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You are what you don't eat
Book reviews~Conferences
You are what you don't eat WHAT IS AMERICA EATING? edited by Frances Peter
National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA, 1986, 173 pp HUNGER STRIKE The Anorectic's Struggle Metaphor for Our Age
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by Susie Orbach W. W. Norton, New York, NY, USA, 201 pp, $15-95 What is America Eating? presents proceedings of the 1984 symposium of the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the National Science Academy, aimed at stimulating discussion among scientists, practitioners, policy makers and the public on topics of current interest to the nutrition community. The programme consisted of 4 sessions. 1) 'Eating patterns, nutrition and health in the US' focused on comparison of changes in eating patterns that occurred over the past two decades. Information from major surveys conducted by USDA and DHHS provided the factual basis. 2) 'What factors shape eating patterns?' aimed to understand motivations for food choices and eating patterns by psychologists and economists, as well as consumer behaviourists. 3) 'Eating trends and nutritional consequences' was devoted to tracing implications of changing patterns for socioeconomic target groups at nutritional risk. 4) 'Perspectives on nutrition programmes, policy, and research' explored the roles that policy making bodies and food industry should play in guiding nutrition research and monitoring public education. The content of the proceedings is of wide interest to all who need a guide through the maze of books, speciality food stores, advice on food in magazines and newspapers all the way from recipes to weight reduction plans. In contrast to the down-to-earth FNB publication comes Hunger Strike
364
by Susie Orbach, an eloquent psychotherapist and co-founder of the Women's Therapy Center Institute (WTCI) in New York City. In 1978 she published Fat is a Feminist Issue, one of the first analyses of women's obsessions with food and body size. Hunger Strike is a cultural and clinical study of anorexia nervosa (AN), a neurosis she considers 'a dramatic expression of the internal compromise wrought by Western women in the 1980s in their attempt to negotiate passions and desires in a time of extraordinary confusion'.
Hysteria Ms Orbach compares AN to hysteria attributed to Victorian women with eating disorders endemic in today's females. Both syndromes - each, in its time, highly resistant to treatment express the 'rebellion and accomodation that women come to make in the context of a social role lived within
circumscribed boundaries'. Ms Orbach explains that eloquent statement as follows: The Victorian physician made their patients feel like children. So do contemporary healers. The parallels in treatment of yesterday's hysteria and today's anorexic are even more worrying. This is because the anorexic may come to medical attention when she is near death from starvation. Force feeding and bed rest are standard practices, just the way they were for hysterias at the turn of the 20th century. Consequently Ms Orbach suggests that anorexics symptoms be relieved by treatment that addresses psychological consequences 'of the suppression of women's desires for both dependency gratification and autonomy'. That way forced feedings can be avoided. In short, librarians should list Hunger Strike under feminism, psychotherapy and cultural anthropology as well as malnutrition.
Frank Meissner Washington, DC, USA
Conferences The future of European agriculture Council of Europe's Agricultural Conference on European Agriculture 2000,
Villars-sur-OIIon, Switzerland, 8-9 April 1986 After many meetings of the Agricultural Committee in which the future of European Agriculture and Food production were discussed, I suggested, eighteen months ago, that we concentrate on the next 15 years, to 2000AD. It was agreed that a conference be arranged with leading experts and politicians and I was asked, as ViceChairman, to draw up guidelines and make arrangements. The Swiss government - a net importer of food offered to be host. The background to the conference was the success of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in meeting two major aims of the Treaty of Rome: raising living standards; and eliminating rationing and shortages. Europe's
agriculture has developed in a way no one could have foreseen in 1945. For many years there has been an ample supply of food at reasonable prices. Now shortages have turned to surpluses; these are extremely costly to store and sell to a largely saturated market. The CAP uses 70% of the EEC budget and European food exports threaten to lead to a U S A Europe trade war. Finally, though certain countries have become selfsufficient, the contrast between the European and USA surpluses, and starvation in Africa, is stark. The main themes of the conference were: 'Europe's role as a food supplier in tomorrow's world'; 'The future of European agricultural policies'
FOOD POLICY November 1986
You are what you don't eat WHAT IS AMERICA EATING? edited by Frances Peter
National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA, 1986, 173 pp HUNGER STRIKE The Anorectic's Struggle Metaphor for Our Age
as
a
by Susie Orbach W. W. Norton, New York, NY, USA, 201 pp, $15-95 What is America Eating? presents proceedings of the 1984 symposium of the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the National Science Academy, aimed at stimulating discussion among scientists, practitioners, policy makers and the public on topics of current interest to the nutrition community. The programme consisted of 4 sessions. 1) 'Eating patterns, nutrition and health in the US' focused on comparison of changes in eating patterns that occurred over the past two decades. Information from major surveys conducted by USDA and DHHS provided the factual basis. 2) 'What factors shape eating patterns?' aimed to understand motivations for food choices and eating patterns by psychologists and economists, as well as consumer behaviourists. 3) 'Eating trends and nutritional consequences' was devoted to tracing implications of changing patterns for socioeconomic target groups at nutritional risk. 4) 'Perspectives on nutrition programmes, policy, and research' explored the roles that policy making bodies and food industry should play in guiding nutrition research and monitoring public education. The content of the proceedings is of wide interest to all who need a guide through the maze of books, speciality food stores, advice on food in magazines and newspapers all the way from recipes to weight reduction plans. In contrast to the down-to-earth FNB publication comes Hunger Strike
364
by Susie Orbach, an eloquent psychotherapist and co-founder of the Women's Therapy Center Institute (WTCI) in New York City. In 1978 she published Fat is a Feminist Issue, one of the first analyses of women's obsessions with food and body size. Hunger Strike is a cultural and clinical study of anorexia nervosa (AN), a neurosis she considers 'a dramatic expression of the internal compromise wrought by Western women in the 1980s in their attempt to negotiate passions and desires in a time of extraordinary confusion'.
Hysteria Ms Orbach compares AN to hysteria attributed to Victorian women with eating disorders endemic in today's females. Both syndromes - each, in its time, highly resistant to treatment express the 'rebellion and accomodation that women come to make in the context of a social role lived within
circumscribed boundaries'. Ms Orbach explains that eloquent statement as follows: The Victorian physician made their patients feel like children. So do contemporary healers. The parallels in treatment of yesterday's hysteria and today's anorexic are even more worrying. This is because the anorexic may come to medical attention when she is near death from starvation. Force feeding and bed rest are standard practices, just the way they were for hysterias at the turn of the 20th century. Consequently Ms Orbach suggests that anorexics symptoms be relieved by treatment that addresses psychological consequences 'of the suppression of women's desires for both dependency gratification and autonomy'. That way forced feedings can be avoided. In short, librarians should list Hunger Strike under feminism, psychotherapy and cultural anthropology as well as malnutrition.
Frank Meissner Washington, DC, USA
Conferences The future of European agriculture Council of Europe's Agricultural Conference on European Agriculture 2000,
Villars-sur-OIIon, Switzerland, 8-9 April 1986 After many meetings of the Agricultural Committee in which the future of European Agriculture and Food production were discussed, I suggested, eighteen months ago, that we concentrate on the next 15 years, to 2000AD. It was agreed that a conference be arranged with leading experts and politicians and I was asked, as ViceChairman, to draw up guidelines and make arrangements. The Swiss government - a net importer of food offered to be host. The background to the conference was the success of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in meeting two major aims of the Treaty of Rome: raising living standards; and eliminating rationing and shortages. Europe's
agriculture has developed in a way no one could have foreseen in 1945. For many years there has been an ample supply of food at reasonable prices. Now shortages have turned to surpluses; these are extremely costly to store and sell to a largely saturated market. The CAP uses 70% of the EEC budget and European food exports threaten to lead to a U S A Europe trade war. Finally, though certain countries have become selfsufficient, the contrast between the European and USA surpluses, and starvation in Africa, is stark. The main themes of the conference were: 'Europe's role as a food supplier in tomorrow's world'; 'The future of European agricultural policies'
FOOD POLICY November 1986