The Eating Instinct - by Virginia Sole-Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

Visiting kitchen tables around America, this timely volume explores today's toxic food culture, telling the stories of those who are struggling with food issues and providing insight into how to feel good about food.

Book Synopsis

Real Simple Best Book of 2018

From the bestselling, acclaimed author of Fat Talk comes an urgent exploration, both personal and deeply reported, of how we learn to eat in today's toxic food culture.

Food is supposed to sustain and nourish us. Eating well, any doctor will tell you, is the best way to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you, is the most important job a mother has. But for too many of us, food now feels dangerous. We parse every bite we eat as good or bad, and judge our own worth accordingly. When her newborn daughter stopped eating after a medical crisis, Virginia Sole-Smith spent two years teaching her how to feel safe around food again -- and in the process, realized just how many of us are struggling to do the same thing.

The Eating Instinct visits kitchen tables around America to tell Sole-Smith's own story, as well as the stories of women recovering from weight loss surgery, of people who eat only nine foods, of families with unlimited grocery budgets and those on food stamps. Every struggle is unique. But Sole-Smith shows how they're also all products of our modern food culture. And they're all asking the same questions: How did I learn to eat this way? Why is it so hard to feel good about food? And how can I make it better?

Review Quotes

"I am extremely grateful to Virginia for writing Fat Talk. It's a fearless and game-changing addition to the conversation about kids, food and weight, and a book that all parents need to read."
--Emily Oster, author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet

"If you have ever held a piece of food or briefly glimpsed a part of your body and felt a complicated thing, you need to read this book. Fat Talk is about parenting--but also about living--within and outside of the nefarious stories we've been told about food and bodies and how and why they relate to health; about the dangers of restriction and the freedom and the power that can come from loving ourselves and one another on new and better terms."
--Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight and Want

"Fat Talk is the book I wish my parents had when I was growing up."
--Julia Turshen, New York Times bestselling author

"Making meaningful social change--especially when it comes to America's insidious diet culture--can feel like slow, Sisyphean work. It requires not only questioning the complex systems we live within but also imagining new, better solutions. Lucky for all of us with bodies, Virginia Sole-Smith is a visionary. In Fat Talk, she generously guides grown-ups toward unlearning everything we've been taught about weight and worth and teaches us to show young people that they are always enough just as they are. Everyone should read this book."
--Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

"With Fat Talk, Virginia Sole Smith hasn't just given us a great book for parents of fat kids. She's given us an indispensable resource for adults preparing kids of all sizes to navigate a world full of bodies, biases, and appearance-based judgment. If you've ever longed for a conversation about fat kids that's rooted in facts, candor, and empathy, this is it. Fat Talk is a must-read for any adult who wants to build a kinder, more accepting, and more just world for the kids in their lives."
--Aubrey Gordon, cohost of Maintenance Phase and author of "You Just Need to Lose Weight" And 19 Other Myths About Fat People

"If you've ever struggled in your relationship with food and your body--and especially if you're trying to raise kids to be resilient in the face of diet culture--this book is essential reading. Virginia offers a nuanced and deeply reported look at the many unintended consequences of the rhetoric around 'childhood obesity, ' and presents a powerful case for rethinking the conventional wisdom about weight and health. At a time when the world feels increasingly cruel to fat kids, this book will be a beacon of hope to many."
--Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS, author of The Wellness Trap and Anti-Diet

"This paradigm-shifting book...flip[s] the script on diet culture and anti-fat bias...With its message of trusting our kids' bodies (and everyone else's) as they are as both a social-justice issue and an act of love, this is a great place to begin."
--Booklist (starred review)

"[Sole-Smith] refrains from making readers feel guilty; rather, she is instructive and encouraging. ...Sole-Smith provides well-rounded discussions of eating disorders, puberty, calorie counting, fitness influencers, and the myth that a fat child necessarily means that they have lazy or disengaged parents...A thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents."
--Kirkus Reviews

"[C]ompassionate...[Sole-Smith's] eye-opening research upends conventional assumptions about what a healthy body looks like, and readers will appreciate the affirming tone. The result is a striking challenge to fatphobia."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Virginia Sole-Smith is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Slate, and Elle. She is the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America and Fat Talk. She was also a contributing editor at Parents Magazine. She lives with her husband and two daughters in the Hudson Valley.