For this episode, Mina revisits an old video she made on the history of dieting, supplemented (no pun intended) with more information, listener stories, and an interview with Dr. Katharina Vester, culture historian and professor at American University.

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Sources:

Regime change: Gender, class, and the invention of dieting in post-bellum America by Katharina Vester

From Robust Appetites to Calorie Counting: The Emergence of Dieting among Smith College Students in the 1920s by Margaret A. Lowe

The Progressive Era Body Project: Calorie-Counting and “Disciplining the Stomach” in 1920s America by Chin Jou

Dieting in the Long Sixties: Constructing the Identity of the Modern American Dieter by Nancy Gagliardi

Slimming One’s Way to a Better Self? Weight Loss Clubs and Women in Britain, 1967–1990 by Katrina-Louise Moseley

“Lose Like a Man”: Gender and the Constraints of Self-Making in Weight Watchers Online by Emily Contois

Fasting Girls: A History of Anorexia by Joan Jacobs Brumberg

Holy Anorexia by Rudolph M. Bell

An examination of the imposture of Ann Moore, called the fasting woman, of Tutbury: illustrated by remarks on other cases of real and pretended abstinence by Alexander Henderson

America’s First Amphetamine Epidemic 1929–1971 by Nicholas Rasmussen

The return of rainbow diet pills by Pieter A. Cohen, Alberto Goday & John P. Swann 

A Speedy History of America’s Addiction to Amphetamine

Saint Wilgefortis: a bearded woman with a queer history

How slimming became an obsession for women in post-war Britain by Myriam Wilks-Heeg

Kids' Sugar Cravings Might Be Biological 

5 Food Myths You Should Stop Believing

Anorexia Mirabilis: Fasting in Victorian England and modern India

The Jacob Case

Breatharian Website

Cult that shuns food shaken by reports leader is eating

Breatharian Leader Wiley Brooks Lives On Light, Air, And Quarter Pounders

Written by Mina Le, Ella Gray, and Sophie Carter

Edited by Sophie Carter

Music by Olivia Martinez

Cover by Lindsay Mintz