Since the 1980's, a growing number of medical consultations have been required by patients who have not been able to eat as doctors, dieticians, and the media have shown them that they must. The more they try and the further they reach, the more their eating behavior gets away from them. Justified by the questions of prevention and risk, the ideology of perfect health, and the cult of thinness, this problem affects a growing number of people. It leads, insidiously, to guilt-mongering and to discrimination against the large and the obese.

Clinical psychologists Michelle Le Barzic and Marianne Pouillon have been practicing for almost twenty years in the Nutrition Clinic at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris.