By some measures, the food influencer and wellness economy is worth over $7 trillion. In All Consuming, Ruby Tandoh traces the rise of this industry and asks how food became both a status symbol and a source of fantasy.

Review of All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh (Knopf, 2025).

Out of the dieting craze came the more profitable culture of wellness. Today, the wellness industry is worth around $7 trillion, more than twice the GDP of France. Wellness is easier to capitalize on than its predecessor. Rather than scolding people into consuming less, it turns a desire for thinness, health, and control into a need for more buzzword-laden products and commodities that tell us that we are healthy, good, conscientious, and clean.

Unique to our time is the sheer volume of

See Full Page