EAT once a day, sleep on a hard bed and walk naked for as long as possible. Such was the advice of the Greek physician Hippocrates to anyone wishing to shed a few pounds. There’s nothing new about people being worried that they are getting fat, notes cultural historian Sander L. Gilman.
His book examines how shifting cultural values have shaped our view of obesity since ancient times. Different societies have blamed it on weak character, poor diet, bad genes, poverty and sin. Now we have a new narrative, says Gilman, a “moral panic” over a global obesity epidemic that…
