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Food and Foodways· 2026Q1

Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex

Philine Schiller

Short summary

Anglo-Victorian ideals prescribed bland, joyless food to suppress desire, linking 'good' eating with sexual repression and 'bad' eating with forbidden pleasures.

AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.

Key points

  • Anglo-Victorian ideals promoted bland food (brown bread, wheat mush) as 'good' and desirable.
  • This 'good' food was intended to suppress sexual desire and 'lustful appetites'.
  • Conversely, 'bad' or 'wicked' food was associated with forbidden pleasures and queer desires.
  • The prescribed diet served as a tool to control both culinary and sexual appetites.

AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.

Abstract

Imagine a plate of brown bread and wheat mush, devoid of any spices or joy – food that is neither sexy nor queer. That was the ideal diet prescribed in Anglo-Victorian Britain and the US for the ro...

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Food and Foodways, 2026 · DOI ↗

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Field: Food Science

Food ScienceAgricultural and Biological Sciences