Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!

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Virginia:

This is a newsletter where we explore questions and sometimes answers around fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture. I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.

The podcast part of this newsletter is usually where I have conversations with researchers, healthcare providers, authors, activists in the body positivity and fat liberation spaces, basically anyone whose brain I’m trying to pick and who has a lot of insight into the types of questions we discuss here. But since we are such a new operation, I figure I can also experiment from time to time with different formats for the podcast part. (I always welcome your feedback on what you like or don't like.)

Today, I want to use the podcast to work through a pile of your questions. Because you all have been sending in awesome, awesome questions! And I have many set aside that I do plan to address in essay form, but some of these are quicker questions or they are questions that come up over and over. So I thought I’d try to work through as many of them as I can in 30-ish minutes, and this might be really helpful to folks.

So, first up:

Q: I’m trying to explain to my partner and my family that yes, even things as simple as calling fries and ice creams “sometimes food” is diet culture, and that this sets up this idea of restriction as the foundation of our kid’s relationship with food. Any advice?

A: Yes, absolutely. Talking about good foods and bad foods is obviously problematic. But so is labeling some foods healthy and some foods junk or some foods growing foods and fun foods. Anytime you break down foods in this kind of dichotomy—A and B categories—you are giving some moral value, some worth to the category of food that you want your kids to be eating the most often. And, you are making the category of foods that you would like them to eat less of simultaneously more forbidden and more tempting. You’re giving those foods more power than they need, while also potentially setting up a restrictive mindset around those foods or making kids feel bad that they want those foods that you want them to have less often. So whenever possible, avoiding labels on foods is a really good way to go.

I do talk about the concept of variety with my kids. I’ll say things like, “Our stomachs would really hurt if we ate broccoli all day long, just like they would hurt if we ate cookies all day long.” Broccoli and cookies are morally equivalent—I don’t say morally equivalent to my three-year-old, but that’s what I'm trying to get across. I’m never saying “you can’t eat just this one food that we’re talking about right now,” I’m saying we need to eat lots of different types of foods to grow. And I don’t categorize them, or try to set them up against each other. But I know that’s tricky. And sometimes you just feel like you need a term to describe the foods that you want them to eat less often. I mean, we do. So when I do that, I try to just call the food, A. Something positive or neutral or B. just what it is. You know, cake is a treat, ice cream is a treat. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have treats every day, or even more than once a day on a lot of days. It just means, this is a treat food, because maybe it is something we don’t eat as often, or we get a particular amount of pleasure from it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I think if you need to use some terminology, “treat foods” is fine, as long as you’re also not saying and that means we only eat them once a month or super rarely.

Q: Can I prefer / put on a pedestal organic ingredients in foods?

A: I mean, you can. I did it for a long time. I didn’t find it very helpful. Wellness culture—which I discussed quite a bit with Christy Harrison a few weeks back—teaches us to worship foods that are minimally processed, farmed sustainably, close to the earth, close to their original form, blah, blah, blah. And it’s not that there aren’t important environmental and social justice reasons to farm organically. There definitely are. In my own home garden, I grow things organically. I try really hard not to use chemicals, pesticides and sprays because we eat some of the food we grow and even if we don’t, I don’t want to kill off important pollinator populations in my area. Or have my kids exposed to those chemicals. There are good reasons to choose organic if you have the budget, if you have that available to you.

But I think we want to make a big distinction between prefer and pedestal. I mean, you can say, “I prefer to buy organic when I can, when my budget allows, when it’s available to me.” Putting these ingredients on a pedestal implies that you’re failing on the days when you don’t do that. On the days when you run out of milk, and go pick it up at the gas station, which happened in my house quite recently. Or you stop for fast food or whatever. You’re failing if you don’t follow this sort of “perfectionist” way of eating. So I think you can have your values, larger social justice values, that you try to bring to choosing food, but if you’re letting that be a mandate—something you always have to do or that you feel badly if you can’t do—that’s probably a red flag that you need to back off how much power you’re giving this concept.

Remember that if these are social justice issues you really care about, there are lots of ways we can work on these issues that are going to be arguably more impactful than how we eat. You can be donating money to these causes. You can be voting for government representatives who are going to support these causes. We need big picture change to make organic farming the norm in this country. We don’t need just you never buying non-organic strawberries. So thinking a little more holistically about some of these concepts is useful.

Q: How do you respond to a naturopathic doctor’s advice to eliminate food groups for health?

A: I would respond by getting a new doctor.

I realize that might not be the response you were hoping for. But if this is a new doctor, this is the first time you’re seeing them, I think this is a big red flag. Especially if they advised eliminating food groups without first screening you for an eating disorder history. So many doctors and not just naturopathic doctors, regular old MDs as well, have a knee-jerk reaction to prescribe restriction to us. They say you need to cut out red meat or you need to cut out carbs or sugar. And they give these restriction-based eating mandates, without first checking to see if that will be healthy for you. And if you are someone who has ever struggled with dieting, disordered eating or an eating disorder, it is not healthy. It is very unhealthy for you to restrict your eating in any way, because that can be a triggering behavior, and lead to more restriction and more restriction. So if a doctor has prescribed that without first having a conversation with you to see, does that feel doable to you? Does that feel interesting to you? Does it feel safe for you? That would be a big red flag for me.

If it’s a doctor you’ve worked with a long time and they know your history, I would still want them to be bringing it up in the context of giving this advice, I want them to be asking, “What are some safety checks that we can put in place?” Maybe we are worried about celiac disease or dairy intolerance, and this makes sense to try, but what other support can we get you to make sure that cutting out these food groups for your health is not going to be dangerous to your mental health and physical health.

So yeah, I would be really concerned if a doctor gave that as a knee jerk prescription without checking into your overall history with food or without offering other support around you doing that. We know there’s very little research to support eliminating food groups for overall health in the broader sense. And often, you know, these ideas, the FODMAP diet or other elimination diets, you know, they’re very under-researched, and they can be a real stepping stone to restriction.

Someone who is a really good source to follow on this is Emily Fonnesbeck. I’ll link to her Instagram. I interviewed her for my first book, and we had her on our previous podcast a bunch. She’s a really great source on navigating the concept of elimination diets and why they can be such a trigger point for orthorexia, and restrictive eating disorders. So yeah, mostly I wouldn’t do it. And I would certainly only do it if someone was offering me a lot of support to make sure it would be helpful and not dangerous.

Q: Kid is given free lunch and breakfast at school, so he eats twice. I just need to let it happen, yes?

A: Yes, that’s right.

I’m assuming you mean that you feed your child breakfast at home, and then they get to school where your school has a free lunch and breakfast program and they eat breakfast again. Maybe they also have a morning snack, maybe not. And then they have lunch. Maybe they have an afternoon snack, they come home. That all sounds like a pretty normal amount of food for a kid to eat. If he’s hungry, when he gets to school, and that breakfast is there, then that’s great that he’s eating it. And it’s great, it’s remarkable that we finally have more schools offering free lunch and breakfast programs. And we really need to continue the push to make this a universal right in American public education. So yeah, if he likes the free breakfast, I’m glad he’s eating it. And I wouldn’t worry about it at all. Remember that kids are really good at regulating their intake. It’s very normal for kids to be hungrier at certain parts of the day than others. You may notice he eats less dinner or he doesn’t need an afternoon snack. Or you may notice he’s eating a lot at every opportunity, and that’s probably because he’s growing. And that’s a good thing.

Q: I want to change the way I talk about food with my kids, I really want to. I think about it on my own, I rehearse, I plan. And then in the heat of the moment, grumpy kids right before dinner, etc. it just goes out of the window, and I screw it up. Any tips?

A: Oh, my friend, I have been there with you. First of all, let’s just talk about how grumpy kids right before dinner are the most unpleasant form of human being. And it’s very stressful, especially if you are actively trying to prepare their dinner and their grumpiness requires so much attention that it gets in the way of you making the dinner that they need to eat. And I also know it’s sort of insulting and frustrating when your kid is demanding a snack while you’re actively preparing them another meal, I’ve definitely experienced that where I’m like, if you can just give me 15 minutes, I’m actually going to feed you. So you don’t need to eat right now.

But the problem is, with little kids, they sometimes do need to eat right then. They have smaller tummies than us, they can’t go as long between eating opportunities. And especially at the end of the day, dinner is often a challenging meal for a lot of reasons. A lot of kids need a snack the second they walk in the door. Or they really would like to be eating dinner at 4:30, and you want them to wait till 5:30 or 6pm. So there are a lot of reasons that that hour before dinner is something of a hellscape in a lot of households. (See this week’s essay on meal planning for more about that!) And just know, that is normal. And if for a while it means that you are throwing snacks at your kids before dinner, even if that undermines what they eat at dinner, you are responding to their need to be fed. And that is fundamentally a good thing.

Now, in terms of changing the way you talk about food with your kids, I mean, for one thing, I wouldn’t beat yourself up about making a grumpy comment in the heat of the moment. We’ve all done it, it happens. It’s normal. I love that you are thinking about it, planning what you’re going to say, rehearsing. I think that’s really helpful. It sounds like maybe you want to spend some more time scripting responses to the specific ways food stuff presents with your kids. Is it that they are asking for a food that you consider less healthy, like a processed snack food, right before dinner, and you're trying to make a “healthful” dinner for them? You might play around with having the snack food, the Goldfish crackers, or whatever it is, as part of the meal. So you can say, we’re not gonna eat that right now, but we’re gonna have it at dinner in 15 minutes.

If you feel like you’re shaming foods in the moment—I’m hoping you’re not shaming bodies, I’m assuming this is mostly around food, because that’s what you specified, so I’m going to focus there—you can follow up with your kids about this. Maybe after dinner when people are full and more cheerful and calmer. You can say, “I didn’t love the way I just talked about that with you, can we make a different plan for how we’re going to handle this?” Apologize for what you said, but we get many opportunities to talk to our kids about food, like every day all day. So I wouldn’t beat yourself up for one wrong comment.

I think the planning and rehearsing you’re talking about is really great. I would keep doing that. Make sure you’re scripting responses to the specific ways food comes up with your kids rather than thinking more generally how you want to talk about it. Really rehearse what you want to say to them right before dinner. Another thought is, if you have a tendency to knee-jerk to a certain kind of food shaming or something you are trying to change, make sure any other adults around you are aware of that. Let your partner know, let grandma know, so they can help you. They might say hey, you know, let’s rethink that, or, I don’t think you meant to say that. That might make you madder in the moment, I could see that turning into a lot of marital spats, sorry. But if you can agree with your partner, if you have one, or with someone you know, maybe it’s a friend who you can text, and they can text you when they’re struggling with how they talk to their kids. Support from other adults can be really helpful, so you can all kind of brainstorm together what you want to say differently. And also just be that touch point for each other, like, oh, that wasn’t what we meant to do, let’s regroup.

Q: My stepdaughter has a “friend” who calls her fat. She’s 10. How best to handle this person?

A: It does sound like this “friend” is maybe not being the best friend to your stepdaughter, which is really hard to see. I’m just entering the world of elementary school friend stuff, and it is a tough stage, a sort of heartbreaking stage in a lot of ways to watch kids navigate.

My first question: Is fat being used as an insult? Let’s start there and just check that that’s what’s happening. I think it probably is, because the kids are 10, and at that point, kids are old enough to have internalized a lot of the messages around fat in our culture. But particularly with littler kids, I would check that it’s not just sort of a description they’re giving, and they’re just noticing that this person is bigger. So, you know, check in.

Assuming that it is a negative use of the word fat, which, you know, I’m guessing it is based on the age, my next question is: Is your stepdaughter fat? Is she in a bigger body? More or less, you’re going to answer this question the same way for kids of all body sizes. But: For kids who are in bigger bodies, the most important thing we can do is recognize and validate their experience in that body. The knee jerk reaction is very often to say, “you’re not fat, you're beautiful.” And when we do that, we put fat and beauty in opposition to one another. We imply that you can’t be fat and beautiful, which is wrong. And we need to challenge that.

And the other thing is, if your child is in a bigger body, this friend may not be the only person who’s made the comment, she may be getting this message elsewhere. So you have to take a lot of care in how you navigate this with her. You might say, “You are bigger than your friends, and that’s great. Your body is amazing. I am not at all concerned about your body. But I’m so sorry that the way your friend talked to you was hurtful.” Make space for her to express those feelings. What you want to do is validate her feelings that it was hurtful to have her body described in this way, without reinforcing the message that there’s anything wrong with her body. And do we want to rethink this friendship and you know, is this person someone who’s supporting you, is all of that is worthwhile. But you can raise that without reinforcing what the friend said.

I think I’d say pretty much the same thing if your daughter is not in a bigger body, but it might also be useful there to add, “It’s so frustrating when people use fat as an insult, because it’s not. Bodies come in different shapes and sizes, and there’s nothing wrong with being fat.” Adding that layer of awareness is really important for thin kids so they can recognize weight stigma and call it out when they need to.

Q: Is there a way to lose weight?

A: This might have been a troll question, but I’m gonna answer it anyway. There are ways to lose weight. There are restrictive eating disorders, which may make you thin (not everybody’s body responds to a restrictive eating disorder with thinness, but many people’s do) but it will bring with it a ton of mental health issues and anguish. Restrictive eating disorders also have the highest mortality rate of any mental health illness. (I may have to check that, opiods may have taken the lead, but it’s up there, like top two for sure.) So that’s one way. Another way to lose weight is bariatric surgery, weight loss surgery, which has the most durable success record of intentional weight loss programs. It’s massively expensive. There’s a battery of testing you have to do to qualify for it. It involves surgically removing part of your stomach, and lots of potentially very unpleasant lifelong side effects that come with living that way, eating a different diet for the rest of your life, and it’s associated with high subsequent rates of eating disorders, alcoholism, depression, and divorce.

So those are kind of the two main ways to “successfully” lose weight. You’re not surprised to hear that I don’t endorse either one, although I do hold space for folks who are struggling with any of these issues, and certainly for folks who do pursue weight loss surgery, if they feel like that’s the only option available to them [to access healthcare or other fundamental rights; you can read more about how this happens here]. It’s a very complicated question. But what’s not complicated is the fact that intentional weight loss through dieting and exercise alone does not work. We have lots of research showing that 85 to 95 percent of people who pursue it are going to regain the weight they lost and then some within two to five years, and they're also not going to lose a ton of weight to begin with maybe five to 10 percent of their body weight, tops. And again, it comes back.

So yes, there are ways to lose weight, they tend to be really bad for your health. No, there are no healthy ways to intentionally and permanently lose weight.

Q: I have a question about the division of responsibility model. We are happy to let our four-year-old eat as much as she wants in terms of a maximum but what about when kids aren’t eating enough to get them through a night without waking up hungry. It’s not a big fight or anything, she usually just needs reminding because she gets distracted by more fun things. In theory, I want to let her decide how much to eat. In practice, I do not want to get up at 1am and try to convince her she can wait until breakfast. This holds for different kinds of food as well, like sure she can have some chocolate or carbs or whatever. But I feel like I do need her to eat protein at each meal, or she’ll be hungry. Should I relax on this?

A: There are actually two different issues going on here. One is, you’re worrying your child is not eating enough at dinner to stay full until breakfast. The easiest solution there is to add a bedtime snack. Lots of kids need bedtime snacks, even if bedtime is only an hour after dinner. Dinner can be a tough meal for little kids, four-year-olds don’t often have the attention span to sit for as long as we want them to, they may not love the food you’re serving, they may be more interested in talking to you. There are lots of reasons that dinner can be a sort of high pressure eating situation for kids. And so adding a bedtime snack is really useful. And make it something they find satisfying: a banana and some peanut butter, some cheese and crackers, a bowl of cereal, something that’s going to help them sleep well and not wake up at 1am hungry. So that’s sort of an easy tweak I would make and it’s very in line with Division of Responsibility or responsive feeding, to say she’s not eating enough at dinner, so she needs another eating opportunity before she goes to bed.

Once you have made sure she’s got multiple eating opportunities every day to eat, you can say no to food at 1 in morning. Again, assuming that this is a healthy, typically developing kid who doesn’t have a need to eat at one in the morning—I mean, there were times when my older daughter was in the hospital, we ate at one in the morning. But that was not normal life. Assuming that you are home and she’s getting frequent eating opportunities throughout the day, you don’t have to say yes to 1 am eating, you can say that’s not what we’re doing right now. Maybe have a sip of water, go back to bed, and we’ll eat a big breakfast. It is okay to say no, when kids ask for food at times that we are not prepared to feed them, like the middle of the night when you’re sleeping. As long as you are confident you are offering them enough opportunities to eat and letting them eat as much food as they want, at the times when you are offering food.

If you’re doing dinner and a bedtime snack, and she’s still waking up at one in the morning, I don’t think that’s really about the food. I think that’s about having learned that bringing up food at one in the morning gets a lot of attention, or maybe there’s a sleep issue you need to deal with. Maybe this is a kid who’s dealing with some anxiety at night. There could be lots of other stuff going on. But I don’t think she’s likely really hungry at that point. I would look sort of more broadly at why this one am wakeup is happening. Again, after having covered those bases of dinner and a bedtime snack.

Now the second part of your question, she can have chocolate and carbs or whatever, but I feel like I do need her to eat protein at each male or she’ll be hungry. Yeah, I would relax on this part. Kids are very good at covering the food groups in their own quirky, erratic, seemingly impossible to understand way. You will have days where it seems like your kid is only eating carbs, or only eating bananas or blueberries or something. And then you will have days when they’re eating lots of different foods. So I wouldn’t get worked up about that. I think it’s fine to offer some protein at every meal and snack, you know, if you want to pour a glass of milk to go alongside whatever the bedtime snack is, or have some cheese, offering a range of foods at each eating opportunity, kind of covering fat, carbs, protein always makes sense. But you don’t have to force your child to eat any particular one of those food groups. You can let them decide from there, what they’re hungry for. Eating carbs before bedtime is going to do just as much to keep her full and it’s not going to trigger the one am wake up. So I would relax on that.

Because also: If you are over-emphasizing the need for protein, you’re increasing the odds that you’re going to have a power struggle around protein-based foods. And you don’t need that because that’s going to make it harder for her to eat them. So I would relax. I would add a bedtime snack if you don’t already have one. Where I would hold firm is on the one am, no we don’t eat at this point in the middle of the night. Because that sounds very exhausting for you.

Alright, I hope this has been helpful! This was fun to do. If you have more questions like this, feel free to comment on this post, or send me an email. I keep a little stockpile and whenever I get another burst that makes sense to answer this way I will, or they may show up in an essay. Thank you so much for listening.

And! I’ve been meaning to add official credits to audio episodes, so here we go: If you like this episode, and you aren’t yet subscribed, please do that. If you are a subscriber, thank you so much, and please consider sharing Burnt Toast on the social media platform of your choosing, or forwarding one of my free essays to a friend who might be interested.

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Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Jessica McKenzie who writes the fantastic Substack, Pinch of Dirt. Our logo is designed by Deanna Lowe, and I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram and Twitter where I am @v_solesmith. Thanks for listening! Talk to you soon.

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