Introduction : eating bodies in the nineteenth century -- Kitchen insurrections -- "She made the table a snare to them" : Sylvester Graham's imperial dietetics -- "Everything 'cept eat us" : the mouth as political organ in the antebellum novel -- A wholesome girl : addiction, Grahamite dietetics and Louisa May Alcott's Rose -- Campbell novels -- "What's de use talking 'bout dem 'mendments?" : trade cards and consumer citizenship at the end of the Nineteenth Century -- Conclusion : racial indigestion.