Content uploaded by Claude Fischler
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Claude Fischler
Content may be subject to copyright.
Fischler, C. (1992). From lipophilia to lipophobia. Changing attitudes and behaviors toward
fat - A Sociohistorical Approach. In D. Mela (Ed.), Dietary Fats (pp. 103-115). London: Elsevier.
FROM LIPOPHILIA TO LIPOPHOBIA.
CHANGING ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS TOWARDS FAT:
A SOCIO-HISTORICAL APPROACH.
CLAUDE FISCHLER
Directeur de Recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Centre d'Etudes Transdisciplinaires
105, bvd Raspail 75006 Paris, France
ABSTRACT
In most developed countries, in the last few decades, fat has increasingly been banned from
both our plates and (with apparently limited success) our bodies. Lipophobia is now growing
in affluent societies, in striking contrast to most if not all traditional societies, where
lipophilia prevails.
Anthropological, historical and sociological data and observations are presented to illustrate
the apparent universality of lipophilia and the recent rise of lipophobia in the developed
world. Hypotheses regarding the nature and origin of this phenomenon, central to the
understanding of eating disorders, body image and even food preferences, are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary societies in the developed world offer one remarkable feature: they seem to be
turning lipophobic, i.e., to be developing a marked aversion to fat. Fat increasingly tends to
be regarded unæsthetic and unhealthful as bodily tissue, unnecessary or even lethal as food. A
lean, almost fatless body is apparently considered a goal worth considerable efforts,
regardless of the potential cost to the subjects' health. Recent trends in culinary and
gastronomic styles seem to induce avoidance and even disgust of fat foods. The latter still are
colloquially referred to as "rich", yet they are now considered poor in both nutrition and
status.
2
Nutritionists and cardiologists warn that populations in affluent countries are too fat and eat
too much fat. Consequently, they recommend dietary changes in the general population and
personal diets for overweight individuals. Clinical psychiatrists, on the other hand, regard
what they consider to be a current obsession with leanness as a factor in the apparently
increasing prevalence of eating disorders. It has even been claimed, in the United States, that
the images of the female body presented in the media should be subjected to government
regulation.
In this paper, I will try to document some aspects of lipophobia and argue that the
phenomenon is related to basic socio-cultural trends which have been developing in most
affluent societies. The lipophobic trend can be ascribed to changes in lifestyles,
socioeconomic status, energy expenditure, demographics and changes in the status of women.
LIPOPHILIA
Lipophilia seems to be almost universally prevalent in traditional societies. Analysis of the
Human Relation Area Files, a record of ethnographic data about more than 300 populations in
the world, shows no instance of a culture with a prohibition or an aversion regarding dietary
fats. Indeed, observers often report a preference for fat, including among cannibals [1].
Studies on food preference in Western societies show that, in children and adolescents, high-
fat foods, smooth and homogeneous in texture, are preferred [2, 3].
As to appearance, particularly as far as the female body is concerned, the same source shows
that plumpness is frequently appreciated and, in certain societies, encouraged. According to
the anthropologist Holmberg, for instance, the Sirione of the Amazon river are typical in this
respect: "Besides being young, a desirable sex partner should also be fat. She should have big
hips, good-sized but firm breasts, and a deposit of fat on her sexual organs." [4]. From the
paleolithic "Venus" of Willendorf to the Sirione or innumerable other groups, fat has been
considered desirable and attractive. Contemporary Western taste, or rather distaste, can thus
be viewed as a notable and remarkable exception.
The progression of lipophobia can be observed on three, distinct yet clearly interrelated,
"fronts" : fashion and corporal æsthetics (body image); food consumption, eating and cooking
habits; finally medicine and public health.
THE PROGRESS OF LIPOPHOBIA
Fashion, Æsthetics And The Female Body
Not only the weight, but the shape of the ideal female body has changed considerably in the
course of time and across cultures.!As we have seen, plumpness has been widely preferred,
but the ideal varied widely in degree and form. For centuries, numerous contraptions forced
women's bodies into desired form. With the demise of corsets and similarly constraining
paraphernalia, the body is now, as it were, its own corset.!
3
Since the beginning of this century, the preferred shape for the female body has evolved, in
North America, from the "hourglass" model (thin waist, ample hips and breasts) to the
"tubular", muscular, model, in which the contrast between waist, hips and bosom is much less
marked. This evolution is examplified in magazine illustrations between 1900 and 1981 or in
Playboy centerfold playmates from 1960 to 1980 [5, 6]. It is confirmed by other data, such as
the weight and height of Miss America pageant contestants since the twenties. On the basis of
data reported by Seid [7], the Body Mass Index (BMI) of these women can be obtained and
compared.
A winner of the contest in the 1920s had a BMI of 21.2 (63.5 k, 1.73 m). In 1954, the
average BMI among contestants was down to 18.7. The winner's BMI was 19.3 that year and
19.5 in 1957. Between 1980 and 1983, the average BMI for contestants whose height was the
same as that of the 1954 winner (1.76 m) was 17.1. The figure is impressive since, according
to Beumont et al [8], a BMI of 16 or less indicates severe malnutrition or anorexia. Moreover,
from 1970 to 1989, the winner always weighed less than the rest of the contestants (figure 1).
1920's
1954
1954
1957
1980/83
av. for
1,76 m
1980/83
av. for
1,67 m
0
5
10
15
20
25
Body Mass Index
21,21
18,77
19,30
19,50
17,11
17,64
Winners
Average
Figure 1. Body Mass Index of winners and contestants of Miss America Pageant, 1920-1983
But being lean is not the whole story. Muscle, formerly a purely male feature, is increasingly
desirable for women. This is particularly conspicuous in the United States, with the spread of
exercise and sports among women in the seventies and eighties.
Cooking and Consumption
The second "front" on which lipophobia seems to have been consistently gaining ground is
that of cooking and food habits.
4
Food consumption and eating habits have changed considerably in most Western, developed
countries. In France, such changes had been heralded quite early by Haute Cuisine and the
emerging trend which was to be labeled "Nouvelle Cuisine" in the early seventies. By the late
sixties, cooks were already concocting dishes which they typically described as "lighter" and
"simpler". Gradually, the most famous French cooks developed new techniques and new
recipes. They were thus putting an end to the elaborate, pomp- and prestige-oriented
stereotypes inherited from 19th century French cuisine, with its cream, butter and foie gras-
rich recipes. They started with new, lighter sauces, no longer based on flour and butter. Then
they gradually moved on to entirely sauceless dishes or to concentrated, fragrant reductions
called jus. Analysing the specialties listed in the Michelin guidebook by the most famous
restaurants of France between 1937 and 1988, this author identified clear trends from the late
sixties on, such as the sudden rise of fish and vegetables, the stagnation or fall from favor of
meat and charcuterie [3, 9]. Analysis of popular and professional cookbooks shows that new
trends (shorter cooking times, smaller portions) had actually been quietly, slowly emerging
before World War II [10].
Culinary changes were actually paralleling or announcing trends in general consumption.
Since World War II, for instance, there has been a spectacular decrease in French
consumption of foods traditionally considered nourishing and cheap (bread, legumes, cheap
pasta, potatoes). In the late eighties, an unprecedented decline of meat occurred.
Cooking fat has been identified as a highly stable marker of cultural, culinary identity. For
centuries, France has been divided into territories entirely devoted to oil (South of the Loire
river) or butter (North of the Loire), with enclaved areas using goose fat or pork fat [3]. In
spite of stereotypes (probably based on traditional high status French cooking and its
exports), in the last twenty-five years, consumption of both butter and oil has declined. As
figure 2 clearly shows, a decrease in per capita consumption of butter has occurred not only in
the whole of the country but even in the North ("région Nord"), the region where butter has
traditionally been the dominant fat.
1965
1969
1974
1977
1980
1982
1985
0
4
8
12
16
20
16,75
8,82
14,33
8,75
14,37
8,35
13,68
8,38
11,88
7,19
11,46
6,96
10,03
6,32
Nord
National
Figure 2. Per capita consumption (kg/year) of butter in France. National vs Nord region
5
Source: INSEE (National Statistical Institute).
Similarly, the consumption of oil has been declining, even in the Southern area of the country
(région Méditerranée) where it is by tradition the dominant cooking fat (figure 3).
1965
1969
1974
1977
1980
1982
1985
0
4
8
12
16
20
19,24
11,80
18,8
11,7
18,7
11,9
16,9
11,2
17,09
10,61
15,02
9,64
13,28
8,87
Méditerranée
National
Figure 3. Per capita consumption of oil in France . National vs Méditerranée region. Source :
INSEE.
The cooking oil market has changed considerably since the beginning of the seventies. The
traditionally dominant oil, peanut, has given way to sunflower seed oil, now overwhelmingly
preferred by French consumers.
In the last few years, new products have appeared and trends have accelerated, with the
proliferation of new low fat spreads and diet foods (often referred to in French as le Light).
As table 1 shows, however, while considerable qualitative shifts have occurred, the actual
reduction in overall consumption (purchases) of fats is not as massive as might have been
expected. Fat is obviously difficult to part with, even when dominant attitudes and beliefs are
hostile to it. In other words, "light" products seem to be used in a largely symbolic way.
TABLE 1
Evolution of purchases of fats in France, 1989-1990 (in tons). Source: Cidil/Secodip.
Butter
-4,5%
Oil
+1,5%
Margarine
-12,5%
Other fats
-4%
Low Fat Spreads
+43,9%
TOTAL
-0,3%
6
Medicine and science
The third front is that of medicine and science. Up until the last decades of the 20th century,
moderate corpulence was considered attractive, healthy, and morally appropriate. A
reasonably plump figure was apparently regarded as indicating good body management, and
fat evoked sound financial assets [11, 7, 3]. In men, corpulence and strength were often
equated, while in women plumpness was typically an integral component of glamour [12].
The first weight-reduction diet book seems to have been William Banting's Letter on
Corpulence (1864), an account of how the author lost 46 pounds following the diet prescribed
by Claude Bernard for diabetics. However, in general, the lipophilic view of fat seems to have
been shared by most if not all members of the medical profession [11].
A gradual reversal of attitudes was initiated by the insurance industry in the United States at
the end of the 19th century. The development of life insurance policies led to statistical
analyses which were taken as evidence that obesity was a strong risk factor for early
mortality. Dr Brandeth Symonds, a physician associated with Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company of New York, was obviously trying to reverse what was then a dominant opinion
when he stated, in 1909, that overweight is "not a storehouse of strength. [It] universally
shortens life" [7]. Later on, Metropolitan Life developed their Tables for Ideal Weight, which
were soon to become a widely established standard used by physicians around the world
(although the notion of "ideal" weight was to be dropped after a few decades). Gradually, fat
began to be seen, not as storage and prosperity, but as a useless, parasitic load, and a
potentially lethal one at that.
After World War II, the medical profession adopted an increasingly lipophobic stance.
Fatness came to be considered not only an individual problem but also a collective, even
social one. Overweight and obesity were a consequence of generalized overeating and poorly
balanced diets in a plethoric society. Obesity came to be regarded as one of the major factors
in many modern pathologies, particularly coronary heart disease. The phrase "we are digging
our graves with our teeth" became proverbial. Public opinion was obviously receptive to this
message, as is well reflected in two French surveys conducted in 1971 and 1989 (table 2).
7
TABLE 2
Evolution of French public opinion, 1971-1989. Source: Sofres/Gault-Millau 1971, 1989
N=1000
Too Much
About Right
Not Enough
No Opinion
Dec. 1971
Jul. 1989
50%
44%
3%
3%
63%
30%
2%
5%
Q. Would you say that the French generally eat too much, about right, or not enough?
It is interesting to note that, while more people believed that "the French eat too much", the
actual per capita consumption in calories had been going down. Since the beginning of the
century it had decreased by almost a third, from approximately 3000 kcal to roughly 2000 -
1800 to 2000 for women, 2000 to 2200 for men - [12].
The medical crusade against body fat was soon to be completed with a crusade against dietary
fat. In the fifties and sixties, diets both for weight loss and CVD prophylaxis typically
banned carbohydrates. Bread, potatoes and noodles acquired reputations as "fattening foods"
(French physicians recommended meals of grilled steak and green salad when dieting). In the
seventies, "slow absorption" carbohydrates were rehabilitated and "fast absorption" sucrose
became the villain and fiber gradually acquired a good name. In the eighties, as Adam
Drewnowski's chart of changing priorities in nutritional guidelines quite clearly illustrates
(this volume, p 000), fat gradually dislodged sugar as the Number One Nutritional Enemy. In
the mean time, cholesterol, which had entered the scene as a risk factor, tended to be viewed
as a culprit or even a "killer". Nutritional guidelines and public health education programs in
several countries increased the pressure in favor of a low (saturated) fat diet.
LIPOPHOBIA AND THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN SOCIETIES
The trend toward increasing lipophobia on all three fronts is related to basic changes in
modern societies: Socio-economic trends, changing lifestyles and values, changes in the role
and status of women.
Socio-Economic Trends
Western societies, particularly Western European ones, have changed tremendously, both
economically and in terms of their social and demographic composition, since World War II.
8
Industrialisation and urbanisation changed the very class composition of society as well as
life styles and values. In France, in the nineteen fifties, about 25% of the workforce made a
living by farming, as compared to a mere 5% in the nineties. In several countries, particularly
during the seventies, the industrial working class was drastically scaled down when
traditional heavy industries underwent major, sometimes fatal, crises and the developed world
gradually entered the post industrial age -an era in which the economy is dominated by
service industries and high technology.
The foods that, as we have seen, have fallen out of favor since the sixties are those that were
traditionally the daily fare of farmers and/or workers. Their consumption tended to decrease
as their sociological basis was shrinking. The only way they could possibly avoid doom and
be somehow preserved or revived was "reappropriation" or adoption by the middle or upper
middle class, particularly the new socially ascending segments of the population. Such was
the case in France with the fall of noodles and the rise of pasta. The old fashioned, cheap,
sticky and stuffing noodles became an almost extinct variety. But in the eighties, their Italian-
style counterpart pasta, loaded with sophisticated and sunny connotations, became a favourite
food for young, urban, middle-aged, fitness- and nutrition-conscious consumers, with an
interest in things culinary and ethnic delights.
Lifestyles, Values, and the Nutritional Cacophony
The new lifestyles feature considerably lower energy expenditure. Automobiles, heating and
air conditioning, mechanisation, the increasing number of office jobs, all resulted in
considerably reduced energy expenditure. Highly energetic foods began to be regarded with
wariness, contempt or even distaste. Such was the case with sugar, butter and fats, all foods
renowned to be energy-packed, and other foods whose actual calorie content was not as high,
but had historically been regarded as particularly suitable for people performing hard physical
work, i.e., meat.
Demography played an important part in the evolution of tastes, beliefs about foods, and
consumption patterns. The evolution, in most Western countries, was tightly tied to the life
cycle of the generations born during the late forties and through the fifties, the "baby-
boomers". They grew up in the world of the sixties, which imposed teen-age culture as a
model for all (from music to clothes to body image and even ideology). During the seventies,
they internalised the overwhelmingly individualistic values of self-development and the new
emphasis on nature and environmental protection. Since the seventies, in major developed
countries, life expectancy increased and the structure of populations grew significantly older.
Risk-consciousness, anxiety and health concerns, all typical of current attitudes, could stem in
part from the growing pains and fears of an aging population.
All this has been occurring in a context of growing disorientation of the consumers. In
traditional societies, few questions are asked by individuals about what an when to eat.
Seasonal availability, religion, customs, are the basis for rigid collective patterns of
consumption. In modern societies on the other hand, consumers tend to have increasing
autonomy from traditional rules for making decisions about food selection. But autonomy
may deteriorate into anomy, which sociologists define as an absence of social rules by which
individuals can orient their attitudes and behavior, a void or an overflow of conflicting rules.
9
A nutritional cacophony has developed, complete with conflicting medical theories,
advertising pressures, consumerist reports, food fads, health claims by food processors and
drug makers. To a large extent, modern distrust and concerns about food and diets stem from
the anxiety associated with the ambient nutritional cacophony.
One form of response to this type of situation is clearly magical. By "demonising" certain
foods, turning them, as it were, into nutritional scapegoats, the eater can magically protect
himself against diseases and death. The nutritional scapegoat helps make disease and death
quasi-optional. Avoiding the demonised food is all it takes to be protected. Sugar, salt, meat,
animal fat, all recently underwent this treatment. The demonisation of cholesterol consisted of
its transformation from risk factor to "killer". Lipophobia is currently the leading form of
demonisation.
Women and Change
The changing role and status of women in modern societies has played a decisive role in the
changes in attitudes which led to the emergence of lipophobia [3]. Since World War II, in all
Western, developed societies, women gradually but massively entered the work force. The
process triggered a number of trends which were to radically alter attitudes about food and
eating as well as body image.
Fatness, in traditional views of the world, was associated with fertility and wealth. In modern
societies, as social expectations about (and of) women change, their ideal body image is
following suit. Women are now involved in production as much as in reproduction. Their
body image has evolved accordingly : it tends to be taller, leaner and more muscular than ever
before.
The hourglass shape, as we have seen, was obtained mostly with the help of corsets and other
constricting accessories. The modern, more tubular, body shape is acquired through a process
of construction rather than constriction : it is based on discipline, dieting, gymnastics and
what is called, quite aptly, body building. Thus the modern ideal is part and parcel of the
contemporary, typically individualistic, notion of self-development. However, although
individualistic, it also has moralistic overtones. Being fit and lean is currently considered a
matter of self-discipline, of dedication, of courage. Contemporary conversations about food
and body shape constantly refer metaphorically, or jokingly, to religious concepts, such as sin
and repentance. Thinness is, quite literally, an ideal, and one almost unattainable for the
larger part of the population. It reflects an implicit ethics of the self. In a way, thinness can be
seen as a modern form of holiness, a cathedral dedicated to the self.
REFERENCES
1. Clastres, P., Chronique des Indiens Guayaki, Plon, Paris, 1972.
2. Einstein, M., Hornstein, I., Food Preferences of College Students and Nutritional
Implications. J. Food Sci., 1970, 35, 429-436.
10
3. Fischler, C., L'Homnivore, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1990.
4. Beller, A. S., Fat and Thin: A Natural History of Obesity, McGraw Hill, New York, 1977.
5. Silverstein, B., Peterson, B., Perdue, L., Some Correlates of the Thin Standard of Bodily
Attractiveness for Women, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1986, 5, 5, 895-905.
6. Garner, D. M., Garfinkel, P. E., Schwartz, D., Thompson, M., Cultural Expectations of
Thinness in Women, Psychological Reports, 1980, 47, 483-491.
7. Seid, R. P., Never too thin, New York, Prentice Hall, 1989.
8. Beumont, P., Al-Alami, M., Touyz, S., Relevance of a standard measurement of
undernutrition to the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa: Use of Quetelet's Body Mass Index
(BMI). International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1988, 7, 399-405.
9. Fischler, C., The Michelin Galaxy: Nouvelle Cuisine, Three-Star Restaurants, and The
Culinary Revolution, Journal of Gastronomy, 1990, 6, 2, 79-94.
10. Hyman, P., Hyman, M. Modèles culinaires et nouvelle cuisine française. Culture
Technique, 1986, 16, 347-349.
11. Schwartz, H., Never Satisfied. A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat, The Free
Press, New York, 1986.
12. Brillat-Savarin, A., Physiologie du goût, Charpentier, Paris, 1841 (first edition: 1826).
13. Lambert, J. L., L'évolution des modèles de consommation alimentaire en France.
Lavoisier; Paris, 1987.
