This intensive study of fad diets opens with the enticing query: “Why this diet, and why now?” (p. 10), and quickly teases that an answer will be found in “the forces that make diets available” or the “cultural channels” through which they flow (pp. 10, 45). That’s a bit misleading, suggesting a political economy of the diet industry, which this book is not. Instead, authors Janet Chrzan (an anthropologist) and Kima Cargill (a psychologist) offer something more interesting. They argue that people embrace diet fads because they promise silver-bullet deliverance from the stressors of modern life.
The book identifies four categories of fad diet: food removal (your classic “avoid X or Y” diets), food addiction or affliction (similar, but focusing on the eater’s particular sensitivity to the offending food, rather than the food itself), Clean Eating (predicated on the idea that some foods or practices are toxic and must be...
University of California Press