Jessica Hamel-Akré talks to Jane Shaw

Historian and cultural strategy consultant Dr Jessica Hamel-Akré explores the deep roots of diet culture to uncover the origins of today’s diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.

Hamel-Akré says the discovery of the ideas of the 18th-century society figure George Cheyne, known as Dr Diet, sparked her own 10-year study of women’s appetite and a personal unravelling. She followed Cheyne through medical studies, novels and historical scandals, stories of ash-eating mystics and wasting society girls and early feminist philosophers. All were grappling with early ideas around food, longing and the body.

Hamel-Akré conducted a seven-year study on the history of appetite control as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Cambridge. She has helped big brands navigate emerging ideas around gender, digital wellbeing and beauty and co-created and presented on the BBC Radio 4 documentary The Unexpected History of Clean Eating. Here she talks to Professor Jane Shaw, principal of Harris Manchester College and professor of the history of religion at the University of Oxford.