Fat Talk: Coming of age in diet culture A brave and radical book The Observer

(Paperback)

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

'Fearless and game-changing.' - Emily Oster

'Hard recommend.' - Pandora Sykes

'A must-read.' - Aubrey Gordon

'Essential.' - Laura Thomas, PhD

'Revolutionary!' - Bethany Rutter

'Pivotal.' - Anita Bhagwandas

Change the way you talk about food, weight, and self-worth, forever.

We live in a world designed to make us hate our bodies. By the time children start school, most have learned that 'fat' is bad. As they get older, many pursue thinness to survive in a society that ties their value to their size. Parents worry both about the risks of their kids fixating on unrealistic beauty standards - and about them becoming fat. Meanwhile, multibillion-dollar industries thrive on our insecurities, and the medical system pushes weight loss at almost any cost.

Talking to researchers, doctors, and activists, as well as parents and young people, Virginia Sole-Smith lays bare how diet culture has perpetuated a crisis of disordered eating and body hatred. She exposes our internalised fatphobia and shows why we need to let go of shame and start supporting young people in the bodies they have.

Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and ground-breaking book that will transform the conversation about health and size.

Praise for Virginia Sole-Smith:
'Sole-Smith writes with warmth and insight about the sheer complexity of eating today'. - Bee Wilson, author of First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Reviews

''A brave and radical book'' - Rebecca Seal

''Hard recommend.'' - Pandora Sykes

''The book I wish my parents had when I was growing up.'' - Julia Turshen

''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.'' - Lynn Steger Strong

''Fearless and game-changing.'' - Emily Oster

Author Bio

Virginia Sole-Smith is the author of Fat Talk: Coming of age in diet culture and The Eating Instinct. As a journalist, she has reported from kitchen tables and grocery stores, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid's tail. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Scientific American and many other publications. She also writes the popular anti-diet newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast.