Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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It could be supposed that [energy intake and energy expenditure] are controlled in harmony to regulate body weight. In practice it is difficul
t to
demonstrate such reciprocal function. It seems likely that we are
dealing with two systems that are only loosely and imperfectly coupled.
J E Blundell (1996) Food intake and weight regulation . IN: Regulation Of Body Weight: Biological And Behavioural Mechanisms. Ed C Bouchard and G A Bray. John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
The discovery of [leptin], a singular event in my life, was absolutely exhilarating. The realization that nature had happened upon such a simple and elegant solution for regulating weight was the closest thing I have ever had to a religious experience. ……It is as yet unclear whether I will succeed in understanding how a single molecule can influence a complex behavior.
J Friedman (2001) In: Neuroscience. Exploring the brain. 2nd edition. Eds: M F Bear, B W Connors, M A Paradiso. Lippincott William and Wilkins, Baltimore.
Socially…obesity is a disaster.. People who are overweight are depressed, they have lower than average income, a higher divorce rate and commit suicide more often. Obesity is probably the single most important reason why, in spite of all the advances in medicine and sanitation, we are not living much longer than people a hundred years ago.
S R Bloom (2003) The fat controller. New Scientist 9 August 2003 p 38-41
Dinner for six persons Dinner for six servants
Caviare Boiled beef, carrots, potatoes
White soup Pancakes
Stewed carp
Oyster patties
Veal rissoles
Fricandeau of Beef
Snipe
Plum pudding
Compote of fruit
Celery salad
Angels on horseback
Mrs Isabella Beeton (1901) The Book Of Household Management. Ward, Lock and Co., London
He began to eat the cabbage with what was left of the soup. A potato had found its way into one of the bowls, ...a medium-sized spud, frost-bitten, hard and sweetish. There wasn’t much fish, just a few stray bits of bare backbone. But you must chew every bone, every fin, to suck the juice out of them, for the juice is healthy. Today was red-letter day for him: two helpings for dinner, two helpings for supper….
He supped without bread. A double helping and bread – that was going too far. The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a rascal. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday, it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.
A Solzehenitsyn (1963) One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. Gollancz, London.
It is always easier to eat things if you know what they are called or, better, if you know what they are made of. There was no cosmological structure in Mahalingam’s meal, at least none that could make sense to a Western mind. To begin with what looked like beef rissoles in black sauce and find them to be piercingly sweet cakes in honey was disconcerting. I mean, a Western banquet recapitulates the history of the earth from primal broth through sea beasts to land predators and flying creatures and ends with evidence of human culture in cheese and artful puddings.
Anthony Burgess (1980) Earthly Powers. Hutchinson and Co, London.
He comes into Mindy’s one evening with a female character who is so fat it is necessary to push three tables together to give her room for her lap, and it seems that this character is Miss Violette Shumberger. She weighs maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, but she is by no means an old Judy, and by no means bad-looking. She has a face the size of a town clock and enough chins for a fire-escape, but she has a nice smile and pretty teeth, and a laugh that is so hearty it knocks the whipped cream off an order of strawberry shortcake on a table fifty feet away and arouses the indignation of a customer by the name of Goldstein who is about to consume same.
Damon Runyon (1956) A piece of pie (Guys and dolls). Penguin Books, London
We don’t eat just because we are hungry, or because we need food: we eat because we are bored, sad, anxious, angry; and we give food to others to placate them, welcome them, control them. ….We don’t not eat because we are not hungry: we starve ourselves out of psychological disturbance, and because everywhere we look thin is beautiful and powerful.
Nicci Gerrard (2003) The Politics of Thin. The Observer, January 5 2003.