from 2000 and on a new problem arose. In 2000, The New York Times (again) divided the list up. This time there was a separate list produced especially for dieting books. In first instance a perfect development, as more dieting books will be available for analysis, since dieting books do not have to compete with other types of books anymore. But this development did create an unfortunate situation. The special
8
Both the books that were actually analyzed and the books that were unable to obtain are omitted in this list.
9
Number one bestsellers are probably the books with the greatest influence, as publishers will put it on the cover of a reprint version of the book when it hits number one on the New York Times Bestseller List (on top of the cover of the book it will say: #1 New York Times Bestseller).
dieting books list is not accessible online from the years 2000-2007. A gap of eight years in the sample is quite large, but despite this the research does not have to be unreliable. First, the sample is large and width, with 80 dieting books spanning 40 years. Secondly, on several points, as the
upcoming chapters will show, dieting books are all the same. In the dieting books of the missing years this will probably not be any different than in the dieting books of the years that have been analyzed. The reliability of this research can be questioned on account of one thing, though. In this research, from time to time, (gradual) changes over time are explicated upon. A gap of eight years can hide away important turns in a dominant discourse. However, in the analyzed time span of 2008-2014, enough consistency with the previous analyzed years has been observed to suggest that a radical change in discourse did not occur in 2000-2008. Moreover, as will be clear in the upcoming chapters, the real intensification of the (biochemical) argument in dieting books has occurred in the period 2010-2014.
4.3 Analysis of the data
The gathered data has been analyzed trough the qualitative analysis program Atlas.ti. With an initial round of ‘open coding’ (Bryman, 2008: 543; Silverman, 2006), which entails “the process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing and categorizing data” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990: 61), and a second round of axial coding, which is “the process of relating codes (categories and concepts) to each other, via a combination of inductive and deductive thinking” (Ibid.).
The analysis has been a combination of content analysis and (critical) discourse analysis. Content analysis can be seen as “any technique for making inferences by objectively and
systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages” (Holsti, 1969). Or as Lasswell (1948) has put it: “Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?”. Moreover, it is a way to organize and make sense of the data one is analyzing, a step which is necessary before starting with a discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is more complex than content analysis, and is aimed at catching the ideas behind the things said in a text. Discourses are mainly guided by social cognition, which entails “socially shared representations of societal arrangements, groups and relations, as well as mental operations such as interpretation, thinking and arguing, inferencing and learning…” (Van Dijk, 1993: 257). In other words, in discourse analysis one seeks to find the
(challenges to) dominant paradigms in a certain field.
In the appendix Atlas.ti output has been submitted. The output consists of a code list, which shows the number of codes used in this research, the name of the codes and the extent to which the codes are ‘grounded’ (have been used). Also a screenshot of a piece of analyzed data in Atlast.ti has been provided, to give an indication of how the coding process has worked.
4.4 Validity and reliability
To assess the quality of a research, some measurements have been established. Important indicators of research quality are internal and external validity and internal and external reliability (Bryman, 2008: 376). External reliability is often difficult to establish in qualitative research, as it is difficult to ‘freeze’ a social setting (Lecompte and Goetz, 1982. Cited in: Bryman, 2008: 376). Fortunately, this research is only qualitative in the analysis of the data. The process of gathering the data is not qualitative, but rather quantitative, as it entails counting and organizing dieting books. If another researcher replicates this research he or she would gather the same data, as the sources and the resulting sample have been provided. However, if another researcher could somehow access the missing years in the sample (1986 and 2000-2007), the data would of course differ from the data in this research. But if another researcher would use the same methodology of data gathering, external
reliability is accomplished. Internal reliability is not applicable in this research, as there was only one
researcher.
Internal validity is attempted to be satisfied through extensively quoting the data throughout
the research. All theoretical claims have been backed up by the data. To strengthen this even more, the code list of this research is added in the appendix, which shows to what extend a theoretical claim (through the accompanying code) is backed up by the data. In terms of external validity the qualitative character of the data analysis does imply some limitations. Firstly, the sample has been limited to bestselling books. To state that all dieting books resemble the findings of this research would be too bold of a statement. Non-bestselling books could, for example, not be a bestseller precisely because they do not comply with the successful narrative of the bestsellers. Secondly, the analyzed dieting books are predominantly American dieting books. While American dieting books are arguably the most influential over the world, it must be recognized that despite this every country has its own ‘national heroes’ in the field of dieting books. Thirdly, while throughout this research the data will be referred to as ‘dieting books’, the sample is comprised of only introductions and prefaces of dieting books. It could well be that the remainder of the books take on a (slightly) different
narrative than the introductions and prefaces. In that case external validity is not met. A research that has the capacity to include the whole books must show if the findings of this research can be explicated to the whole of the books.
5. What is a diet?
A diet is a lifestyle in which one gets disciplined to restrict the amount or sorts of foods one takes in, through reducing this food to its nutrient value, with the goal to get/stay slim and/or healthy – forever.
The definition above is derived from the gathered data. In the upcoming paragraphs of this chapter will be dedicated to explicating on the parts of this definition. There is a need for a clear definition of what dieting in diet books encompasses, since this is the first social scientific inquiry into dieting books. The narratives, mechanisms and politics of dieting books have not yet been described and categorized by a social scientist, so if one wants to go in depth about the biochemicalization of dieting, first of all there needs to be established what a diet book is all about.
5.1 The ‘classic’ vs. the ‘modern’ diet
If one thinks about a diet, a few aspects will probably come to mind. The reducing of foods one takes in by counting calories for example. This makes dieting a highly disciplined practice, and when people think about dieting they will probably associate it with starvation. The expectation before this
research was that a lot of diets, especially in the seventies and eighties, would encompass such a ‘starvation’ approach. This would not be surprising as people this day and age still associate dieting with starvation, so if dieting was not about this practice in the seventies and eighties, why would we still associate dieting with starvation? The findings of the analysis are surprising in this light. Almost all the diet books in the sample dissociate themselves of the common perception of dieting. These dieting books claim that they are everything that the common perception of dieting is not. These diets are not tough to keep up with (is the claim), in fact it can be seen more as a ‘lifestyle’. Counting calories is out of the question. Reducing the amount of foods one takes in is also a big no. Even more, they virtually all claim a ‘no hunger diet’, which implies eating more rather than eating less. The disciplining nature of a diet can be considered a thing of the past. Starvation and disciplining is seen as outdated and reserved for ‘fad diets’, which all the analyzed diet books are not, at least, so they claim. Although the range of the sample spans multiple decades, virtually all diet books claim that they are more evolved than ‘fad diets’. This has led to the classification of the dieting books analyzed as ‘modern diets’, as they dissociate themselves from what can be called the ‘classic diet’.10 One of the few examples of a ´classic´ diet in the sample is the Weight Watchers Diet Program11, which is aimed at ‘weight control’. Weight control is everything that the ‘modern diet’ despises; it’s highly disciplining, one counts calories and it is adapted from (reduced amounts of) the food pyramid. In the upcoming parts of this chapter a description will be made of what these ‘modern diets’ are all about. What makes them so different from the ‘classic’ diet? How do they convince people to take on the diet as a ‘lifestyle’? What kind of ‘science’ is at play if they rebel against the contemporary food science (food pyramid)? And are these diets indeed less disciplining as they claim?
10
This statement holds for the majority of dieting books. There are some books in which some aspects of the ‘classic’ diet come back, but even in these books there are more aspects of the ‘modern’ diet.
5.2 The ‘lifestyle’ certainty
“The Best Life Diet is not a diet in the usual sense of the word. You don’t go on it, then off it, as the term diet usually implies. It is, instead, a diet in the traditional sense of the word, a way of eating – for life.” (The Best Life Diet, 2006: 4).
The quote above is exemplar of the message derived from most dieting books; a diet is not something one does for a short while, it is a way of living. In this sense dieting resembles the self-identity problem in late modern age, as described by Giddens (1991). As our traditional ways of living (including the way we eat) are quickly fading away, people tend to find new ways of living in the form of ‘lifestyles’, to have something to give structure and certainty to their lives. All the uncertainty that surrounds food, the risks of mass production of food for example (Beck, 1992, 2006), makes the adoption of a ‘lifestyle’ with more certainty of what is ‘good’ and ‘wrong’ food attractive. But while there is increased uncertainty surrounding food consumption in late modern age, everybody still has their own traditions and habits, how small they might be. Sometimes the switch in a diet lifestyle is radical, sometimes it is not such a big change (eliminate just one food type for example), but changing one’s lifestyle even in the smallest way imaginable can have great implications for one’s daily life. How do diet books convince people to change their way of eating for life? First of all these books appeal to the negative aspects of the ‘classic diet’, and conversely claim that this is not what they are about.
“You will learn that blowing is a thing of the past because there is nothing out there you can’t have. The trick is learning how and when to eat it and what to do to compensate for it. What to do to counter its effects, to make it digestible and non-fattening.” (The Beverly Hills Diet, 1982: 2).
“You are about to begin a new way of life. You will feel fabulous on a day-to-day basis – and lose weight, too. Within the pages of this book you will learn about a food program so innovative, so exciting, and so effective that you will never have to “diet” again.” (5-Day Miracle Diet, 1996: 1).
For everyone trying to lose weight or wanting to be more healthy, this is of course a blessing. The discourse in this quote makes the disciplining part sound easy and fun, but the disciplining character is there. As the first quote states: you need to learn how and when to eat and what to do to
compensate it. There are thus rules how and when to eat. This contradicts the claim in the first sentence: you can have everything. While the narrative is ‘fun’ and ‘not tough’, there are rules and limitations. Moreover, as every diet claims this same promise, why would one belief this particular diet? As Philip (2009) has mentioned, there is a general mechanism to be discovered in self-help
books that try to discipline the mind; human technologies. Including theories on disciplining the mind can be considered quite surprising, as dieting is often viewed as disciplining the body, rather than the mind. But as mentioned before, the analyzed dieting books take on a different approach to dieting, and as will be shown in the next paragraph, that this will entail using the human technologies as described by Rose (1996).
5.3 Disciplining the mind through human technologies 5.3.1 Who needs a diet?: Calculating subjectivities
Bridget Philip (2009) used the human technologies framework in a case study on a psychological self-help book and found that the first human technology used is calculating subjectivities and measuring subjectivities. This implies determining if someone is ‘sick’ or not, via tests and scales. In the ‘classic diet’ this was often done and quite easy and standardized: the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculates if you are overweight or not. Interestingly, in the ‘modern diet’, these kind of measurements are often lacking. Instead of offering a measurement to calculate subjectivities, grand narratives are used. For example the ‘obesity epidemic’ (Schessler-Jandreau, 2008; Murray, 2008) is mentioned a lot of times.
“Recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the number of overweight or obese Americans at more than 60 percent. We’ve all heard the stories, read the magazine articles and watched the talk shows. America is seriously fat and seriously unhealthy. As crazy as it all sounds, you – or someone you know – have tried at least one of the aforementioned tactics in an effort to lose weight, get healthy and look and feel good. I say: stop the madness!” (Now Eat This!, 2010: xiii).
Authors that employ the obesity problem state that the amount of overweight people (in the USA) is rising and spreading each year, giving the impression of some sort of contagious disease. Indeed, authors often use the term ‘epidemic’ to enforce the ‘contagious disease’ analogy. Moreover, there is often no differentiation between ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’, two different medical terms. These two narratives leave in the middle if the reader belongs to this group or not. Instead of offering a clear-cut definition if someone needs treatment (dieting), scary and vague statistics are used to legitimize the subjectivication.
5.3.2 Who can tell you what to do?: Establishing ethical authority
The second human technology Philip (2009) distinguishes is establishing ethical authority. This can be done via appeals to expert knowledge (Philip, 2009: 156). This human technology appears in
“Friends and family may question why you are following the Atkins Diet, and even some doctors who have not read the latest research could discourage you from trying this approach. Although your personal results in appearance and laboratory results may change their minds within a few weeks, even before that, please let this book help you enlighten them.” (New Atkins for the New You, 2010: xii).
“Few of us understand the effects proper nutrition has on our bodies. Again and again, science has proven the adage: “You are what you eat”. Wholesome food, prepared properly, is vital to
maintenance of your mental and physical health – from your moods to your muscles.” (Diet Center
Program, 1983: 15).
The quotes above exemplify the importance of expert knowledge in establishing ethical authority. The claims in the book are true and uncontested, because ‘science’ has proven it. However, what ‘science’ may be is contested. Most science comes from the medical research field, but throughout the decades other fields have also earned the right to claim ‘facts’ about dieting and nutrition. In the next chapter on biochemicalization it will be shown that even sciences as evolutionary biology and neurology have entered the field of dieting. Furthermore, even in one field it can be contested what ‘science’ is.
“In study after study, overweight individuals have failed to reveal any consistent differences in emotional or mental health from those who are of normal weight. Simple obesity appears to be a
physical disorder. According to the American Psychiatric Association, it is not, in most cases, to be
associated with any distinct behavioral or psychological syndrome.” (Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, 1999: 21. Italics original).
The quote above makes a case for dissociating emotional problems and being overweight. The author makes a convincing argument for this case, citing a statement from a renowned scientific organization. But if one looks at the quotes below, it becomes clear that an opposite statement can be made with the same convincing ease.
“Science backs up this discovery. Research presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Ingestive Behavior in 2009 found that depressed patients who followed a six-month behavioral weight loss program not only lost weight but also reported a significant drop in their symptons of depression”. (The Amen Solution, 2010: 3).
“Change – or, should I say, lasting change – simply takes time. And that’s not only true for how our bodies work, it’s also true of how our minds work. If you’ve always relied on food for emotional sustenance, you will have to get used to the idea of turning to other things to help you through tough times.” (Best Life Diet, 2008: 3).
While everything else can be contested, the science provided in the book you are reading is
irrevocably true and uncontested. Some authors do not really explicate it like this, but make it subtly clear that they proclaim the uncontested truth, as is often the case in discourse (Foucault, 1971). However, most authors bluntly make it clear to their readers that they have the ‘true science’.
“I will teach you to spot bad science, and therefore bad advice and bad products”. (The 4-Hour Body, 2010: 7).
“Granted, my ideas are revolutionary, but isn’t it about time we found a cure for fat? If medical experts had conclusively proven the causes of fat, we’d all be thin”. (The Beverly Hills Diet, 1982: xxii).
As Beck (1986) and Giddens (1990) have mentioned, science in late modern society is characterized by uncertainty rather than certainty. The age of dogmas and universal truths is over and scientific findings can be questioned and contested. The findings in this research suggest that this is the case in the field of dieting and nutritional science. One author can quote a research that another author in the same year can debunk. The interesting aspect of this part of the findings is that the authors of dieting books treat ‘their’ science as uncontested and universally true. The fact that different branches of the same science, with different instruments, test subjects and the like can come to different conclusions, is not shared with the readers. This is of course a logical strategy, because as Giddens (1990) has shown, since the universal truths of the past are now contestable, people crave for something that gives them certainty in this uncertain age (1990). This is why expert knowledge is an important mechanism in establishing ethical authority, but being an ‘expert’ on itself can also function as establishing ethical authority.
“I am not a diet doctor. In fact, my career in medicine has been largely devoted to the science of noninvasive cardiac imaging – the development of technology that produces sophisticated pictures of the heart and the coronary blood vessels.” (The South Beach Diet, 2003: 6).
The author of the quote above admits he is not a ‘diet doctor’, with which he of course means that he is the type of doctor one usually sees in the dietary field. But the author is wrong in that remark. The majority of authors are not ‘diet doctors’. There are all sorts of doctors that have written
successful dieting books. The only prerequisite seems to be that the author needs to be some sort of ‘expert’; a cardiovascular specialist, heart surgeon, neurologists, as long as they can be called (science) ‘experts’. Are all authors (science) ‘experts’ then? No, there are also a number of authors who cannot be considered ‘experts’ in a scientific or medical way, but there are other ways to accomplish ‘expertness’. Some journalists and cooks for example have established ‘expertness’ in their books, but the ‘experience experts’ can of course also establish ethical authority. However, they often do feel the need to call upon a doctor of some sorts to say a few words (in the preface for example), to give some extra expert knowledge. This is despite the fact that some expert knowledge of the author him/herself has been established, as the quote below shows.
“I’ve been creating Hungry Girl content for 10 years now. And in that time, I’ve honed my “mad scientist” skills in the kitchen, becoming an expert at putting together meals and snacks that are delicious, incredibly satisfying , and completely guilt free. But, I’m not a dietitian or medical
professional. This is why the plan is 100% approved by an esteemed registered dietitian, David Grotto, MS, RDN, LDN.” (The Hungry Girl Diet, 2008. Italics original).
Expert knowledge is not the only mechanism for establishing ethical authority. Another important aspect is the ‘success story’. A success story is an example of someone who successfully has put the diet in practice. This can be an example of someone who has lost a lot of weight (in a aesthetics dominant perspective) or someone who’s health conditions have improved radically (in a health dominant perspective).
(Fit For Life, 1999)
“From a dangerous high level of 7,4 mmol/l, my blood cholesterol level lowered to a safe level of 4,4! In only eight weeks . My doctors and nurses were astonished and happy. Such results have never been accomplished in such a short time, and without medicine or a strict diet.” (8 Week Cholesterol Cure, 198912 [1987]: 16).
A success story can be a (ex)client of the author, as the image above illustrates, but the author him/herself can also embody the success story, as the quote above exemplifies. Success stories are an inseparable part of dieting books, as they prove to be successful mechanisms of establishing ethical authority.
5.3.3 Is dieting disciplining or fun?: Technologies of the self
Technologies of the self is the third tool of human technologies (Philip, 2009: 156). As mentioned in
the theoretical section of this thesis, technologies of the self is a term coined by Foucault. It is an overarching term of all the mechanisms that can be presented with the goal to make the disciplining process more easy. This can result into positive feelings towards the disciplining process. As
mentioned earlier, the ‘modern diet’ dissociates itself from the ‘classic diet’ by claiming that it eliminates the disciplining part. However, the disciplining part the ´modern diet´ promises to eliminate is a very common understanding of ´disciplining´, more aimed at physical punishment on the body. According to Foucault, the disciplining of the mind is nowadays a more successful way of disciplining a docile body, rather than direct physical punishment (Foucault, 1977). The modern diet thus claims to eliminate the ‘disciplining’ character of dieting – for example starvation – but do they really eliminate all the disciplining? The amount of technologies of the self found in the study suggest otherwise.
Disciplining is in this research understood as disciplining the mind, in other words disciplining through education. Technologies of the self are a useful tool in the disciplining process, and can take on different forms. One example is the ‘measuring of success’.
(Belly Fat Cure, 2009: 6).
Success measurements as in the quote above make it very visual for the dieter what the goals are, and measure how far one is towards the goal and via this give positive reinforcement. The difference between the measuring of success and calculating subjectivities is that it leaves it up to the reader to decide what the perceived problem and desired success is.
Technologies of the self can come in this form, as schemes and tables to measure oneself, but usually it is done in more subtle ways. Moreover, it is often the discourse (Foucault, 1971) which shows the technologies of the self in the disciplining process.
“Eating well isn’t just about losing weight – it’s about feeling better in every possible way, from fighting of the stress of a bunk economy to maximizing the effect of a serious work out. We’ve pinpointed 10 foods you’d do well to eat everyday and provided you the blueprints for putting each in action” (Cook This, Not That, 2010: 5).
“Think of these food policies as little algorithms designed to simplify your eating life. Adopt whichever one sticks and works best for you.” (Food Rules, 2009: 7).
As the first quote shows, dieting books often claim that weight loss and/or optimum health is not just the only plus a diet can bring, the diet lifestyle is about much more ‘fun’. The positive feedback mechanisms a diet provides seem almost endless. Some authors claim that a diet can cure negative feelings and even depression. The discourse in the second quote is more subtle than the first one, but a technology of the self is certainly detectable. The ‘food policies’ suggested in the book are actually quite restrictive and for a lot of people probably tough to keep up with, but the discourse turns this around and actually makes it more easy. Instead of disciplining, it is brought as simplifying for the self. Furthermore, it implies that people have a choice, but it is a choice within a set of rules.
“All we ask from you is a little effort in the kitchen and some good old fashioned honesty. Brace yourself, you’ll need to keep a food diary for a week. But don’t panic. This is not going to be one of those boring , document-keeping diets. And it’s the last bit of hard work you need to do.” (Cook
Yourself Thin, 2009: 30).
Another important technology of the self is the ‘food diary’. Often dieting books suggest (or
command) their readers to keep a diary to write down all the foods they have consumed on a daily or weekly basis. On the surface this looks exactly as what the ‘classic diet’ would do. If one looks at
Weight Watchers for example, a food diary is an inseparable part of the disciplining process in the
diet. So what is different in the ‘modern’ food diary and the ‘classic’ food diary. It’s in the technology
of the self. In the ‘classic’ diet it is purely meant as a means to control oneself and what one eats. The
‘modern’ diet tries to differentiate their food diary from this perspective:
“When you’re diary is complete, give yourself half an hour to sit down and analyze it. Remember, this isn’t an exercise in feeling bad about yourself. On the contrary, it’s empowering. It’s the perfect way to
identify what your tastes and personal must-haves are when it comes to food and how to make sure you still satisfy your culinary lust as you shrink in size.” (Cook Yourself Thin, 2009: 31).
The message concealed in the quote above is not so different from the one in the classic diet; you got to control yourself in what you eat. But the discourse is quite different; it is “empowering” and “satisfying your culinary lust”. This change in discourse transforms the food diary in a useful
technology of the self.
5.3.4 A promise not kept
The ‘modern diet’ promises to break with the unbearable diets of the past. With the promise that it is not tough to follow, a no-hunger diet and will fit as a ‘second nature’, it implies that the disciplining days are over. The extent to which human technologies operate in these books to discipline the mind, suggests that the disciplining part of the diet is not over. It is more subtle and with a discourse that celebrates ‘empowerment’, ‘happiness’ and ‘self esteem’, the disciplining part seems innocent. The interventions the diet puts on the lives of people, are apparently still big enough to employ these
human technologies. In the next paragraph it will explicated what the reason is that writers presume
that readers will not take part on this diet without these human technologies.
5.4 The spill of the diet: Reducing foods to nutrient value
The ´modern diet´ distinguishes itself from the ´classic diet´ in a number of ways, one of these is the rejection of ´calorie counting´. But a diet is not a diet if it is not aimed at changing one´s current eating habits. The way that the ´modern diet´ does this is by singling out one or multiple nutrients, such as carbohydrates (carbs), fat or proteins. Some are good, some are bad, but they are the spill of the diet in most cases.
The table above is adapted from the top bestselling book from the sample. The numbers are astonishing; 182 weeks in the New York Times Bestsellers List. While it must be noted that the book only costs $2,50, with 182 weeks on the list the influence the book has had on the dieting field is undoubted. It is actually not a book on itself, but an extra guide to accompany the original book The
T-Factor Diet (1989, 57 weeks on list). It is a book comprised of theories, tables and graphs, aimed at
teaching readers the importance of the nutrient value of food. The table above lists a number of drinks with its nutrient value. It is a good example of the focus on the nutrient value of food and drinks in the modern diet. It can range from suggesting to ease up with a certain nutrient, to abolishing a nutrient all together. As the next chapter will show, the modern diet is heading to the last variant: abolishing a nutrient all together.
There are a number of problems with reducing of food to its nutrient value. Firstly, social scientific writings have pointed out the inherent social character of food. As Caplan (2013) has mentioned, since the 1960’s there has been written a good deal about the relation between food and society. All these scholars come to the conclusion that food is more than just something you put in your body to survive. With the reducing of food to its nutrient value, however, the authors of dieting books do the opposite; they treat food as a mere substance, disconnected from social
meaning. Curiously, however, authors of dieting books often mention the inherent social character of food, despite their practice of reducing food to its nutrient value. They mention the ‘culture of fast-food’ or they claim that people often use ‘food for comfort’. This shows at least a simple lay
understanding of the social character of food, but apparently it does not bother the authors that this disappears with the reducing of food to its nutrient value. An example is the ‘anti-wheat movement’ in the field of dieting, which attempts to eliminate everything associated with wheat. That includes, among others: bread, pasta, pizza and even a birthday cake. The social impact the elimination of wheat has is almost indescribably large. From a macro perspective the (fast)food industry is largely build around wheat; try to think about a breakfast table, and you will probably picture bread on the table. Even more on the macro (economic) perspective, some countries food pattern is largely build around wheat, Italy for example (imagine going to Italy and not finding a single restaurant that serves pasta). But, more importantly, the subtle cultural and symbolic meanings food has is completely eliminated by reducing food to its nutrient value. Take a birthday cake for example. A birthday cake is not seen as a symbol of celebration anymore, but as ‘wheat’ and a source of trouble. There are almost infinite social and cultural practices imaginable, that will be impacted by the focus on nutrients instead of food.
The second problem is also associated with the social and cultural meaning of food. With the reducing of food to its nutrient value, it is even more difficult to keep up with a diet than it already is. The goal of the reducing of food to its nutrient value is that people better understand what exactly is
good and bad for them, and thus make it easier to diet, but it will probably be counterproductive. At first such a table as above will probably come as a blessing, now a dieter can just take out the book in the supermarket and check the prospected product if in contains the right nutrients. But how long will someone keep this on? Social scientific inquiries into cooking practices (see for example: Halkier, 2009) have shown that the practice of cooking is often more than just reproducing prescribed recipes. The same holds for diet practices.13 Neglecting the social and cultural role of food by reducing it to its nutrient value will make diet even more difficult to put in practice. Leaving a disappointed and disenchanted dieter.
6. The Biolochemicalization of Dieting
The main hypothesis of this research is the proposition that dieting has changed over the past forty years to encompass a more biochemical understanding of how the body works and thus how a diet should work for the body. The assumption behind this was that in the seventies and eighties dieting would be understood biologically or biochemically in a minimal sense. Gradually, a change would become manifest and in the long run dieting would become another field in which biology, neurology and bio-medicine are the dominant forces. But of course the empirical data one uncovers do not always follow the lines of the hypothesis neatly, and interestingly, in this case the foundational assumption of the hypothesis - dieting was not biologically/biochemically understood in the past – seems to be rejected completely by the empirical data. Thus, this chapter will not describe how biological/biochemical understandings of the body have come into the field of dieting, but rather how this idea has grown and ‘evolved’ through the decades in the field of dieting through books on dieting.
6.1 A biochemical revolution in the seventies
“[M]ost people – and that includes doctors and dietitians - are totally ignorant of the metabolic imbalance that is the primary cause of almost all overweight. The result of prescribing a so-called “balanced diet” for patients who actually were suffering from metabolic imbalance is a raging national epidemic of overweight.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, 1972: 2)
With an astonishing 49 weeks on the list, 27 of which on pole position, Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution can be considered the most popular and influential diet book of the 1970´s. The author claims to set on a ´revolution´ in the dietary field. Indeed compared to the Weight Watchers Program Cookbook –
which hit the bestselling lists in 1974, but is an extension of the original program founded in 1963 – one sees a number of differences with the quote from Dr. Atkins’ book.
“The Basic Program in short with menu suggestions
Follow the daily menu, as showed on page 18. Never skip a meal. Only eat the food that is mentioned in the Basic Program. Weigh the amounts of food. Furthermore, it is recommended to write down everything you eat on a daily basis, which will help you to give a summary of what you have eaten.” (Weight Watchers Cookbook, 197414: 11).
The above quote is followed by a list of food groups from the ‘food guide pyramid’15, with a number of restrictions on them (for example how many times per week one can eat a certain food). This is an example of the ‘classic diet´. In the previous chapter it was mentioned that the majority of the ‘modern diets’ of the past 40 years profiled their selves through rebelling against this ‘classic diet’. According to the modern diets, the classic diet was aimed at weight control, which could be accomplished through a balanced diet (adopted from the food pyramid) and was inescapably directed towards eating less and was restrictive and therefore had a highly disciplining character. As shown in the previous chapter the authors of the modern diets justified their diets mostly with the promise to change these aspects of the classic diet. This rhetoric and its mechanisms have been described. However, the question remains what the (scientific) justification was for denouncing the ways of the classic diet.
As the quote from Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution shows, the basis for the criticism is the failure of the classic diet to grasp the complex16 internal biological and/or biochemical processes of the body which are blamed as the primary cause of weight gain – and conversely health. The shift in attention from counting calories towards an understanding of dieting revolved around metabolic processes is a exemplifies a biochemical understanding of how the body react to a diet. In the remainder of this part of the chapter the ‘revolutionary’ character of Atkins will be described further, showing how this perspective breaks radically with the classic conception of dieting. After this, the legacy of Atkins in the years after will be discussed. This section will end with a comparison with books from the seventies/eighties and recent dieting books to make a case for the intensification of a biochemical understanding in dieting books.
14
The version used for the analysis is the Dutch reprint from 1978.
15 A food guide pyramid is a pyramid shaped guide of healthy foods divided into sections to show the
recommended intake for each food group. The food guide pyramid referred to in this research is the food guide pyramid provided by the United States Department of Agriculture.
16
Complex as compared to the classic diet. As the upcoming parts will show, the understanding of biochemical processes can become even more complex.
6.1.1 What changed in the seventies?
In the first chapter the main aspects of what defines a diet was described. One of these aspects is that in a diet – and especially in the ‘modern diets’ - it is virtually impossible to escape the tendency to reduce food to its nutrient value. Certainly, there are gradations in this, and not coincidentally there can be distinguished a parallel between the degree of ‘biochemicalization’ and how food is reduced to their nutrient value. Again, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution is used as an example.
“Over the years a large number of doctors and medical researchers have observed that the overweight person, the diabetic, the hypoglycemic (that’s a person suffering from a low level of blood sugar), the heart attack prone, all have one thing in common: something is very wrong with the way their body handles sugar and other carbohydrates. These people are carbohydrate intolerant – due to metabolic imbalance.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, 1972: 4).
With this reasoning a sandwich is not two pieces of bread with a variety of possible toppings on it anymore, it has become a ‘carbohydrate’. The vastly different combinations are all reduced to one thing; a carbohydrate. Being able to justify this radical ontological shift, the story becomes inherently more biological and biochemical. It becomes more biological in the sense that the reader is viewed as a mere biological body.
“As cavemen, we humans evolved mainly on a diet of meat. And that’s what our bodies were and are built to handle. For fifty million years our bodies had to deal with only minute amounts of
carbohydrates – and unrefined carbohydrates, at that. Seven thousand years ago, when man learned to till the soil, the quantity of carbohydrates increased – but they were still unrefined. In other words these carbohydrates were not artificially concentrated by a milling or refining process. Only over the last century has a drastic change come about in what man eats and drinks, with the advent of a diet
predominantly composed of refined carbohydrates.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, 1972: 5).
In the quote above the human body is portrayed as a biological object, on which ‘culture’ acts. ‘Man’ acts, but its body is the object upon which man acts, it is a biological thing that does not act with man but merely uses its biological hardwiring to process these acts, in this case; eating. Sociological, anthropological as well as (applied) philosophical scholars have recently pointed to the problematic of such a reasoning (see for example the work of Annemarie Mol, 2002). For now it is not the point to go into these ontological discussions. The main reason for laying bare this dissection of the biological human body from the actor is to show that it is a tool for legitimizing the forthcoming lecture on biochemical processes the reader is about to endure. If the reader acknowledges his/her dissection
into an actor and a biological body it is easier to understand how certain biochemical processes lead to the problem the reader is having.
“During this process your body changes from a carbohydrate-burning-machine into a fat-burning-machine. The revolutionary aspect of my diet is the new chemical condition in which ketones are separated, during which these unwelcome pounds disappear – without hunger.” (Adapted and translated from: Dr. Atkins Dieet Revolutie, 1976 [8th Dutch reprint]: 18)17.
At this point the body has become a biological nutrient-burning ‘machine’. The analogy of the body as a machine is a problematic one, as Annemarie Mol (2011) has pointed out. This analogy came in to being at the turn of the 20th century, in a context of scarcity. Nutritional science was called upon by industrial employers, they wanted to know how much they had to pay their employees so they could feed themselves just enough to survive. That is when the kilocalorie was invented, and the body was reinvented as a machine that burns this calorie. Now, of course, Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (and many other ‘modern diets’) makes a case against counting calories, claiming that more complex
biochemical processes are at the ground of weight gain and loss. But this example shows how
persuasive certain ontonorms18 (Mol, 2012) can be; the body remains a nutrient burning machine. To this point it is important to note that in the seventies the biochemical revolution started in the field of dieting. Contrary to other fields, like the study of the mind, in which this revolution has taken place in the last two-and-a-half decades or so (Rose, 1996, 1999, 2007; Dehue, 2008), the field of dieting has been influenced by this notion since the seventies. In the upcoming part examples will be shown of other books of the late seventies and eighties, showing that this biochemical revolution did indeed took hold and more authors have followed Atkins in this vain. The acceleration and
intensification of these claims, however, took place from the 90’s and 2000’s and reached their height (until now) only months from writing this study.
6.1.2 Atkins’ legacy
Seven years after Dr. Atkins’ book, a new bestselling dieting book was published. Nathan Pritikins
Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise was just as big of a hit as Atkins, with 52 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers List. Published in 1979, but spiking in the early eighties, this book can be
considered one of the most dominant dieting books in the eighties. Following Atkins, this diet can also be considered a ‘modern diet’, in the sense that it breaks with the ‘classic diet’ in shifting from a
17 The switch from the original 1972 version to the Dutch reprint has been made out of practical reasons. The
original version was only accessible as a limited preview and the complete Dutch book was available. The choice has been made to quote the original version where possible, to be certain nothing is lost in translation.
18
Ontonorms are ontological perceptions of what food is and does, as well as normative rules surrounding food and food consumption.
