Maintenance Phase

Do you have viruses? Cysts? Cancer? Are you tired sometimes? According to Instagram, the  problem might be a lack of liquefied vegetables! This week, Mike and Aubrey take on a troubling taste test, meet a ghost with bad intentions and encounter the longest list of problematic celebrities we've ever seen.

Plus, we start the show with an announcement: We're doing Patreon-only bonus episodes! Sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/maintenancephase

Support us:

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!

• Anthony William on Extra
• Anthony William on Keeping Up with the Kardashians
• Celery Juice Is the Perfect, Probably Pointless Trend for 2019 (Vanity Fair)
• Food Isn't Medicine. Here's Why It's Dangerous to Believe It Is. (Huffington Post)
• Is celery juice a viable alternative to nitrites in cured meats? (McGill University)
• Is Celery Juice a Sham? (The New York Times)
• Today's Diet Fads (Today's Dietitian)
• People think celery juice can protect you from COVID-19. Here's why that's categorically false. (Mama Mia)
  
  

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Special guest Mike Rothschild tells us how the road to wellness can be an on-ramp to a conspiracy theory. Along the way we debunk oil pulling, explore Instagram aesthetics and bemoan anti-vaxx argumentation tactics . Mike gets the date of the January 6th insurrection wrong and he is sorry.

Mike Rothschild is on Twitter and you can pre-order his book here!

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• Donate on PayPal
• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week is our first  Diet Book Deep Dive, where we dig into some of the worst and wildest weight loss advice we can find.  First up: Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon's pun, alcohol and misogyny-fueled diet plan from the 1970s. Hope you like broiled steak and Sanka!

Clips!

• Ed McMahon & Britney Spears on Star Search
• Ed McMahon for American Family Sweepstakes

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Thanks to Lynn Barbera for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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 In 1996, Proctor & Gamble launched an artificial fat substitute that promised all of the taste but none of the calories. There was just one problem. 

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Links!

• Marion Nestle’s The Selling of Olestra
• Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything
• The 1996 Federal Register
• The Trouble With Fries
• Reduction of the body burden of PCBs and DDE by dietary intervention in a randomized trial
• Review of the effects of dilution of dietary energy with olestra on energy intake
• Authors’ Financial Relationships With the Food and Beverage Industry and Their Published Positions on the Fat Substitute Olestra
• Postmarketing Surveillance of New Food Ingredients: Results from the Program with the Fat Replacer Olestra
• Effects of wheat bran and olestra on objective measures of stool and subjective reports of GI symptoms
• The effect of ingesting olestra-based foods on feeding behavior and energy balance in humans
• Effect on Body Weight of Replacing Dietary Fat with Olestra for Two or Ten Weeks in Healthy Men and Women 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Fat people have them too! This week, special guest Erin Harrop tells us about one of America's most under-diagnosed and misunderstood problems. Along the way we talk about elbow bumps, Twitter etiquette and '90s sweatpants. Our content warnings are becoming increasingly threatening.

Here's Erin's faculty page and a bunch of her research!

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Thanks to Mitra Kaboli for production support and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Get your flex point calculators and food scales! This week, Mike and Aubrey are talking about one of America's most iconic diet programs: Weight Watchers. Along the way, we encounter The Rock, the mating habits of straight people and a new James Bond villain. 

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!

• Jean Nidetch, a Founder of Weight Watchers, Dies at 91 
• Mass Firing on Zoom Is Latest Sign of Weight Watchers Unrest 
• Weight Watcher's Kurbo app slammed for targeting kids. Makers defend it 
• What's gone wrong at Weight Watchers? 
• Weight Watchers Is Offering Teens Free Memberships and People Aren't Happy 
• Americans’ new way of losing weight has left Weight Watchers behind 
• How the Oprah effect helped Weight Watchers regain Americans' trust 
• Deal Master Debbane 
• The Population Cost‐Effectiveness of Weight Watchers with General Practitioner Referral Compared with Standard Care 
• Weight Watchers on prescription: An observational study of weight change among adults referred to Weight Watchers by the NHS 
• The Problem With 'Fat Talk' 
• 'Fat Talk' Compels but Carries a Cost 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Are your moods too stable? Is your face free of cold sores? Get your lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper ready, because this week we're talking about celebrity favorite THE MASTER CLEANSE!

Along the way we roast New Atheism, praise Gwyneth Paltrow (!) and endorse garbanzo bean salads. Mike wishes to clarify that he adores Kate Bush and quips with the utmost affection.

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Links!:

• The Master Cleanser by Stanley Burroughs
• I Heard It Through the Diet Grapevine (New York Times)
• Improving Ourselves to Death (The New Yorker)
• Cleansing's Dirty Secret (Marie Claire)
• Mr. Clean: Jeffrey Steingarten Puts the Master Cleanse to the Test (Vogue)
• The Dubious Practice of Detox (Harvard Health)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week we're dissecting "America's Doctor." How did a smart, hardworking surgeon become one of TV's leading purveyors of junk science?  Along the way we debunk green coffee bean extract, raspberry ketones, conversion therapy (!) and a salad dressing skincare regimen.

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links:

• Transcript of the infamous Congressional hearing
• The Making of Dr. Oz
• Columbia and the Problem of Dr. Oz
• The FTC lawsuit against green coffee bean extract sellers
• The Oz craze: The effect of pop culture media on health care
• The BMJ content analysis of the Dr. Oz show
• Ageing, fitness and neurocognitive function
• Real-world doctors fact-check Dr. Oz, and the results aren't pretty 
• Dr. Oz may be America's most influential — and controversial — physician 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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The world of dieting and wellness is full of so-called snake oil salesmen—but what IS snake oil? This week, we take a wild ride through the history of health scams and discover a startling twist about an everyday idiom. Along the way, Aubrey delivers fun facts about sanitation from memory and Mike roasts the state where most of his family lives. 

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links:

• Snake Oil, Hustlers & Hambones by Mary Anderson
• A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen' : Code Switch (NPR)
• How Snake Oil Got a Bad Rap (Hint: It Wasn’t The Snakes’ Fault) (Collectors Weekly)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week we dissect the content and impact of one of America's most harmful TV experiments.  
 
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•  Subscribe on Patreon
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•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links! 

• Aubrey’s article on The Biggest Loser
•  That's not reality for me': Australian audiences respond to the Biggest Loser 
• "Cheapening the struggle:" obese people's attitudes towards the Biggest Loser 
• The Effects of Reality Television on Weight Bias: An Examination of The Biggest Loser
• 'It's a miracle no one has died yet': The Biggest Loser returns, despite critics' warnings
• The Retrograde Shame of The Biggest Loser
• Analysis of all contestants
• Neoliberalism And The Realities Of Reality Television
• The “Reality” of Health: Reality Television and the Public Health
• Life after NBC's "The Biggest Loser": The Experiences and Perspectives of Former Reality TV Contestants 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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