Category Diet Practices:

Poor Fatties Can’t Help but Make Unhealthy Decisions?: The Myth of the Obesogenic Environment

Posted on by Cat Pausé

The obesogenic environment refers to “the sum of influences that the surroundings, opportunities or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals and populations.” The obesogenic environment encompasses the infrastructural, social, and culture conditions that influence people’s ability and willingness to engage in health seeking behaviours. These include the advertising and availability of high calorie food, the lack of safe green spaces for activity and play, and the motorisation of daily life.  It represents an ecological lens for understanding and solving the ‘problem of obesity,’ shifting the responsibility for fatness from individuals to environmental factors, and highlights that certain populations (poor people; usually people of color) live in environments that put them at greater risk for fatness. Concerns over…

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Changing the Game of Sports Nutrition, Challenging the Ideal of “Athletic” Men? The Game Changers and Hegan Masculinity

Posted on by Jan Weber

The controversial documentary The Game Changers seeks to debunk the myth that plant-based proteins will never be as good as their animal counterpart. For those who have not seen the documentary, a quick look at the film poster might help to better understand what is at stake here: in the documentary, vegan athletes are depicted as so ultra-masculine that they also make their dietary choice “manly” and, therefore, do not challenge hegemonic ideals of masculinity. We see a strong arm, a clenched fist, and enlarged veins with green blood circulating through them. Next to this arm, green and white letters proclaim: “Fueled by the Truth: The Game Changers.” At first glance, the poster seems to announce a remake of the…

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The American Dream of Being Enough: The Story of Jean Nidetch, a Slim Entrepreneur

Posted on by Maria Wiegel

In 1963, patriarchal social structures in the United States seemed to be getting stirred up by female voices challenging the hegemonic imaginary woman, when Betty Friedan published her seminal book The Feminine Mystique. That same year, Jean Nidetch started a company helping women reduce their body weight: Weight Watchers, now called WW. By losing weight, as Marisa Meltzer argues in her book This is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (and Me) (2020), Nidetch “basically earned the American dream” (8) and then sold it as a commodity. Meltzer explains that “Jean had a Cinderella story for the ages. She was a maven and mogul who lost weight, spectacularly found her calling, and helped to create a national pastime and obsession that endures today” (276).…

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The Business with Postfeminist Healthism: Tensions between Thriving Mothers and Rebellious Daughters

Posted on by Judith Schreier

  “Can you imagine my mom’s reaction?” [Abby asks]. “Eat Healthy with Norah!’s Norah suspected of having a fat kid!” —Amy Spalding, The Summer of Jordi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles (91) This quote from the well-received young adult novel The Summer of Jordi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding vividly captures the essence of the novel: The main character’s (Abby Ives’s) striking line pictures the tensions between her mother and herself that are based in their different approaches to how to live a good life—and the good life is immediately connected to a healthy and slim body. While Abby stridently points out that her fat body visibly contradicts her mother’s lifestyle, the name of her mother’s…

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Butter and the History of U.S. Dietary Guides since 1894

Posted on by Emily Contois

Creamy, sometimes salty, and optimistically yellow, butter is one of my favorite foods. It’s also a scientific and cultural barometer. For the first half of the twentieth century, nutritionists enthusiastically endorsed butter as a good source of energy and part of a healthy, moderate diet. Early government-issued food guides endorsed eating enough food, as public health efforts focused on such problems a nutritional deficiencies and inadequate diets, particularly for children. Since then, increased food availability, changing disease patterns, and additional research have reshaped food and nutrition guidelines, changing perceptions of butter along the way. Butter’s shifting nutritional status provides a window into major developments in dietary advice and public health. The following food guides sought to communicate each historical moment’s…

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