Speaker 1: It's nineteen ninety one. I'm nine new Kids on the
Speaker 1: Block is my favorite band. I am the proud owner
Speaker 1: of a trapper keeper and a pocket rocker, And I'm
Speaker 1: sitting at my rickety school desk that's got to be
Speaker 1: eight hundred years old, and watching the hands on the
Speaker 1: clock above my teacher's head tick in slow motion, inching
Speaker 1: toward noon. Finally the bell rings, the doors open, and
Speaker 1: out of every classroom, a wild, screeching herd of children
Speaker 1: heads to the lunch room. Lunchtime was the best, worst
Speaker 1: time of the day. Best because Doug gossip and snacks,
Speaker 1: worst because I always still felt hungry when it was over.
Speaker 1: I usually had homemade lunches, brown paper bags filled with
Speaker 1: foil wrapped chicken brass sandwiches. But oh man, sometimes I
Speaker 1: would get to take part in the school's pizza Tuesdays.
Speaker 1: The plastic wrap that enveloped each rectangular foil encased slice
Speaker 1: steamed with condensation, like the backseat of a high schooler's car,
Speaker 1: but instead of forbidden makeouts inside, there was something better. Cheese.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love that cheese, and the little globs
Speaker 1: of translucent orange fat that formed heavenly little pools and
Speaker 1: the three Measley Pepperoni lily pads that floated on top
Speaker 1: of it. My cheese lust was only overshadowed by my shame.
Speaker 1: I remember looking down at my empty rectangular foil tray,
Speaker 1: still hungry just like I was on most days at
Speaker 1: the end of lunchtime, and thinking, why isn't this enough food?
Speaker 1: What is wrong with me? Even back then, I knew
Speaker 1: I was supposed to want less food than I did.
Speaker 1: I knew I was supposed to feel full sooner. I
Speaker 1: looked to some of my classmates who would eat a
Speaker 1: few bites and then throw out the rest. What was
Speaker 1: their secret? As an adult who is now raising fur
Speaker 1: babies too, very hungry Netherland dwarf rabbits named Lulu and
Speaker 1: John Candy, I asked on behalf of my little kids self.
Speaker 1: Why was there never enough food? Why wasn't I ever
Speaker 1: encouraged to eat until I was full? Why was I
Speaker 1: so ashamed of something as natural and innocent as my appetite?
Speaker 1: I want to introduce you to someone who has some
Speaker 1: pretty amazing thoughts on these types of questions, my friend,
Speaker 1: doctor Jennifer Brady. I wish you were here to eat
Speaker 1: this jam with me. I know it's so good. I'm
Speaker 1: going to send you some of this jam I make it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Holy mulligers, I can't wait. Hold on,
Speaker 1: let me finished chewing. I am not offended by talking
Speaker 1: with food in your mouth. Jennifer is a freaking dietitian
Speaker 1: with a PhD, an Assistant Professor of Applied Human Nutrition
Speaker 1: at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia, and she's
Speaker 1: a mom of two kids. She studies the history of
Speaker 1: home economics and the roles of health professionals in social justice.
Speaker 1: Jen's educational background kind of makes her the ultimate expert
Speaker 1: on nutrition. She knows what she's talking about. But what
Speaker 1: truly amazes me about Jen is that she has a
Speaker 1: very simple prescription for our cultures issues with food. What
Speaker 1: healthy eating looks like is eating a variety of foods
Speaker 1: and you know, filling up your tummy. That's that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, filling up your tummy. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: is how we should all live with respect of food.
Speaker 1: You know, when we when we're thinking about what healthy
Speaker 1: eating is. And I would also say that that's an
Speaker 1: evidence based way of understanding what healthy food is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think we really need anything more complex than
Speaker 1: that clapping. Beyond laying down culture smashing wisdom, I learned
Speaker 1: the jet loves croissants, and because she's a home eck queen,
Speaker 1: she put together a whole spread of croissant accompaniments for
Speaker 1: our call. Let me first preface this by saying that
Speaker 1: I love eating with my fingers. I love eating with
Speaker 1: my hands, so I've got a bunch of picky hand things.
Speaker 1: I have carrots. I have some pickles that I've made. Um,
Speaker 1: I make a lot of pickles and jams, so I
Speaker 1: have some eggplant pickles. I have some gherkins. I love gherkins,
Speaker 1: and I have some jam that I save only for croissants,
Speaker 1: which is like a pear and coco nib jam. Gosh,
Speaker 1: the croissant is central though pear and coco nib jam.
Speaker 1: That sounds really magical when you so, when you told
Speaker 1: me that you'd chosen the croissant, I immediately began searching,
Speaker 1: as you know, all over San Francisco for the croissant
Speaker 1: of my dreams. And when I shared this with you,
Speaker 1: you shared with me your croissant philosophy, which I love,
Speaker 1: which is there's only good and better, And I felt
Speaker 1: that through my whole entire body when I read your
Speaker 1: email that said that, and I knew you weren't just
Speaker 1: talking about croissants. I mean, I just sort of felt
Speaker 1: like so anyway, um, yesterday I went out and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I'm gonna get croissants in preparation for
Speaker 1: the interview, and I entered a little bit of I
Speaker 1: decided to call it crnception, which is croissant plus inception.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of a croissant time looping
Speaker 1: situation where I would buy a croissant and then I
Speaker 1: would eat the croissant because it was completely irresistibly delicious looking, right,
Speaker 1: and then I would have to go buy another one
Speaker 1: and be like this one is really the one for tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and then I would eat that one. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of a fun I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this could go on forever, Like I could just be
Speaker 1: in this loop forever, and like what a fantastic loop
Speaker 1: it would be in. Should we partake? Yeah? Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, I'm gonn I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take my first night. I'm gonna try and make
Speaker 1: it a loud crunch o. Right, so good, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: that it sounds so good. Yeah, I'm like enjoying my
Speaker 1: fingers getting shiny butter. It's like one of my favorite feelings.
Speaker 1: You can lick that butter off your fingers now, Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell me about the significance of the croissants. Yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, in some levels, it's just delicious, and so
Speaker 1: it's significant just for that reason. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's a food that is just about pleasure for me,
Speaker 1: which is a huge part of eating that I try
Speaker 1: to be really conscious about. We don't take time to
Speaker 1: savor and we're so focused on health and nutrition and
Speaker 1: eating for a purpose that isn't about just loving it
Speaker 1: and and tasting it and the textures and the sensuality
Speaker 1: of eating and croissants. To me, like, it's the pleasure part.
Speaker 1: It's the using your body or being in your body
Speaker 1: in a way that allows you to experience all the wonderful,
Speaker 1: joyous things that come with having a body. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether that be eating, whether that be going for a run,
Speaker 1: whether that be you know, feeling wind in your hair,
Speaker 1: whether that be having sex, making love. That's all wrapped
Speaker 1: up and having a body, and that's the beautiful thing
Speaker 1: of having a body, and diet culture, I think really
Speaker 1: fucks that up for us and it really teaches us
Speaker 1: to hate our bodies. Does the diet culture ever get
Speaker 1: tired of ruining people's lives? Answer? No. Jennifer has done
Speaker 1: lots of or to the grandmothers of her profession, from
Speaker 1: early dieticians to the women who founded Hume Economics. Her
Speaker 1: work takes us from the science of dietetics to the
Speaker 1: movement for food justice today, and her journey began when
Speaker 1: she was just a kid. I was a fat kid
Speaker 1: growing up, and that was, you know, like it is
Speaker 1: for many kids, a source of bullying, not just from peers,
Speaker 1: but from my parents as well, from teachers, really from
Speaker 1: everyone around me, even people that I trusted and you know,
Speaker 1: were meant to take care of me and love me.
Speaker 1: What really was a turning point for me in getting
Speaker 1: more deeply invested in dieting and disordered eating. I broke
Speaker 1: up with a someone I had been with. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty significant relationship, broke up with them and just
Speaker 1: sort of fell into something that was already deep like
Speaker 1: deeply ingrained in my relationship with food because of my
Speaker 1: childhood and and you know, I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: completely pulled that apart yet I feel like it's something
Speaker 1: that I'm I continue to learn about how that happened,
Speaker 1: and why that happened, and how I feel about it now.
Speaker 1: So I was struggling with an eating disorder, although I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to articulate that at the time
Speaker 1: because I was so it was like there was two
Speaker 1: parts of me. One that did was sort of engaged
Speaker 1: in disordered eating, believe me up in particular, I was
Speaker 1: binging and purging, and then another part of me that
Speaker 1: almost didn't even know that other side. It was like there,
Speaker 1: I was so split from my body. But I will
Speaker 1: say what I do know for sure is that going
Speaker 1: into dietetics after that experience only made it worse. Dietetics
Speaker 1: is a field that studies the effects of food on health.
Speaker 1: We've heard the terms dietitian and nutritionists, but until recently,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that there's a pretty big difference. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot to be able to use the term dietitian,
Speaker 1: years of education and then a formal internship. When you
Speaker 1: become a dietitian, you're a credential healthcare provider. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are no credentials required to become a nutritionist.
Speaker 1: Jen went down the dietetics path. She was first drawn
Speaker 1: to it because she was interested in both science and
Speaker 1: in food, but she found that the process of becoming
Speaker 1: a dietitian impacted her relationship with her body. Becoming a
Speaker 1: dietitian made me more heavily invested in controlling my body.
Speaker 1: It's not just the learning. It's not just the what
Speaker 1: we learn in dietetics about you know, quote unquote obesity
Speaker 1: and weight management and all and all of that that
Speaker 1: we imagine dietitians roles to be. But it was just
Speaker 1: even the culture of the profession is so very toxic
Speaker 1: and particularly toxic in terms of relationships with food and
Speaker 1: bodies and eating. And you know, it's not random that dietitians,
Speaker 1: based on the research, dietitians struggle with eating disorders. There's
Speaker 1: some research showing that there's a particularly high prevalence of
Speaker 1: eating disorders among dietitians, and that that's not random, right.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think of dietitians a
Speaker 1: sort of experts in eating, experts of food. And you're
Speaker 1: saying that there's this really toxic culture. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear more about you know what that was like. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, in dietetics, the the sort
Speaker 1: of view of food is a very you know, as
Speaker 1: something that you can understand through the nutrient components, through
Speaker 1: um the calories program, through the you know, the vitamins
Speaker 1: and minerals that are contained in that food. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that stuff is important. However, you there's
Speaker 1: a there's an aspect of becoming a dietitian or becoming
Speaker 1: a professional that is an embodied experience and is a
Speaker 1: is one of shifting your personal identity. And so when
Speaker 1: you're learning about a you know, body weight and quote
Speaker 1: unquote obesity in that way, it you take that on
Speaker 1: and internalize it. It's not just about becoming a dietitian,
Speaker 1: earning a credential and sort of carving out a career.
Speaker 1: But looking like a dietitian is about is not about
Speaker 1: science sub course, looking like a dietitian is about whiteness.
Speaker 1: It's about femininity. It's about yeah, white supremacy, it's about capitalism,
Speaker 1: it's about all of these other things that have come
Speaker 1: to mark the culture of the profession. You know, the
Speaker 1: drill by now Rebel Eaters, let's break this diet culture
Speaker 1: poop garbage down. As we've learned from other Rebel Eaters
Speaker 1: Club guests, the world of medicine and healthcare, just like
Speaker 1: every other part of our society, is steeped in fatphobia
Speaker 1: that includes dietetics and nutrition. The people who enter those
Speaker 1: fields end up facing a lot of pressure to stick
Speaker 1: to the status quo. If they have their own issues
Speaker 1: with restriction or disordered EA, they will likely not be
Speaker 1: encouraged to interrogate them because the thin ideal is still
Speaker 1: the standard of ultimate well being in pretty much every
Speaker 1: health profession. Sometimes going into these fields can even create
Speaker 1: issues with food. There are rad examples of people like
Speaker 1: Jennifer who are pushing back, but they face a lot
Speaker 1: of resistance. We even heard doctor Janet Toma Yama talk
Speaker 1: about this in the second episode. This is all part
Speaker 1: of a cycle that keeps things the way they are.
Speaker 1: Just for the record, you don't need to be thin
Speaker 1: in order to be a dietician. We can interrupt this
Speaker 1: poop garbage cocktail by naming it when we see it,
Speaker 1: by hiring fat nutritionists and advocating for weight neutral practices
Speaker 1: in educational environments. There's another dimension of dietetics and nutrition
Speaker 1: that is played an important role in its history, and
Speaker 1: that's gender. Over ninety percent of dietitians are women. This
Speaker 1: is in part because we have culturally associated food with
Speaker 1: care work and care work with women for a really
Speaker 1: long time. Back in the mid eighteen hundreds, there was
Speaker 1: one particular group of smart women who thought if they
Speaker 1: could legitimize care work, women might be able to finally
Speaker 1: get more power. These women were the mothers of dietetics
Speaker 1: and the founders of home economics. You know, most people
Speaker 1: when you say home economics, they think of their Grade
Speaker 1: seven experience of home economics, you know, sewing pencil cases
Speaker 1: and making muffins. And we could chuckle and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so silly, you know, baking muffins and sewing pencil cases,
Speaker 1: But those are the survival skills of life. You know,
Speaker 1: knowing how to so on a button or mend a
Speaker 1: shirt and to provide food for yourself and others that
Speaker 1: you love and take care of is really important and
Speaker 1: really valuable work, but it's often not valued by society.
Speaker 1: And so home economics, in large part, was about politicizing
Speaker 1: and valuing domestic labor. As the labor that literally runs society.
Speaker 1: A lot of the women that were advancing these ideas
Speaker 1: at the time were largely disenfranchised. They had no access
Speaker 1: to higher education for the most part, and no access
Speaker 1: to financial independence. You know, women involved in home economics,
Speaker 1: we're fighting for access to some of those things, and
Speaker 1: for basic education for women who were tasked with running
Speaker 1: households with some basic knowledge to be able to do
Speaker 1: their jobs, and for those jobs to be valued. Imagine
Speaker 1: the power of saying, yes, what I do is work
Speaker 1: and should be legitimized in a culture that, for the
Speaker 1: most part, didn't believe that women were even worth educating.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen hundreds, home economics wasn't a class you
Speaker 1: took in seventh grade. It was a movement. Here are
Speaker 1: some of the things women were in charge of back then.
Speaker 1: Dealing with sewage there was no city government managing sewage
Speaker 1: back then, figuring out what to do with garbage, no
Speaker 1: garbage trucks, and taking care of people who were sick
Speaker 1: because medicine still had a long way to go, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: women's work included managing things that were matters of public
Speaker 1: health before that was really a thing. In eighteen forty one,
Speaker 1: an early advocate of home economics, Catherine Beecher, sister of
Speaker 1: Harriet Beechristowe, published a treatise on Domestic Economy for the
Speaker 1: use of Young Ladies at Home and at school. It
Speaker 1: was about the importance of women's roles in society, a
Speaker 1: spicy subject at the time. In those days, science and
Speaker 1: reason were seen as the realm of men. A woman's
Speaker 1: place was the emotional realm and taking care of the home.
Speaker 1: But Beecher's book turned that on its head. It showed
Speaker 1: how young women could bring a scientific approach to their
Speaker 1: duties in the home. Now, Catherine Beecher wasn't exactly arguing
Speaker 1: for equality. She agreed that women belonged in the home,
Speaker 1: but she was saying that women should be educated in
Speaker 1: the sciences that applied to their work in the home.
Speaker 1: It opened the door for women to pursue higher education,
Speaker 1: be taken seriously, and get paid. Ellen Swallow Richards is
Speaker 1: considered the founder of the home economics movement, and she
Speaker 1: took it a step farther. She believed that home economics
Speaker 1: had the power to liberate women. If science could help
Speaker 1: make women's work more efficient, they could have more time
Speaker 1: to pursue other things like dare I say, smashing the patriarchy?
Speaker 1: Pretty fucking cool. Actually, one of the things that people
Speaker 1: don't know about home economics was it also wasn't just
Speaker 1: about cooking and sewing. Home economics had a really well
Speaker 1: developed theoretical but also practical knowledge base around a variety
Speaker 1: of different things finance like personal finance, you know, how
Speaker 1: to how to budget, and it was also about design
Speaker 1: and architecture. They were thinking about reproductive rights. They were
Speaker 1: doing advocate to see around reproductive rights and women's rights
Speaker 1: throughout the sort of you know what we understand is
Speaker 1: being the second wave of feminism. So anyway, I love
Speaker 1: this stuff because it's so to me. It's just like
Speaker 1: all these really important threads we've together. In the context
Speaker 1: of the time, home economics was radical, but looking back
Speaker 1: at it from where we sit today, the movement had
Speaker 1: some of the very same challenges we still see in
Speaker 1: mainstream feminism. First, there were many different factions that wanted
Speaker 1: different things. Second, the movement was made up of white
Speaker 1: middle class women, and that meant that the progress they
Speaker 1: created ended up only being available to other white middle
Speaker 1: class women. So yeah, the push for home economics was flawed,
Speaker 1: but this movement is also part of the reason I
Speaker 1: got to grow up in a culture where women have
Speaker 1: careers and get to go to college. After the break,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a look at how my college
Speaker 1: years landed me right in the middle of a food fight.
Speaker 1: We are back. Like I said in the last episode,
Speaker 1: I lived in Berkeley after I moved away from home.
Speaker 1: I was learning how to fit into a new community,
Speaker 1: one that was much wealthier and whiter than the one
Speaker 1: I grew up in. I noticed that good food was
Speaker 1: a core way of relating. Good food meant something very specific,
Speaker 1: not just flavorful or worthy of seconds, but also local,
Speaker 1: quote unquote clean, and definitely not from a fast food restaurant.
Speaker 1: I was proud to know the names of famous foodies
Speaker 1: like Michael Pollen and Alice Waters. It made me feel
Speaker 1: like I belonged, and honestly, like I'd earned access to
Speaker 1: an exclusive club full of people who I suspected were
Speaker 1: better than me. I remember going to lectures where sustainable
Speaker 1: food advocates would point to fat people as the ultimate
Speaker 1: evidence of global food system failure. I was deep in
Speaker 1: diet culture, and I didn't think twice about what these
Speaker 1: smart reputable, well dressed. Usually men were saying about people
Speaker 1: like me. They didn't relate to food the way my
Speaker 1: family had raised me to. This fight over the future
Speaker 1: of food wasn't just about what you ate. It was
Speaker 1: about who you were good or bad, clean or dirty,
Speaker 1: healthy or ill, thin or fat. Sure, foodie culture celebrates eating,
Speaker 1: but there are still bs rules about who gets to
Speaker 1: enjoy food and how. I think the pleasure of food
Speaker 1: also needs to be understood as a as political. If
Speaker 1: at one point it was about eating right, which meant,
Speaker 1: you know, controlling your weight and eating for health, we
Speaker 1: we just shift the goalposts, so now it's about pleasure
Speaker 1: and affording certain things and um putting on airs and
Speaker 1: the pretense of eating, which is, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I like eating with my fingers because
Speaker 1: I think it for me. I feel like it rejects
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm overselling it, but I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like a ready for me. It's also a political
Speaker 1: act in that you know, you can uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: rejects that pretense of eating with this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: middle class ideals I guess of uh using the certain
Speaker 1: fork and using the certain knife sucking on your fingers,
Speaker 1: sucking sauce off your fingers, to me is both pleasure
Speaker 1: and politics, right, Like, I mean, I remember moving to
Speaker 1: San Francisco and learning that people eat pizza with a
Speaker 1: knife and akh and just kind of I was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't, I can't. I mean for me eating with
Speaker 1: my fingers, sort of saying like I want to get
Speaker 1: my hands sturdy. I do not want to be a
Speaker 1: person who is completely just like separated from the butter
Speaker 1: and the grease on the oil and the tomato sauce
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, Like how did it end up
Speaker 1: on my elbow? There's something like so beautiful about that, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think eating pizza with a knife and fork
Speaker 1: is the epitome of that sort of middle class disconnection
Speaker 1: with our food and with our bodies as well, and
Speaker 1: then the application of those rules of who's in, who's out,
Speaker 1: who knows what they're supposed to be doing with food,
Speaker 1: And that's like this marker of class and status. I
Speaker 1: have to say that if you eat pizza with a
Speaker 1: knife and fork, we do not hate you, I promise.
Speaker 1: I name checked this practice though, because the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, I immediately felt this downpour of shame.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I've been eating pizza like a caveman my
Speaker 1: whole life. And honestly, there are many food practices and
Speaker 1: behaviors that are sort of meant to elicit that response.
Speaker 1: They draw a line between the distinguished and everyone else.
Speaker 1: Like think of how many spoons and forks there are
Speaker 1: at the table setting of a fancy restaurant. Insider knowledge
Speaker 1: is required to navigate the utensil situation. I remember being
Speaker 1: at a restaurant a few years ago and not remembering
Speaker 1: how to pronounce the French word for fries, frights or frets.
Speaker 1: My palms were drenched. And if you didn't grow up
Speaker 1: going to restaurants with a wine list, like you have
Speaker 1: no idea why a waiter might bring you in tiny glass,
Speaker 1: pour wine into it, and then just stand there while
Speaker 1: you drink it like a perv. Jennifer has all sorts
Speaker 1: of ideas about what fat, positive, equal opportunity and more
Speaker 1: fun food culture would look like. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's a world where, not to simplify it, but I
Speaker 1: think it's a world where we don't eat pizza with
Speaker 1: a knife and a mark, where we eat with our fingers,
Speaker 1: engaging with food and touching our food and feeling our
Speaker 1: bodies as part of that. But it's a way that
Speaker 1: joy and pleasure can be inclusive and can be something
Speaker 1: that you don't need to have a lot of money
Speaker 1: to do. There's no rules that we can expand our
Speaker 1: thinking about what pleasure but also meaning, Like for me,
Speaker 1: what is healthy about food? When I think about what
Speaker 1: healthy means, it's what brings joy and pleasure and meaning
Speaker 1: to someone's life. And so I think, you know, in
Speaker 1: thinking about a world that has food justice, it's similar.
Speaker 1: It's about a world where the production of food is
Speaker 1: meaningful for people and isn't oppressive. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: have migrant workers who are taken advantage of to produce
Speaker 1: the cheap food that North Americans have come to demand.
Speaker 1: But that also we can all take joy and pleasure
Speaker 1: in food in whatever ways that means to people. And
Speaker 1: I think on one side that's a really vague and
Speaker 1: open description or almost a non answer, but I think
Speaker 1: that's where we need to get, the really open, fluid
Speaker 1: way of being with food. Does that make sense? I
Speaker 1: love that, Yes, absolutely, Like what we need is fewer
Speaker 1: singular answers. Yes, exactly. A flexity, nuance, intuition. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I kind of want to ask how your I mean,
Speaker 1: I see you as a fat positive feminist, you know,
Speaker 1: in this space doing incredible work. I'm curious about what
Speaker 1: this looks like as a mom, Like, how does this?
Speaker 1: I mean? Oh, my god, Like the Parenting Food Conversation
Speaker 1: is its own ten hour baby series narrated by David Attenborough.
Speaker 1: But but like, you know, what does it look like
Speaker 1: for you as a mom? Oh, it's so fraught. It's
Speaker 1: my daughter's nine and I have a son who's six.
Speaker 1: When my daughter, when we lived back in Ontario, I
Speaker 1: I would give my daughter like I do still a
Speaker 1: variety of different foods in her lunch, you know, everything
Speaker 1: from apples to chips, to a sandwich to yogurt to
Speaker 1: you know, cookies or cake or whatever, and trusting her
Speaker 1: to make decisions around what she puts in her body
Speaker 1: at recess or lunch or whatever and when she's hungry. Well,
Speaker 1: the school was not having that. So the school on
Speaker 1: a number of occasions told her that she couldn't eat
Speaker 1: you know, the treat that I'd given her, or she
Speaker 1: had to save it until the end of the day. Wow.
Speaker 1: And then the lunch monitors were taking food out of
Speaker 1: kids lunch bags, like the so called unhealthy food, and
Speaker 1: so I talked to the principle and the vice principles
Speaker 1: about why that is totally unacceptable for them to be
Speaker 1: taking food away from kids, but also to be teaching
Speaker 1: kids that, you know, they can't trust their bodies to
Speaker 1: know when they're hungry or what they're hungry for. You know,
Speaker 1: so once in a while I can pull out the
Speaker 1: dietitian card. And so that is an instance where I
Speaker 1: did pull a bit of rank with expertise and say, listen,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a PhD in this. You you know,
Speaker 1: don't you dare take food out of my kid's lunch bag. Again.
Speaker 1: I think I'm particularly attuned to this with my daughter,
Speaker 1: partly because of the ways that diet culture I think
Speaker 1: is particularly cruel to women's bodies. But I think also
Speaker 1: because I do see so much of myself in my
Speaker 1: daughter as well. You know, she's a big kid as
Speaker 1: I was, and it just brings back for me the
Speaker 1: bullying that I experienced as a kid, and you know,
Speaker 1: it breaks my heart to know that I'm sure she's
Speaker 1: also experiencing that. And one of the ways that that
Speaker 1: came out is on her sixth birthday, she asked me
Speaker 1: if she was thin, and I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: respond to that. You know, she's not thin, but there's
Speaker 1: bullying happening in her environment around weight, there's fat phobia
Speaker 1: in her environment. How do I respond with, No, you're
Speaker 1: not thin, and that is perfectly normal, and that is
Speaker 1: that your body is perfect, just the way it is.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I don't know if I if I get
Speaker 1: it right, but you know who knows. There's all this
Speaker 1: mother guilt too, you know that adds to it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just fraught. It's just a constant battle. Oh, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I can imagine. I mean, it's it's interesting for me
Speaker 1: as someone who is not sure if she wants to
Speaker 1: be a mother. Like one of the questions that comes
Speaker 1: up is like, what does it mean to bring a
Speaker 1: little fat, brown baby into this world? Just knowing that
Speaker 1: they'll I mean, the likelihood that they'll be traumatized, the
Speaker 1: likelihood that I won't know how to navigate these things.
Speaker 1: It's just like, I mean, it's just so much and
Speaker 1: I think like that that absolutely that preemptive, like even
Speaker 1: as sort of just thinking about it. I have preemptive
Speaker 1: mother guild. Um. But I mean I think like there's
Speaker 1: I think there's something really beautiful in what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is like this. I mean, there's so much going on.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're doing the work of justice.
Speaker 1: You're going in there and you're being a dissenting voice,
Speaker 1: and that's so powerful in the school. But I think
Speaker 1: from an individual perspective, it's like that beautiful capacity to
Speaker 1: reparent yourself um on some level. And I think that
Speaker 1: like for for um, for parents who are fat positive,
Speaker 1: who are trying to teach their children that all food
Speaker 1: is good food, that they can trust their bodies right,
Speaker 1: Like I think I think that that work is about repair,
Speaker 1: you know, for ourselves as well. And I'm sor I'm
Speaker 1: sort of curious. Do you have like some simple frameworks
Speaker 1: or um or rules or sort of policies or mottos
Speaker 1: that you have in your household around food? H Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you kind of said it all food is
Speaker 1: healthy food, like all food is good food. Um. You
Speaker 1: know one of the things that I you know, often
Speaker 1: say in response when they come home with the oh no,
Speaker 1: that's not healthy because they learned that at school, I
Speaker 1: try to impress upon them that what healthy eating looks
Speaker 1: like is eating a variety of foods and you know,
Speaker 1: filling up your tummy. That's that's it, I mean, filling
Speaker 1: up your tummy. Yeah, yeah, I think that is how
Speaker 1: we should all live with respect of food, you know,
Speaker 1: when we when we're thinking about what healthy eating is.
Speaker 1: And I would also say that that's an evidence based
Speaker 1: way of understanding what healthy food is. And I don't
Speaker 1: think we really need anything more complex than that. However,
Speaker 1: I would say that, like going back to something I
Speaker 1: said earlier, I do think that nutrition science and more,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of complex city of what healthy
Speaker 1: eating that nutrition science gives us is important in some instances.
Speaker 1: You know, for example, for a Celiac who can't eat gluten,
Speaker 1: nutrition science has been immensely important. But for most of us,
Speaker 1: what healthy look eating looks like is just that eat
Speaker 1: a variety of foods and you know, to your hunger
Speaker 1: cues essentially. Yeah, I mean I think, like for me,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, how do we up the pleasure
Speaker 1: on eating and then how do we lower the steaks
Speaker 1: for everyone on eating as well? Yeah, my last question
Speaker 1: is what's your recipe for the change we need to see. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: in the change we need to see, soup, what ingredient
Speaker 1: are you bringing? Oh that is a good colostion, My goodness. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the change that we need to see, Okay. The
Speaker 1: ingredient that I bring, I think is what I value
Speaker 1: about myself actually and about the opportunities and experiences I've had.
Speaker 1: Is that respect for what science can do for us,
Speaker 1: but also that valuing of science only being important insofar
Speaker 1: is it allows us to advance justice or advance love
Speaker 1: and advance dignity. You know. Uh wow, I just love that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, science in service of love, dignity and
Speaker 1: justice absolutely right, Like, oh my god, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was so amazing. Um, fill your tummy. And also
Speaker 1: science and service of justice, love, these are the takeaways.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Jennifer, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: on rebel Pleasure. I love this. I want to do
Speaker 1: this more often. Yes, yes, thank you for enjoying delicious
Speaker 1: croissants and you're amazing. We've talked a lot about science
Speaker 1: and medicine this season. Talking with jen I realize that
Speaker 1: for most of my life I haven't felt there was
Speaker 1: any option besides do whatever my doctor, and the culture
Speaker 1: says or rejected all outright. That's the thing about being fat,
Speaker 1: or a woman, or any marginalized person. You've learned again
Speaker 1: and again that the people you're supposed to trust don't
Speaker 1: know how to give you what you need. And it's
Speaker 1: so hard to find a third path, an accessible path
Speaker 1: forward that gives you the facts you need without the
Speaker 1: ideological trash you don't. I crave that third path, full
Speaker 1: of dignity and autonomy, the idea that the rules of
Speaker 1: Patricia could be simple, the idea that science shouldn't exist
Speaker 1: if it's not in service to love and justice. That
Speaker 1: is the medicine we need. I want to go back
Speaker 1: to that lunchroom story I told you, and I want
Speaker 1: to rewrite it together. In this version, I'm still dying
Speaker 1: for the bell to ring. Since we're dreaming big here,
Speaker 1: New Kids on the Blocks Pruner Joey McIntyre is my boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Joey and I run hand in hand the lunchroom. It's
Speaker 1: Pizza Tuesday, and I get in line for my steamy slice.
Speaker 1: The lunch lady, Miss Vanessa asks how hungry are you today?
Speaker 1: And I yell with complete joy, very hungry, Miss Vanessa
Speaker 1: she laughs, pats her tummy, which is as round as mine,
Speaker 1: and says eat as much as you want. Rebel Eaters
Speaker 1: Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is
Speaker 1: Jordan Bailey, Lacy Roberts is our managing producer. Sarah nix
Speaker 1: edits the show, and our executive producer is Greta Khane
Speaker 1: and I'm your host. Virgie Tovar Ben Shano is our
Speaker 1: mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer
Speaker 1: and Mitchell Johnson for the production assist and Taka Yauzawa,
Speaker 1: who wrote some of the music we use in the show.
Speaker 1: If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and
Speaker 1: share the love by writing a review on your favorite
Speaker 1: podcast app. See you next week.