The modern ‘retreat into the body’ means that it has become highly constitutive of the self; as a result, negative events which befall it constitute a frightening challenge to subjectivity (Shilling 1993). For this reason, illness and even death are now viewed as failures of the self, and indications of a lack of rational behaviour and self-control, especially around issues of food and eating which are central practices of the self. Thus, in an age of uncertainty and heightened self-reflexivity, one way of taking control over the body is to exert discipline over eating habits. Given the current value of ‘self-control’, bodies become potent physical symbols of the extent to which their ‘owners’ possess self-control.