Fat and Thin Hunting the Healthy Body in America

Short Description
healthy body in the United States over the past two centuries. … changing medical understanding of the healthy body, including the history of diets and …

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Content
Fat and Thin: A History of American Bodies
HSHM230b/HIST 125b
Susan E. Lederer susan.lederer@yale.edu
Section of the History of Medicine office 785-4338
Yale University
Monday, Wednesday 1:30 to 2:20
America is currently experiencing an “epidemic” of obesity. In the last two decades, the number of Americans identified as overweight or obese has ballooned. (Even American pets are apparently dangerously overweight!) At the same time, an increasing number of Americans-men, women, teenagers, and children as young as six-report that they are dieting to lose weight. This course considers the search for the healthy body in the United States over the past two centuries. It explores changes in the American diet that resulted from technologies of food production. It also examines the changing medical understanding of the healthy body, including the history of diets and eating disorders, the discovery of vitamins, the development of weight charts, the medicalization of obesity and the availability of surgical solutions. Topics include food faddism, the moral dimensions of diet, and the cultural norms of the slender and fat body-male and female.
Required Readings (Available at Book Haven; on reserve in Cross Campus Library)…

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