What did Vogue actually recommend women eat in 1977 — and why did it make one food writer cry in the
bathroom? How did the Greeks turn a six-pack into a moral argument? And, has the human obsession with
controlling what we eat ever really been about health at all?
Peter and Afua trace the long, strange history of dieting — from ancient Greek athletics and Roman
feast-and-purge excess, to medieval starvation saints who turned self-denial into a radical act of female agency.
0:00 Vogue’s 1977 Wine and Egg Diet — and what happened when someone actually tried it
6:30 The diet industry’s dirty secret: it was never about nutrition
9:00 Peter on fasting, cranky emails, and what not eating teaches you about your relationship with food
14:30 Ancient Greece: when abs were a moral statement, not just an aesthetic one
19:30 The manosphere’s Spartan fantasy — and what the Greeks would actually make of it
23:00 Rome: the inventors of binge and purge culture
24:30 When Christianity enters the chat — and fasting becomes holy
26:00 Catherine of Siena: the medieval starvation saint who used hunger as protest
30:00 Anorexia mirabilis — holy anorexia, and why Peter is wary of projecting modern diagnoses onto the past
32:00 Why medieval peasants weren’t dieting — they were just trying to stay alive
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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