Romantic Dietetics! Or, Eating Your Way To A New You

Abstract

Christ exhorts us to ponder the ends of eating.What enters the mouth leaves by another passage, but only after its descent into that physiological underworld, the stomach. That eating sustains life is obvious. That it does so to specific cultural ends, however, is a circumstance worth closer consideration than it often gets, at least in studies of Romanticism. What are the cultural politics of eating in the age of revolution? We’re all familiar with the dietetic promises of today’s popular media.A recent issue of Parade Magazine touts the wisdom of a book entitled The Glucose Revolution, which propounds the truth of something called the “glycemic index,” a new system that ranks food by its effect on blood sugar: “according to the system it’s not so much whether you’re eating sugars or carbohydrates that counts, as how quickly and easily your choices are digested.” Digestion is the means to bodied happiness, and food choices are its matter.With a little dietetic care you can eat your way to a new you: “The important thing is for you to find out about how the glycemic index may revolutionize your diet just as soon as possible. For let’s face it.You’ve gone without it long enough.”1 Good digestion turns out to incorporate a new you: it transforms substance (food) into a subject (you) who has made all the right dietetic choices.This Romantic dietetics directs digestion toward socially serviceable ends, producing a proper body and sustaining a private subject.

All things entering the mouth, descend to the stomach and leave it.

—Jesus (Matthew 15:17)