April 18, 2023 — Consider these two competing headlines. In the Washington Post, Kate Cohen tells us “It’s time to cancel diet culture.” Then with a press release about new papers in Nature Medicine, researchers tell us “Most new Type 2 diabetes cases attributable to suboptimal diet.” It’s a fascinating mashup of causality, attribution, and diet culture. On one […]
September 5, 2022 — The big problem with pop diets is the presumption that the latest, hottest diet on the scene might be THE ANSWER that everyone’s been looking for. Ironically, non-diet diets fit neatly into this template. It’s all part of the abyss that greets people when they go looking for answers about diet, health, and weight. Evangelists […]
August 28, 2022 — It’s either depressing or enlightening. When the subject of body weight comes up in pop culture, it brings us into an evidence-free zone. Pop diets compete with anti-diets. Obsessive diet regimens compete with people telling us that we should fuggedaboutit and move on to intuitive eating. Eat whatever your body tells you it wants in […]
February 26, 2022 — Disapproval of “diet culture” is quite popular in the media right now. But at the same time, people can’t stop tinkering with their diets. In fact, it seems that diet culture is expanding its circle of influence to engulf our pets. Now the New York Times reports that people are putting their pets on regimens […]
February 6, 2022 — Is trauma losing its meaning? It seems that accounts of trauma are filling the news. Death and suffering in more than two years of a global pandemic has certainly been traumatic. So too is the toll of gun violence. With the return to more normal school operations, school shootings are once again popping up in […]
January 18, 2022 — It is something of an underground PR triumph. What has long been a season of short-lived diets and unused gym memberships now seems to be a season for mindfulness and intuitive eating. It is a season for beating up on diet culture instead of beating up on ourselves. A descriptive title for the mood of […]
January 9, 2022 — “Know that BMI is BS.” On NPR’s Life Kit podcast, that’s the advice for coping with the boogeyman of diet culture. Whatever diet culture is, in this season of anxiety about weight and health, it certainly seems to be on the minds of many influencers. So if one defines diet culture as a preoccupation with […]
January 5, 2022 — The concept of dieting – restrained eating for the express purpose of weight loss – has hit a well-deserved rough patch. For three decades the implicit answer to obesity has been simple and simplistic: eat less and move more. It doesn’t work well, so dieting has gained a bad reputation. And yet here we are. […]
January 4, 2022 — “Healthy eating” is the catchphrase of the moment. This moment – in case you’re living under a rock – is January, when many people think about losing the excess pounds they picked up over the holidays. But there’s a problem this year. Diet culture is unhealthy and immoral, says moral philosopher Kate Manne. So talking […]
December 22, 2021 — It’s an odd intersection. On one hand, people are totally done with diets right now. And yet, here comes the news that people are reading about weight loss more than any other health topic online. More than COVID, which came in second. How can it be that anti-diet sentiment is so strong at the same […]
