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“An alliance with Mother Nature” : Natural food, health, and morality in low-carbohydrate diet books

This article examines the significance of the natural/unnatural food dichotomy in recent low-carbohydrate diet discourse, drawing on two bestselling low-carbohydrate manuals—Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution and The South Beach Diet. Low-carbohydrate diet books extend the moral associations of natural and unnatural food evident in American diet reform discourse from the nineteenth century, the key difference being the specific foods deemed natural, healthy, and virtuous. An analysis of low-carbohydrate discourse illustrates the flexibility of the descriptor “natural,” effectively being used as a proxy for acceptability across widely differing dietary plans. Atkins relies on a Rousseauian concept of nature, in which anything natural (including natural pleasure) is inherently healthy and good. By contrast, South Beach deploys a Calvinist rhetoric of austerity and self-denial. Although Atkins, in particular, criticizes the modern Western food system, hinting at its damaging effects on the environment, ultimately both manuals are concerned primarily with individual health.