ABSTRACT
There is a common assumption in the twenty-first century that “natural” food is a prophylactic against obesity as well as illness. The French food writer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin could write as late as 1825 that “obesity is never found either among savages or in those classes of society, which must work in order to eat or which do not eat except to exist.” But he provided a caveat, “savages will eat gluttonously and drink themselves insensible when ever they have a chance to” (Brillat-Savarin 1999: 239 and 241). This is very much in line with Immanuel Kant’s view of “savages” and alcohol use in his lectures on anthropology first held in 1772-3 and published by a student in 1831 (Kant 1831: 299). Obesity, therefore, could be an illness of natural man as well as of civilization when the boundaries of power were transgressed. Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836), one of the first modern medical commentators on dieting, recognized this when he commented “a certain degree of cultivation is physically necessary for man, and promotes duration of life. The wild savage does not live so long as man in a state of civilization” (Hufeland 1797: 1, 169).
