Jessica Hamel-Akre | The Art of Not Eating
The Art of Not Eating by Jessica Hamel-Akré is an illuminating exploration of the surprisingly deep historical roots of diet culture and our complicated relationship with appetite. Beginning with the ideas of eighteenth-century physician and polymath George Cheyne, once known as “Dr Diet”, Hamel-Akré traces centuries of attempts to understand, regulate and suppress women's appetites.
Blending history and memoir, the book moves through medical studies, literature and historical scandals, encountering religious mystics, fasting women and early feminist philosophers along the way. Hamel-Akré examines how ideas about food became entangled with desire, rationality, self-control, gender and oppression, revealing that many pressures surrounding women's bodies and eating habits today have centuries-old precedents. Thought-provoking and deeply researched, it offers a fresh perspective on how diet culture became embedded in modern life.
- • Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Language: English
• Cover: Paperback
• Edition: Main Edition
• Publication Date: September 11, 2025
• Number of Pages: 320
• Dimensions: approximately 198 × 129 × 17 mm
• Illustrations: Black and white
• Category: Cultural History, History of Food, Women and Society, History of Medicine, Memoir
• Topics: diet culture, appetite, the female body, nutrition, desire, self-control, feminist history






