September 2024

Just past the halfway mark of Emma Specter’s debut memoir, More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for Enough, she recalls a period when she finally allowed herself to interrupt free from all the foundations around food that she’d set herself. “I never used butter or white bread or Parmesan or any of the carbs or high-fat items I related to the dishes I craved probably the most,” she writes. “Today, each time I cook a very satisfying meal, I send a silent message to my younger self across space and time: In the future you'll cook with butter, and it won’t feel like such an enormous deal.” For over a decade, food plan culture and weight-reduction plan...