s_jw's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I think this book was poorly labeled and blurbed. If you are looking for a more technical deep dive into the history of dieting and diet culture in America this is not the book for you. The author is a journalist and it shows in her writing by being very accessible and mainly anecdotal. HOWEVER this book is a four star due to the fact that her story and others she interviewed are incredibly interesting and touching. I love reading the chapter about hunger and her struggles with her daughter learning to eat. A must ready if you are a parent to a kid who struggles to eat and is picky. Informative and touching overall.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Vomit, Medical trauma, Ableism, Fatphobia, Classism, and Medical content
dorhastings's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
My feelings about this book have been a little all over the place, depending on my location in the book. The book didn't meet my expectations (not bad; just surprising), and then it did, and then it sort of did, and by the end I sit solidly in the camp of "it's complicated".
I've been following Sole-Smith's Substack for around a year now. I generally agree with the things that she and her interviewees and coworkers say. Sometimes they make me a little uncomfortable, but I think that's a good thing, and I think she would agree. I've learned a lot from her and from her work. I was primarily drawn to her for her writing about fatness. She recently published Fat Talk, and I've been meaning to read it, even though it's primarily advertised as a book for parents. A lot of her work has to do with parenting, in part because that's where we learn a lot about food culture: from our parents.
Having said that, I should not have been surprised that the first part of this book was about her eldest daughter (whose name is Violet, I think?) and the challenges Violet experienced from birth. A lot of the story is of course about Violet's journey, but eventually there is some attention to the food culture lessons that Sole-Smith internalized when it came to essentially preparing her body to produce a perfect Violet, and how that Did Not Work Out At All. Indeed, there are several stories about mothers and their children, and how mothers are trying pre- and post-birth to do the right things for their kids, all the while working with or fighting against societal expectations about food and their own unique family situations. This provides some interesting nuance for the book, and thus makes it "valuable" to me, because I don't know if we have anything remotely similar in our popular food culture that looks at this perspective.
As many reviews have pointed out, a solid part of this book is the one that looks at food culture and racism. Sole-Smith also sprinkles criticism of the medical establishment and food and diet cultures, and I am Here For It. The more I've read Sole-Smith's reporting, the more anti-establishment I've become, for good or ill.
If you're looking for how to avoid all the negative effects of the above, well, she doesn't really have an answer for you. There is a good amount of research in this book, but universal findings are just not really possible, especially with so many unique cases. But a useful message for the book is: we've become so engrained in food and diet culture that we don't really know what's appropriate or "good" anymore, so it's likely not bad to not have any hard-and-fast rules. That said, Sole-Smith does advocate trying to disentangle yourself from societal expectations for all of the above and find out what works for you, even if she sort of argues against its usefulness earlier in the book. I sort of get what she's saying, in terms of "eating what you want" being a little problematic when you're younger and still learning food culture. She does make some interesting points about what we generally call "picky eaters", such that I've been thinking a lot more about my own food preferences and the preferences of those around me (aka my partner, who is just as happy eating chicken patties and brats every day, to say nothing of the gallons of Mountain Dew he drinks). This book has encouraged me to not think poorly about anyone who has different food preferences from me. Instead, I've tried to invite trying different things but also returning to staples that we both admittedly love.
I've been following Sole-Smith's Substack for around a year now. I generally agree with the things that she and her interviewees and coworkers say. Sometimes they make me a little uncomfortable, but I think that's a good thing, and I think she would agree. I've learned a lot from her and from her work. I was primarily drawn to her for her writing about fatness. She recently published Fat Talk, and I've been meaning to read it, even though it's primarily advertised as a book for parents. A lot of her work has to do with parenting, in part because that's where we learn a lot about food culture: from our parents.
Having said that, I should not have been surprised that the first part of this book was about her eldest daughter (whose name is Violet, I think?) and the challenges Violet experienced from birth. A lot of the story is of course about Violet's journey, but eventually there is some attention to the food culture lessons that Sole-Smith internalized when it came to essentially preparing her body to produce a perfect Violet, and how that Did Not Work Out At All. Indeed, there are several stories about mothers and their children, and how mothers are trying pre- and post-birth to do the right things for their kids, all the while working with or fighting against societal expectations about food and their own unique family situations. This provides some interesting nuance for the book, and thus makes it "valuable" to me, because I don't know if we have anything remotely similar in our popular food culture that looks at this perspective.
As many reviews have pointed out, a solid part of this book is the one that looks at food culture and racism. Sole-Smith also sprinkles criticism of the medical establishment and food and diet cultures, and I am Here For It. The more I've read Sole-Smith's reporting, the more anti-establishment I've become, for good or ill.
If you're looking for how to avoid all the negative effects of the above, well, she doesn't really have an answer for you. There is a good amount of research in this book, but universal findings are just not really possible, especially with so many unique cases. But a useful message for the book is: we've become so engrained in food and diet culture that we don't really know what's appropriate or "good" anymore, so it's likely not bad to not have any hard-and-fast rules. That said, Sole-Smith does advocate trying to disentangle yourself from societal expectations for all of the above and find out what works for you, even if she sort of argues against its usefulness earlier in the book. I sort of get what she's saying, in terms of "eating what you want" being a little problematic when you're younger and still learning food culture. She does make some interesting points about what we generally call "picky eaters", such that I've been thinking a lot more about my own food preferences and the preferences of those around me (aka my partner, who is just as happy eating chicken patties and brats every day, to say nothing of the gallons of Mountain Dew he drinks). This book has encouraged me to not think poorly about anyone who has different food preferences from me. Instead, I've tried to invite trying different things but also returning to staples that we both admittedly love.
agenderberry335's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Medical trauma, and Medical content
Moderate: Fatphobia
jackiepreston's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Vomit, Addiction, Medical content, Medical trauma, Body shaming, Fatphobia, and Classism
afro8921's review against another edition
3.0
The Eating Instinct explores how our relationship with food effects our relationship with our bodies. I was fascinated to discover just how many ways food impacts different parts of our community. There are no easy answers in this book, only a suggestion to learn to love the body we have so that future generation can have a better relationship with food and with others.
koramay's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.75