This is a very informative read and I feel like something that is needed today. We often forget the intimate connection between mind, body, and what we put in it. Reading this book not only reminded me of how close those things are and how important food is, but also made me want to pay more attention to what I ate and how food affected me. I highly recommend this book, as it is an important subject for everyone.

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Eating Instinct was interesting in the fact that it makes you question the relationship that we have with food. From a mental and physical standpoint, the focus of food should be sustainability. We see it as several other things, a necessity, a reward, a punishment, a friend. Virginia Sole - Smith’s Daughter was born with health issues and was tube fed for her first two years of life. This story follows her trials and tribulations in teaching her Daughter how to eat, and in turn, gained insight on how we view food and ourselves.

"Food is supposed to sustain and nurture us. Eaing well, any doctor will tell you, is the most important thing you can do to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you is the most important job a mother has, especially in the first months of her child's life. But right now, in America, we no longer think of food as sustenance or nourishment. For many of us food feels dangerous. We fear it, We regret it. And we categorize everything we eat as good or bad."

When her daughter was born with a heart condition, needing multiple surgeries, feeding tubes, she realized her daughter did not know how to eat, enjoy food. She felt she had failed in the most important duty of motherhood. Even once the feeding tube was removed, they had a slow journey towards regarding food as enjoyable. This prsked her interest in how food is viewed by many, and in multiple interviews she takes us through the ever changing role of what we eat.

The differen diet crazes, health advice that is ever changing, the emotional connection to food and the many food related illnessess. The pressure of a media that promotes thinness, a culture that thinks if one gets I'll they have not eaten correctly. Food and food related books, diets, supplements has become a mega business worth billions. it is in their favor if they can keep us off balance, constantly searching for the new and improved cure all. For many eating is no longer enjoyable, it has become challenging and pressurized. We have forgotten the instinct, and no longer listen to our body, which can and will, if we let it,ctell us when and how much to eat. Our own control has been diverted and control given over to others.

Quite an informative read, well done and we'll presented.

ARC from Netgalley.

This was at times a heart-breaking book to read with emotional stories that mention issues of eating that had never crossed my mind. In truth, I was expecting a much different book than what I read. This was much more personal rather than numbers and facts. It's made me think about eating in other contexts outside of health and body image -- to the very core of what it means to be a live human being.

Sole-Smith’s daughter was born with serious heart issues, making her too weak to nurse, or take any food by mouth. She was tube fed for nearly two years, and had to learn how to eat. The Eating Instinct explores the physical and psychological issues that interfere with what most of us take for granted. A different perspective on the usual approach to diet. Recommend highly.

"Nutrition has become a permanently unsolvable Rubik's Cube. So we read more books, pin more blog posts, buy more products, and sign up for more classes and consultations. And we don't realize how many of the so-called experts guiding us through this new and constantly changing landscape are ... fighting their own battles with food."

"I am not always at peace with my body. After all, I've never met anyone who really is."

"How did I learn to eat this way? Why is it so hard to feel good about food? And how can I make it better?"

Virginia Sole-Smith took on a massive task in The Eating Instinct: confronting the various complicated issues and "anxieties" that dominate Americans' relationships with food.

She was motivated by realizing that the instinct to eat to survive, one of the basest instincts any living thing has, can be pushed aside in favor of avoiding pain, discomfort or traumatic associations. This realization stemmed from her baby daughter's refusal to eat due to a breathing condition and those associated factors.

For a relatively short book, it did feel much more was about her experiences with her baby and the associated guilt and feelings of failure she dealt with herself in this regard as she desperately tries to retrain her daughter to obey these instincts. And a lot of breastfeeding-related information. It felt a little gratuitous, and what I really wanted to read was a range of stories with more of the "in America" angle the subtitle promises.

But that gripe aside - some of the stories in the author's extensive research are quite interesting and illuminating. If anything, it reveals how deeply the emotional and personal connection to food goes in various people for a variety of reasons. The spectrum of eating disorders or disordered eating behavior is far more complex and nuanced than I think most realize. Not to mention the influence of environment, parents, and economic status: "Nothing connected with food happens in a vacuum."

Something I found so interesting here was how she pointed out that certain directions meant to guide us into making better food choices or structuring our lives in a more healthful, less stressful way in regards to eating could be misinterpreted or end up making things even more complicated. This is especially true for those prone to any sort of disordered eating or problematic food relationships in the first place.

She uses Michael Pollan's famous "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" as an example. What is too much, being just one question about this dictate. I haven't read anything by Pollan yet so although I have an idea of his opinions from getting recaps elsewhere, I can't say for sure, but that does seem unhelpfully vague, particularly for those who struggle with control.

Organic farmers and food activists may have originally banded together to take on huge corporations within the agricultural-industrial complex. But infusing their arguments with messages about health has led to the rise of a wellness-industrial complex, in which nutritionists, personal trainers, cookbook authors, and other "alternative-health experts" target us for our individual choices. They aren't fighting evil corporations like Walmart or Amazon anymore. They're hoping those evil corporations will stock their products.

She covers nutritional and wellness gurus who struggle with their own disordered eating, the obsession with organic foods as the pinnacle of "healthy" eating, the vague and even potentially dangerous idea of "clean eating" and the "wellness-industrial complex" mentioned above that becomes all-consuming and is often decidedly unscientific. I especially loved her look at the clean eating/detoxing trends that seem like a more socially acceptable way to practice dangerously restrictive eating habits.

"The inside of your body is not dirty and it does not need cleaning," Michael Gershon, M.D., a professor of cell biology and pathology at Columbia University, told me when I asked him to explain detoxing for the readers of SELF.

Sole-Smith is an experienced print journalist, having written for Self and a plethora of women's wellness and nutrition-themed publications. Each chapter reads like a magazine story, with the requisite combo of anecdotal evidence presented alongside a focused interview subject, backup statistics, and quotes from the subject themselves. I didn't always think the best, most revealing or impactful quotes were pulled, and this style got somewhat tedious.

The majority of the people profiled in this book are privileged. One outside this range is Sherita's, an African-American who struggled with drug addiction and sex work while trying to feed her daughter, and who is currently a fitness and health food aficionado.

Occasionally, her family would go downtown to walk around at Philadelphia's famous Reading Terminal Market and Sherita would dream about eating all the food she saw there but couldn't buy. "I think I always had a love affair with food because I could never get what I really wanted."

Sole-Smith explains herself and sets up the section well, but the overwhelming air of privilege throughout is impossible to ignore. You'll have to look elsewhere for insight into the guilt of poverty and food that figures in those kind of stories for American families. I recommend this National Geographic piece as an excellent starting point.

A word about eating disorders. According to the author: It can be fraught to read about someone else's weight so if you struggle with an eating disorder yourself, please use your own best judgment in deciding whether to read those chapters. I would add: Be prepared to sit with those thoughts for awhile. Although I think reading the research and statistics and anecdotal evidence presented here is ultimately much more helpful than hurtful, that doesn't mean it's not going to evoke some difficult, unsettling memories in those who have previously struggled with unhealthy food relationships. I read somewhere that even ex-sufferers who decide to write about how they've beaten eating disorders find just writing about the experience powerful enough to draw them back into an unhealthy place. There's something so psychologically compelling about this illness, so fair warning that some of the stories and conversations here may be triggering in this way.

A well-researched exploration into a food landscape littered with too many sweeping proclamations and extremes, with some especially illuminating and reassuring moments, this book would especially appeal if you can see yourself reflected in it somehow, so if you've suffered from disordered eating or anxieties around food or helped someone who has, or if you're a practitioner in a related field.

This book really covered a different way a lot of people eat. It was a bit complicated, but certainly interesting.

Thanks to author, publisher, and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

I absolutely loved reading this book, and I want to suggest this to anyone who has had issues around eating... so basically everyone. As someone who has a love-hate relationship with food and eating due to Celiac Disease, this put a lot of my feelings around the subject into a fantastically written book. There was also a section on race that made me critically look back at my times of being a health educator, and I cringe at my ignorance.

My only negative is that that the author lightly touched on Celiac Disease and gluten intolerance. It was brought up early in the book and then immediately dropped! Wish there was a little bit more about it included.

I think the author's story about her family would be better as an introduction rather than as part of Chapter One. Opening as it did left me confused and thrown since I was expecting a much lighter (although still serious) subject.
I also feel that some of the chapters could be split up differently. Eating as a way to "cure" or help medical issues isn't really the same as eating clean because the motivations are different.
Otherwise, I really did enjoy the book and the author's method of research and overall conversational tone.