Key Takeaways
1. Anorexia reflects societal alienation, not just individual pathology.
For if it is possible that someone might starve not in service to but in spite of their sense of self, we are forced to humor a schism between the “eats” and the “is.”
Beyond personal struggle. The author's personal experience with anorexia challenges conventional explanations that frame it as adolescent rebellion, a daughter's disease, or a response to patriarchal beauty standards. She found no drive to assert herself through thinness or to defy her mother, suggesting that her inability to eat stemmed from something deeper than individual psychology. This perspective forces a re-evaluation of the common belief that "you are what you eat," implying that one's eating habits don't always define one's identity or desires.
A symptom of awfulness. The author's struggle coincided with political disillusionment and a pervasive sense of futility, leading her to question if her eating difficulties were a symptom of a broader societal "awfulness." She felt a strange relief in suspending the pleasure of eating, exempting herself from something unbearable in the world. This suggests that anorexia, for some, might be a withdrawal from a world that feels meaningless or overwhelming, rather than a direct act of self-definition or protest.
Questioning the context. Instead of focusing on individual traits, the author asks what kind of life one must be living to find starvation preferable. She highlights that people are constantly changed by their surroundings, and that the surge in eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be rationalized by genetics alone. This calls for an understanding of anorexia as a complex response to external turmoil, not merely an internal flaw.
2. Individualistic health models fail to address systemic causes of eating disorders.
Recovery rates from anorexia in standard clinical settings are acknowledged to be low, relapse and fatality high.
Limited effectiveness. The author critiques mainstream medical treatments like MANTRA (Maudsley Model of Anorexia Nervosa Treatment for Adults) and the DSM-5's diagnostic criteria. These approaches, rooted in biomedical models, reduce eating disorders to individual traits like anxiety or a need for control, and offer solutions like drugs and behavioral retraining. However, their low recovery rates and high relapse rates suggest a fundamental failure to address the underlying issues.
Dismissing patient experience. MANTRA, for instance, treats patients as cognitively defective, dismissing their insights and desires as pathological. The author describes being subjected to infantilizing tasks and predetermined outcomes, where her resistance was seen as further evidence of her "rigid, irrational mind." This approach prioritizes symptom correction over understanding the patient's inner life or the difficult context in which their illness developed.
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This 1940s study, often cited to prove that "feeding first" cures eating disorders, is re-interpreted by the author. While the men in the study developed "anorexic" behaviors due to physical depletion, the author questions if their initial good moods were solely due to good diets or if their subsequent psychological decline was also linked to external factors like the war ending and the dehumanizing surveillance of the experiment. This highlights that context and purpose are crucial, not just caloric intake.
3. Dietary restriction can be a powerful act of political solidarity.
To refuse to eat meat was not to purify the soul, nor even to preserve the lives of individual animals. Rather, it was a daily inspiration to care—to hold oneself accountable for how humans relate to one another and to animal life.
Beyond personal virtue. The author explores veganism not as a moralistic or self-punishing diet, but as a form of non-participation in violence. While acknowledging the historical links between dietary purity and fascism (e.g., D'Annunzio, Hitler, Kellogg), she distinguishes her own veganism as a refusal to stomach the violence inherent in meat-making and exploitation. This reframes restriction as a potential act of solidarity, rather than mere self-indulgence or a mask for an eating disorder.
Suffragettes and animal justice. Constance Lytton, a suffragette, exemplifies this political restriction. Her vegetarianism, initially for health, evolved into a political consciousness after witnessing a sheep being beaten. She linked the contempt for animals to the contempt for women, seeing both as existing for others' pleasure. The suffragettes' hunger strikes and their meat-free breakfasts at Eustace Miles restaurant were acts of resistance, connecting animal justice with women's democratic agency.
Challenging the status quo. Lytton's act of disguising herself as a working-class woman ("Jane Warton") to experience force-feeding in prison further highlights the political nature of dietary control. Her experience revealed how working-class women's principles were dismissed, demonstrating the link between violence against non-human animals and the use of force against certain humans. This suggests that restriction, when rooted in a vision of a less exploitative world, can be a powerful political statement.
4. The "You Are What You Eat" dogma obscures food's political essence.
Food, it seemed, could be more than a mere occasion for self-definition—self-aggrandizement, self-judgment, or performative self-defense.
Beyond individual identity. The author challenges the pervasive notion that our food choices define who we are, arguing that this individualistic focus distracts from the collective and political dimensions of food. Her experience at a Landworkers' Alliance demonstration, eating simple grains and vegetables, transformed the meal from a personal act into a shared experience of collective purpose. This food, provided by an organization fighting for food sovereignty, highlighted how food can unite people against injustice.
Critique of consumer choice. Our culinary preferences, often cherished as marks of enlightened taste, are frequently expressions of inherited status or choices arrayed by a profit-driven food system. The author argues that focusing on "one's diet" as a personal ledger of values and achievements, nutritional or moral, is an unhappy norm that prevents us from seeing the bigger picture of food injustice. This includes:
- Worker and animal exploitation
- Dispossession of farmers
- Malnourishment of the poor
- Colonial weaponization of hunger
Food as a collective act. The Right to Food campaign, inspired by the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for School Children scheme, demonstrates how food can be a tool for political education and collective empowerment. By providing free, dignified meals, the Panthers not only addressed immediate hunger but also instilled in Black children an "internal sense of satisfaction" and an expectation of what a just society should provide. This reframes food as fuel for seeking social change, not just individual sustenance.
5. Gorging can be an act of despair or a celebration of abundance.
To eat to excess, thinks Berlant, could create a “meaningful or meaningless feeling of well-being”—a shudder in the moment, a fair-enough fantasy of like there’s no tomorrow.
Beyond simple gluttony. The author explores gorging not merely as a sin or a sign of lack of self-control, but as a complex act with varied meanings. Her own "weight-gain assignment" revealed that even authorized overeating lacked joy, as it wasn't driven by genuine desire but by external compulsion. This contrasts with the "holy anorexics" who sought ultimate satisfaction in spiritual food, viewing ordinary food as debased.
Gluttony and social hierarchy. Historical examples like Trimalchio's dinner and Emperor Elagabalus's excesses illustrate how gluttony has been used to reinforce social hierarchies. Trimalchio, a former slave, and Elagabalus, a Syrian emperor, were ridiculed for their "bad taste" and "alien excess," respectively. Their overconsumption was not just absurd but served to check their social status, highlighting that certain types of greed are more despised than others, often along lines of class and race.
Despair and the "small vacation from the will." Lauren Berlant's concept of overeating as a "small vacation from the will" offers a nuanced perspective. In a world where life systematically short-changes many, gorging can be a soothing escape from the pressure of striving for a "good life." It's a way to remove the body from time, a temporary well-being that, while not a solution, reflects a despair in the possibility of a meaningful future.
6. Bourgeois gourmandism differs from revolutionary feasting.
Nigella can’t eat like Elvis—why should she?—but nor could Elvis have eaten like her: secure enough to linger over mouthfuls, graceful and grateful for every crumb.
Class and culinary pleasure. The author contrasts Nigella Lawson's "thoughtful" gourmandism with Elvis Presley's "mind-numbing obliteration" through food. Nigella, a "pretty gourmand," preaches pride in earthly delights but emphasizes savoring and gratitude, reflecting a privileged relationship with food. Her slimmed-down version of Elvis's fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, and her advice for Christmas dinner during a cost-of-living crisis, reveal a class-conscious approach to eating that prioritizes moderation and sophistication over "obscene overindulgence."
Elvis's hunger for abundance. Elvis, born into poverty during the Great Depression, never overcame the need to overindulge in the things he was denied as a child. His 8,000-calorie "Fool's Gold" sandwich was not about refined taste but about burying an aching heart, a desperate pursuit of abundance. This highlights that the meaning of gorging is deeply tied to one's social and economic background, and that "more is not actually more" is a rule often dictated by those who already have enough.
The erotic of collective abundance. Audre Lorde's concept of the "erotic" offers a counter-narrative to bourgeois gourmandism. For Lorde, feasting, especially among Black lesbian women, was not about rarefied food but about big, unignorable, shareable abundance—food that demanded to be felt and eaten with full participation. This collective joy, exemplified by platters of fried chicken and potato salad, fostered an "internal sense of satisfaction" and an expectation that such abundance should be a permanent fixture of social life, transforming a guest list into a synchronous, breathing crowd.
7. Feeding others is a radical act of care and political imagination.
Her own idea of warding off this premature death was showing radicals of various kinds how to provide for one another’s bodies.
Beyond individual healing. The author's unexpected invitation to cook for a "sacred happening" retreat, despite her own eating struggles, prompts a re-evaluation of feeding. She initially fears lubricating "libertarian smugness" but finds inspiration in Diane di Prima, the anarchist poet who fed activists and homeless comrades. Di Prima's "Revolutionary Letters" offered practical survival recipes and emphasized food sharing as a core component of revolutionary struggle, rooted in Buddhist notions of interdependence.
Mothering against motherhood. Di Prima's approach to motherhood and communal living challenges the state's idea of a nuclear family. Despite lacking conventional resources, she chose to have children, believing in "making the leap" and trusting in collective support. She saw caring for infants, like caring for each other, as inseparable from living itself, advocating for shared labor and pooled resources beyond biological or legal kinship. This "mothering against motherhood" aimed to redefine family and create a social mode from communal activity.
The Diggers' "living theater." Inspired by di Prima, the California Diggers modeled a classless society where food was abundant and "free because it's yours." Their "hip food network" and "free stores" were acts of "living theater," demonstrating that people could grow, make, steal, and barter for things on each other's behalf. Though their food quality was often poor, their aspiration was to create "festive communal banquets" and a San Francisco "where no one is hungry," using food as an engine for transforming the experience of life.
8. Hope for a just world is fundamental to the will to eat and live.
My commitment to life came first; the desire to have a child was its mere affirmation.
Surviving canceled futures. The author reflects on the sensation of "canceled futures" after political defeats and personal loss, including a miscarriage. She realizes that her commitment to life, and her ability to eat, predated and was not conditional on having a child. This highlights that the will to live, and by extension to eat, is deeply tied to a belief in a future worth living into, a future of social justice.
Despair as a sin. In the Christian tradition, despair is considered a sin worse than gluttony, an intellectual change where one decides there is no hope of salvation. In secular terms, this translates to a disbelief in society's capacity to change. The author's own "faithless disposition" made eating feel pointless, suggesting that overcoming this despair requires a vision as seductive as the one she once found in Nigella's philosophy of pleasure, but one grounded in collective possibility.
The taste of possibility. Diane di Prima's journey, from a "metal and precise as clockwork" universe to a belief in "yin/yang spiral in the aether" and the certainty of change, illustrates how a shift in worldview can inspire the will to live and create. Her discovery of alchemy, with its concept of a "materia prima" that can mutate and create new possibilities, offered a cosmic ground for faith in human capacity to make new worlds. This "taste of possibility" is what fuels the desire to breathe out, to create, and to sustain life.
9. Food justice demands collective action, not individual virtue.
Hunger, the organizer barked, was not a sad fact of life but a brutal political choice.
Beyond charity. The author's experience at a Landworkers' Alliance demonstration, listening to the UK Right to Food campaign, solidified her understanding that hunger is a political choice, not an immutable fact. The campaign's demands—free school lunches, living wages, community kitchens—highlight that food justice requires systemic policy changes, not just individual acts of charity or virtue. This challenges the notion that personal dietary choices can solve global food inequality.
Black Panthers' survival programs. The Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for School Children scheme is presented as a powerful example of collective action. By feeding thousands of hungry children daily, the Panthers not only met immediate needs but also exposed state neglect and instilled in the community an expectation of what a just society should provide. This program, along with "liberation schools," fueled a new generation of radicals, demonstrating that "survival pending revolution" was the aim.
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). The author connects the Right to Food movement to the BDS campaign, emphasizing that solidarity with Gaza requires not just sending aid but also boycotting companies that support Israel's occupation. This non-violent resistance, inspired by anti-apartheid struggles, challenges the narrative of conflict as natural and demonstrates that collective consumer choices, when organized and strategic, can exert significant pressure on governments and corporations. It's about making "people of conscience" consume in a way that galvanizes further collective action.
10. Healing is intertwined with transforming the world that makes us ill.
To treat psychic distress and the effort to make it better, she writes, as separate from political work, “neglects the gravity of the mental strains that arise from living in the world and trying to change it.”
Beyond self-soothing. The author concludes that "healing" should not be separated from political work. Her journey reveals that her anorexia was a symptom of a broader "sickness" in society's misappropriation of food, turning it into a means of self-creation rather than collective engagement. The counterproductive obsession with personalized "meal plans" in eating disorder treatment mirrors an unhappy norm: viewing eating as a personal ledger of values, rather than a collective act.
Fortifying for struggle. Hannah Proctor's argument in Burnout reinforces this: to strengthen ourselves for struggle, we must nourish our minds and learn to properly mourn. The Black Panthers' free health clinics exemplify this, redefining health not as bland functionality but as a source of mental power, connecting individual well-being to the social and political environment. They aimed to heal and empower simultaneously, fortifying bodies for revolution.
Eating for a better world. The author now eats not for comfort, but because contributing to a better world requires living and thriving. Her eating is a commitment to being "kept in running order" for future engagement, allowing her to continue asking questions of the world. This perspective transforms eating from a moral obligation or a personal struggle into a vital act of sustaining oneself for collective action, embodying the belief that we must make a world we all want to live in.
