Diet Practices Archives - Food, Fatness and Fitness

Lunchboxes are more than just a meal; they are a way for family and loved ones to show their care. However, lunchboxes also expose individual food practices to public scrutiny and judgment, creating “lunchbox shaming” that leads to marginalization and discrimination. The rise of lunchbox-packing as a trendy social media content has further reinforced this phenomenon, perpetuating public evaluation, mostly negative, to create self-distinction and other-abjection. In this blog post, I explore comments on a video of Mama J Rae’s lunchbox-packing for her husband, posted on Instagram, to understand the role of lunchbox commentary in expressing food loathing online. By criticizing Mama J Rae’s lunchbox-making practices, commentators distinguish themselves from her, perceiving her family’s food practices as inferior and undesirable.…

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In July 2024, after 14 years of conservative Tory rule, the British Labour party won a general election. Shortly after their landslide victory, in October, an interesting case study on fat politics played out in the UK. Keir Starmer, the party’s newly elected prime minister, announced he wanted to get fat, unemployed people back onto the job market with the help of free “weight loss injections,” a new turn of the screw in dystopian diet culture. In this piece, I want to reflect on the larger politics and consequences of this policy proposal and ask: What are progressive fat politics and what role do fat politicians play in shaping fat policy-making? According to British Health Minister Wes Streeting, the “widening waistbands” of his…

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As I was reading the Sunday newspaper, a colorful full-page advertisement caught my eye. At the bottom sat a juicy burger. Two buns encased a thick patty stacked over arugula and topped with fresh onion rings, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Behind the burger sat the phrase “Beyond Meat, Serve Love.” Over everything hung a headline declaring “The Next Generation of Beyond Meat is Here and It’s Not Just Loved by Those Who Have Tasted It.” As a historian who has written about food politics in Germany, I’m always curious about food politics in other places. In this case, that other place is the United States. Caught by the color, two mentions of “love,” and, let’s admit it, that mouth-watering burger, I…

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A year ago, I first came across the term “Ozempic Face” in various social media posts and celebrity reporting. The Ozempic Face is, so the complaint, recognizable by sagging facial skin and other signs of ageing – effects of the weight loss caused by the intake of the drug. Semaglutide, sold under the brand name Ozempic, is a drug that lowers blood sugar levels and was initially meant to treat type 2 diabetes, but is now also used for weight loss. Ozempic particularly gained prominence in 2023, when more and more celebrities were rumored to have lost a conspicuous amount of weight in a short period of time – with resulting shortages in supply left people with diabetes struggling to get access. The Ozempic Face is a…

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Note of the editors: This is the 100th entry in our blog. We are grateful to all of our contributors for making this possible and hope to have hundreds more entries to come. If you’d like to contribute, don’t hesitate to get in touch via proposals@nullfoodfatfitness.com. We appreciate your contribution! Save the planet by eating? In recent years, a new diet has been making the rounds among nutrition experts and the popular media, one that promises to do just that: simultaneously save the planet and human life on it by eating a diet based largely on whole grains, vegetables, dairy, fruits, legumes, and nuts, while avoiding added sugars, processed fats, red meat, and refined grains (not too many surprises here!).…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

Category Diet Practices:

Food Loathing Online: Lunchbox Commentary and Social Othering

Leftist Politics and the “Significant Burden” of Fatness

“Beyond Meat” Takes a Historian Back Then

Ozempic and Fat Futurity

Save the Planet by Eating? The Politics of Food in the Planetary Health Diet