Calories and Corsets

Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media''s relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have been struggling with what to eat, when and how much, ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch. Meticulousl...