First published 2018
Food culture has turned eating into a minefield of moral judgment. Virginia Sole-Smith confronts this reality when her newborn daughter stops eating following a medical emergency. For two years, Sole-Smith works to help her child feel safe around food again. This personal crisis opens her eyes to a broader American struggle with eating. Sole-Smith travels to kitchen tables across the country, meeting women recovering from weight-loss surgery, individuals who can only consume nine specific foods, and families navigating food access with both abundant and limited resources. Through personal narrative and extensive reporting, she examines how modern food culture creates these struggles. Each story reveals the same underlying questions about how we developed such fraught relationships with nourishment and whether we can repair them.
Genres: psychology, memoir, non-fiction, health, parenting, food-writing
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-crisis, recovery
336 pages · ebook · Henry Holt and Co.
Content warnings: eating-disorder