Why Don’t Rich People Eat Anymore?

Consequently, ordering lobster is no longer a sufficient signifier of status; today, a sign of true wealth is the ability to forgo food entirely. Eating essentially betrays a person's most basic human needs; in an era obsessed with 'self-optimisation', not eating suggests that a person is somehow 'beyond' needs and has achieved total mastery of their body with a heightened capacity for efficiency and focus.

"When eating practices are packaged as 'done in the name of health', they are more socially acceptable and difficult to contest." She points out that a normal teenage girl restricting her diet in the same way as Johnson would likely be regarded as ill and in need of medical intervention. "What we, as a society, regard as 'normal' and 'abnormal' eating is contextual and largely rides on how those eating practices are framed."

"There is a history in Judeo-Christian societies – and likely in many other religions, hence the widespread practice of fasting – where demonstrating a lack of need for material things, especially food, and being able to demonstrate self-control and discipline are signs of spiritual transcendence," Dr Woolhouse says. Famously, Italian saint Catherine of Siena would fast for prolonged periods of time as a means of demonstrating her devotion to God through extreme self-control. "But there's also a class dimension to this," Dr Woolhouse continues, "because being able to demonstrate a lack of need for material goods, like food, suggests social transcendence too; it's symbolic of living a life whereby our material needs aren't a daily concern." She adds that "fad diets are very unlikely to take off in societies where there are food shortages or food insecurity."

Our work-centric society leaves little time for people – particularly people on low incomes – to plan, purchase and cook healthy food or exercise, and as Dr Woolhouse says, "this is a key reason why fatness is now more associated with the working classes as opposed to thinness."

"The economists' old friend, the supply and demand curve, is a fairly reliable indicator of what foods are used to signal high status: venison and game, the sale of which were highly controlled, from the Norman invasion onwards; spices in Medieval and Tudor England; French food in the 19th century," she says. "For centuries anything imported was high status – and we still grant 'middle class' to imported foods such as avocado or quinoa – even though they might be peasant foods in their countries of origin."