A luminously original exploration of the deep roots of diet culture by an award-winning historian

The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne - an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as 'Dr Diet' - it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women's appetite and a personal unravelling.

In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today's diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.

Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire, rationality and oppression, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat.

"A beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching exploration of our relationships with eating and food. Hamel-Akré takes us into the heart of human experiences. This book is psychologically illuminating and, most importantly, deeply fascinating" - Charlotte Fox Weber, author of What We Want

"This is perhaps because I'm dismayed that these stories of danger and shame need to be told and retold, but they do, and these books by Sarah Moss and Jessica Hamel-Akré deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live - allow ourselves to live - in this hard world in our soft and beautiful flesh." - New Statesman

"Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking." - The Telegraph

"The book convincingly shows that the scrutiny of the female body, which can feel so unrelenting in the Instagram era, is far from new. Cheyne's milk and seed diet may seem eccentric but is it so different from the diets that have their moment in the sun today?" - Daily Mail