Happiness or Self-Control in the Age of Diets and Gyms

A YA dystopian novel about science, control, and the price of engineered happiness

In today’s world, young readers grow up surrounded by powerful and often contradictory messages. Social media constantly amplifies ideals of “perfect” bodies, a pressure that becomes even more intense as summer approaches and images of physical perfection dominate digital feeds. Alongside this, there is also a growing critical movement promoting body positivity, diversity, and more inclusive fashion standards.

At the same time, these platforms and news cycles expose them to starkly different realities: war, displacement, and famine shown side by side with curated lifestyles. Global concerns about food security add another layer to this tension. Rising instability in agricultural supply chains, including fertiliser shortages and geopolitical pressures affecting key trade routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, has intensified fears of scarcity in several regions, particularly in parts of Africa. In this fractured landscape, questions about consumption, control, and inequality feel increasingly urgent.

As the author, Joe F. Daniels, explains:

“Now imagine there is a simple solution. Imagine a future world in which you take a pill and become protected against hunger. You can eat whatever you want without the risk of overeating. Immediately, we would see children stuffing themselves with sweets every day under the approving gaze of their mothers, or adults holding feasts for the pure pleasure of eating.

Self-control would be a thing of the past. The repression of hunger would be a solved issue. We would have built a happy world.”

But would people truly be happy in a world ruled by gluttony? And what if someone realised the mistake and tried to turn back?

This is what Dissident and Persecuted by Joe F. Daniels is about: a YA dystopian novel in which science has eliminated hunger through intestinal absorption inhibitors (IAIs), a single pill that reshapes society at its core. In this new order, Jan, the protagonist, rebels against a totalitarian democracy that has placed the vice of gluttony at the centre of its system. Declared a dissident, he is forced into a relentless escape that drives the narrative from the first page to the last.

The novel explores the limits of science, transhumanism, morality, and friendship from a philosophical perspective, while asking a question that feels increasingly urgent today: if control, pleasure, and identity could all be engineered, what would we be willing to sacrifice?

If you were in Jan’s situation and had to decide, what would you do? Would you choose the pill of easy happiness, or opt for the difficult path of self-control? Take the book, open it, and choose your side. Or your pill.