CONSUMED: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear...

CONSUMED: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food by Michelle Stacey (Touchstone: $11; 237 pp.). Elle columnist Michelle Stacey explores America’s curious love-hate relationship with food, a perverse obsession that may manifest itself in a dinner composed of a no-oil, no-salt, no-fat spa entree followed by a staggering chocolate dessert. Blending historical anecdotes with interviews and personal reflections, she traces the transmutation of a sensual desire into a Quixotic search for physical and moral perfection: “Perhaps the most disturbing, and disheartening, aspect of the current food paranoia is it seems driven far more by a fear of death than by a love of life.”