February 9, 2021 • 39 mins
"Fill up your tummy!" says dietician Dr. Jennnifer Brady. Dietitians are not immune to fatphobia. It can seep into their training programs and -- ultimately -- the advice they give to patients. Virgie and dietician Jennifer Brady discuss this while savoring croissants and discussing the feminist history of home economics.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's nineteen ninety one. I'm nine new Kids on the
Block is my favorite band. I am the proud owner
of a trapper keeper and a pocket rocker, And I'm
sitting at my rickety school desk that's got to be
eight hundred years old, and watching the hands on the
(00:23):
clock above my teacher's head tick in slow motion, inching
toward noon. Finally the bell rings, the doors open, and
out of every classroom, a wild, screeching herd of children
heads to the lunch room. Lunchtime was the best, worst
(00:48):
time of the day. Best because Doug gossip and snacks,
worst because I always still felt hungry when it was over.
I usually had homemade lunches, brown paper bags filled with
foil wrapped chicken brass sandwiches. But oh man, sometimes I
(01:08):
would get to take part in the school's pizza Tuesdays.
The plastic wrap that enveloped each rectangular foil encased slice
steamed with condensation, like the backseat of a high schooler's car,
but instead of forbidden makeouts inside, there was something better. Cheese.
(01:32):
Oh man, I love that cheese, and the little globs
of translucent orange fat that formed heavenly little pools and
the three Measley Pepperoni lily pads that floated on top
of it. My cheese lust was only overshadowed by my shame.
I remember looking down at my empty rectangular foil tray,
(01:56):
still hungry just like I was on most days at
the end of lunchtime, and thinking, why isn't this enough food?
What is wrong with me? Even back then, I knew
I was supposed to want less food than I did.
I knew I was supposed to feel full sooner. I
(02:19):
looked to some of my classmates who would eat a
few bites and then throw out the rest. What was
their secret? As an adult who is now raising fur
babies too, very hungry Netherland dwarf rabbits named Lulu and
John Candy, I asked on behalf of my little kids self.
(02:40):
Why was there never enough food? Why wasn't I ever
encouraged to eat until I was full? Why was I
so ashamed of something as natural and innocent as my appetite?
I want to introduce you to someone who has some
pretty amazing thoughts on these types of questions, my friend,
(03:03):
doctor Jennifer Brady. I wish you were here to eat
this jam with me. I know it's so good. I'm
going to send you some of this jam I make it.
Oh my gosh, Holy mulligers, I can't wait. Hold on,
let me finished chewing. I am not offended by talking
with food in your mouth. Jennifer is a freaking dietitian
(03:28):
with a PhD, an Assistant Professor of Applied Human Nutrition
at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia, and she's
a mom of two kids. She studies the history of
home economics and the roles of health professionals in social justice.
Jen's educational background kind of makes her the ultimate expert
(03:52):
on nutrition. She knows what she's talking about. But what
truly amazes me about Jen is that she has a
very simple prescription for our cultures issues with food. What
healthy eating looks like is eating a variety of foods
and you know, filling up your tummy. That's that's it.
(04:15):
I mean, filling up your tummy. Yeah. I think that
is how we should all live with respect of food.
You know, when we when we're thinking about what healthy
eating is. And I would also say that that's an
evidence based way of understanding what healthy food is. I mean,
(04:35):
I don't think we really need anything more complex than
that clapping. Beyond laying down culture smashing wisdom, I learned
the jet loves croissants, and because she's a home eck queen,
she put together a whole spread of croissant accompaniments for
(04:57):
our call. Let me first preface this by saying that
I love eating with my fingers. I love eating with
my hands, so I've got a bunch of picky hand things.
I have carrots. I have some pickles that I've made. Um,
I make a lot of pickles and jams, so I
have some eggplant pickles. I have some gherkins. I love gherkins,
(05:26):
and I have some jam that I save only for croissants,
which is like a pear and coco nib jam. Gosh,
the croissant is central though pear and coco nib jam.
That sounds really magical when you so, when you told
me that you'd chosen the croissant, I immediately began searching,
(05:46):
as you know, all over San Francisco for the croissant
of my dreams. And when I shared this with you,
you shared with me your croissant philosophy, which I love,
which is there's only good and better, And I felt
that through my whole entire body when I read your
email that said that, and I knew you weren't just
talking about croissants. I mean, I just sort of felt
(06:09):
like so anyway, um, yesterday I went out and I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna get croissants in preparation for
the interview, and I entered a little bit of I
decided to call it crnception, which is croissant plus inception.
It was a little bit of a croissant time looping
situation where I would buy a croissant and then I
(06:31):
would eat the croissant because it was completely irresistibly delicious looking, right,
and then I would have to go buy another one
and be like this one is really the one for tomorrow,
and then I would eat that one. So it was
kind of a fun I was like, oh my god,
this could go on forever, Like I could just be
(06:51):
in this loop forever, and like what a fantastic loop
it would be in. Should we partake? Yeah? Absolutely, Okay,
let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, I'm gonn I'm
gonna take my first night. I'm gonna try and make
it a loud crunch o. Right, so good, I'm feeling
(07:12):
that it sounds so good. Yeah, I'm like enjoying my
fingers getting shiny butter. It's like one of my favorite feelings.
You can lick that butter off your fingers now, Okay,
So tell me about the significance of the croissants. Yeah, well, um,
(07:32):
I mean, in some levels, it's just delicious, and so
it's significant just for that reason. I mean, I think
it's a food that is just about pleasure for me,
which is a huge part of eating that I try
to be really conscious about. We don't take time to
savor and we're so focused on health and nutrition and
(07:55):
eating for a purpose that isn't about just loving it
and and tasting it and the textures and the sensuality
of eating and croissants. To me, like, it's the pleasure part.
It's the using your body or being in your body
in a way that allows you to experience all the wonderful,
(08:19):
joyous things that come with having a body. I mean,
whether that be eating, whether that be going for a run,
whether that be you know, feeling wind in your hair,
whether that be having sex, making love. That's all wrapped
up and having a body, and that's the beautiful thing
(08:42):
of having a body, and diet culture, I think really
fucks that up for us and it really teaches us
to hate our bodies. Does the diet culture ever get
tired of ruining people's lives? Answer? No. Jennifer has done
lots of or to the grandmothers of her profession, from
(09:03):
early dieticians to the women who founded Hume Economics. Her
work takes us from the science of dietetics to the
movement for food justice today, and her journey began when
she was just a kid. I was a fat kid
growing up, and that was, you know, like it is
(09:25):
for many kids, a source of bullying, not just from peers,
but from my parents as well, from teachers, really from
everyone around me, even people that I trusted and you know,
were meant to take care of me and love me.
What really was a turning point for me in getting
(09:48):
more deeply invested in dieting and disordered eating. I broke
up with a someone I had been with. It was
a pretty significant relationship, broke up with them and just
sort of fell into something that was already deep like
(10:09):
deeply ingrained in my relationship with food because of my
childhood and and you know, I don't know if I've
completely pulled that apart yet I feel like it's something
that I'm I continue to learn about how that happened,
and why that happened, and how I feel about it now.
(10:29):
So I was struggling with an eating disorder, although I
wouldn't have been able to articulate that at the time
because I was so it was like there was two
parts of me. One that did was sort of engaged
in disordered eating, believe me up in particular, I was
(10:50):
binging and purging, and then another part of me that
almost didn't even know that other side. It was like there,
I was so split from my body. But I will
say what I do know for sure is that going
into dietetics after that experience only made it worse. Dietetics
(11:13):
is a field that studies the effects of food on health.
We've heard the terms dietitian and nutritionists, but until recently,
I didn't know that there's a pretty big difference. It
takes a lot to be able to use the term dietitian,
years of education and then a formal internship. When you
(11:34):
become a dietitian, you're a credential healthcare provider. On the
other hand, there are no credentials required to become a nutritionist.
Jen went down the dietetics path. She was first drawn
to it because she was interested in both science and
in food, but she found that the process of becoming
(11:55):
a dietitian impacted her relationship with her body. Becoming a
dietitian made me more heavily invested in controlling my body.
It's not just the learning. It's not just the what
we learn in dietetics about you know, quote unquote obesity
and weight management and all and all of that that
(12:20):
we imagine dietitians roles to be. But it was just
even the culture of the profession is so very toxic
and particularly toxic in terms of relationships with food and
bodies and eating. And you know, it's not random that dietitians,
based on the research, dietitians struggle with eating disorders. There's
(12:42):
some research showing that there's a particularly high prevalence of
eating disorders among dietitians, and that that's not random, right.
I think a lot of people think of dietitians a
sort of experts in eating, experts of food. And you're
saying that there's this really toxic culture. I would love
(13:04):
to hear more about you know what that was like. Well,
I mean, first of all, in dietetics, the the sort
of view of food is a very you know, as
something that you can understand through the nutrient components, through
um the calories program, through the you know, the vitamins
(13:25):
and minerals that are contained in that food. And you know,
I think that that stuff is important. However, you there's
a there's an aspect of becoming a dietitian or becoming
a professional that is an embodied experience and is a
is one of shifting your personal identity. And so when
you're learning about a you know, body weight and quote
(13:47):
unquote obesity in that way, it you take that on
and internalize it. It's not just about becoming a dietitian,
earning a credential and sort of carving out a career.
But looking like a dietitian is about is not about
science sub course, looking like a dietitian is about whiteness.
(14:10):
It's about femininity. It's about yeah, white supremacy, it's about capitalism,
it's about all of these other things that have come
to mark the culture of the profession. You know, the
drill by now Rebel Eaters, let's break this diet culture
poop garbage down. As we've learned from other Rebel Eaters
(14:36):
Club guests, the world of medicine and healthcare, just like
every other part of our society, is steeped in fatphobia
that includes dietetics and nutrition. The people who enter those
fields end up facing a lot of pressure to stick
to the status quo. If they have their own issues
(14:58):
with restriction or disordered EA, they will likely not be
encouraged to interrogate them because the thin ideal is still
the standard of ultimate well being in pretty much every
health profession. Sometimes going into these fields can even create
issues with food. There are rad examples of people like
(15:19):
Jennifer who are pushing back, but they face a lot
of resistance. We even heard doctor Janet Toma Yama talk
about this in the second episode. This is all part
of a cycle that keeps things the way they are.
Just for the record, you don't need to be thin
in order to be a dietician. We can interrupt this
(15:42):
poop garbage cocktail by naming it when we see it,
by hiring fat nutritionists and advocating for weight neutral practices
in educational environments. There's another dimension of dietetics and nutrition
that is played an important role in its history, and
(16:02):
that's gender. Over ninety percent of dietitians are women. This
is in part because we have culturally associated food with
care work and care work with women for a really
long time. Back in the mid eighteen hundreds, there was
(16:22):
one particular group of smart women who thought if they
could legitimize care work, women might be able to finally
get more power. These women were the mothers of dietetics
and the founders of home economics. You know, most people
when you say home economics, they think of their Grade
(16:44):
seven experience of home economics, you know, sewing pencil cases
and making muffins. And we could chuckle and say, oh, yeah,
that's so silly, you know, baking muffins and sewing pencil cases,
But those are the survival skills of life. You know,
knowing how to so on a button or mend a
shirt and to provide food for yourself and others that
(17:07):
you love and take care of is really important and
really valuable work, but it's often not valued by society.
And so home economics, in large part, was about politicizing
and valuing domestic labor. As the labor that literally runs society.
(17:28):
A lot of the women that were advancing these ideas
at the time were largely disenfranchised. They had no access
to higher education for the most part, and no access
to financial independence. You know, women involved in home economics,
we're fighting for access to some of those things, and
(17:51):
for basic education for women who were tasked with running
households with some basic knowledge to be able to do
their jobs, and for those jobs to be valued. Imagine
the power of saying, yes, what I do is work
(18:11):
and should be legitimized in a culture that, for the
most part, didn't believe that women were even worth educating.
In the eighteen hundreds, home economics wasn't a class you
took in seventh grade. It was a movement. Here are
some of the things women were in charge of back then.
(18:32):
Dealing with sewage there was no city government managing sewage
back then, figuring out what to do with garbage, no
garbage trucks, and taking care of people who were sick
because medicine still had a long way to go, quote unquote,
women's work included managing things that were matters of public
(18:54):
health before that was really a thing. In eighteen forty one,
an early advocate of home economics, Catherine Beecher, sister of
Harriet Beechristowe, published a treatise on Domestic Economy for the
use of Young Ladies at Home and at school. It
was about the importance of women's roles in society, a
(19:16):
spicy subject at the time. In those days, science and
reason were seen as the realm of men. A woman's
place was the emotional realm and taking care of the home.
But Beecher's book turned that on its head. It showed
how young women could bring a scientific approach to their
(19:36):
duties in the home. Now, Catherine Beecher wasn't exactly arguing
for equality. She agreed that women belonged in the home,
but she was saying that women should be educated in
the sciences that applied to their work in the home.
It opened the door for women to pursue higher education,
be taken seriously, and get paid. Ellen Swallow Richards is
(20:03):
considered the founder of the home economics movement, and she
took it a step farther. She believed that home economics
had the power to liberate women. If science could help
make women's work more efficient, they could have more time
to pursue other things like dare I say, smashing the patriarchy?
(20:25):
Pretty fucking cool. Actually, one of the things that people
don't know about home economics was it also wasn't just
about cooking and sewing. Home economics had a really well
developed theoretical but also practical knowledge base around a variety
(20:45):
of different things finance like personal finance, you know, how
to how to budget, and it was also about design
and architecture. They were thinking about reproductive rights. They were
doing advocate to see around reproductive rights and women's rights
throughout the sort of you know what we understand is
(21:06):
being the second wave of feminism. So anyway, I love
this stuff because it's so to me. It's just like
all these really important threads we've together. In the context
of the time, home economics was radical, but looking back
(21:26):
at it from where we sit today, the movement had
some of the very same challenges we still see in
mainstream feminism. First, there were many different factions that wanted
different things. Second, the movement was made up of white
middle class women, and that meant that the progress they
created ended up only being available to other white middle
(21:48):
class women. So yeah, the push for home economics was flawed,
but this movement is also part of the reason I
got to grow up in a culture where women have
careers and get to go to college. After the break,
we're going to take a look at how my college
years landed me right in the middle of a food fight.
(22:17):
We are back. Like I said in the last episode,
I lived in Berkeley after I moved away from home.
I was learning how to fit into a new community,
one that was much wealthier and whiter than the one
I grew up in. I noticed that good food was
a core way of relating. Good food meant something very specific,
(22:40):
not just flavorful or worthy of seconds, but also local,
quote unquote clean, and definitely not from a fast food restaurant.
I was proud to know the names of famous foodies
like Michael Pollen and Alice Waters. It made me feel
like I belonged, and honestly, like I'd earned access to
(23:02):
an exclusive club full of people who I suspected were
better than me. I remember going to lectures where sustainable
food advocates would point to fat people as the ultimate
evidence of global food system failure. I was deep in
diet culture, and I didn't think twice about what these
(23:24):
smart reputable, well dressed. Usually men were saying about people
like me. They didn't relate to food the way my
family had raised me to. This fight over the future
of food wasn't just about what you ate. It was
about who you were good or bad, clean or dirty,
(23:48):
healthy or ill, thin or fat. Sure, foodie culture celebrates eating,
but there are still bs rules about who gets to
enjoy food and how. I think the pleasure of food
also needs to be understood as a as political. If
(24:09):
at one point it was about eating right, which meant,
you know, controlling your weight and eating for health, we
we just shift the goalposts, so now it's about pleasure
and affording certain things and um putting on airs and
the pretense of eating, which is, you know, one of
the reasons why I like eating with my fingers because
(24:29):
I think it for me. I feel like it rejects
and maybe I'm overselling it, but I don't. I don't
feel like a ready for me. It's also a political
act in that you know, you can uh, it's it's
rejects that pretense of eating with this sort of you know,
(24:50):
middle class ideals I guess of uh using the certain
fork and using the certain knife sucking on your fingers,
sucking sauce off your fingers, to me is both pleasure
and politics, right, Like, I mean, I remember moving to
San Francisco and learning that people eat pizza with a
knife and akh and just kind of I was just like,
(25:12):
I don't, I can't. I mean for me eating with
my fingers, sort of saying like I want to get
my hands sturdy. I do not want to be a
person who is completely just like separated from the butter
and the grease on the oil and the tomato sauce
or whatever it is, Like how did it end up
on my elbow? There's something like so beautiful about that, Yeah, exactly.
(25:35):
And I think eating pizza with a knife and fork
is the epitome of that sort of middle class disconnection
with our food and with our bodies as well, and
then the application of those rules of who's in, who's out,
who knows what they're supposed to be doing with food,
(25:57):
And that's like this marker of class and status. I
have to say that if you eat pizza with a
knife and fork, we do not hate you, I promise.
I name checked this practice though, because the first time
I saw it, I immediately felt this downpour of shame.
(26:20):
Oh God, I've been eating pizza like a caveman my
whole life. And honestly, there are many food practices and
behaviors that are sort of meant to elicit that response.
They draw a line between the distinguished and everyone else.
Like think of how many spoons and forks there are
(26:42):
at the table setting of a fancy restaurant. Insider knowledge
is required to navigate the utensil situation. I remember being
at a restaurant a few years ago and not remembering
how to pronounce the French word for fries, frights or frets.
My palms were drenched. And if you didn't grow up
(27:04):
going to restaurants with a wine list, like you have
no idea why a waiter might bring you in tiny glass,
pour wine into it, and then just stand there while
you drink it like a perv. Jennifer has all sorts
of ideas about what fat, positive, equal opportunity and more
(27:25):
fun food culture would look like. I mean, I think
it's a world where, not to simplify it, but I
think it's a world where we don't eat pizza with
a knife and a mark, where we eat with our fingers,
engaging with food and touching our food and feeling our
(27:47):
bodies as part of that. But it's a way that
joy and pleasure can be inclusive and can be something
that you don't need to have a lot of money
to do. There's no rules that we can expand our
thinking about what pleasure but also meaning, Like for me,
(28:07):
what is healthy about food? When I think about what
healthy means, it's what brings joy and pleasure and meaning
to someone's life. And so I think, you know, in
thinking about a world that has food justice, it's similar.
It's about a world where the production of food is
(28:28):
meaningful for people and isn't oppressive. You know, we don't
have migrant workers who are taken advantage of to produce
the cheap food that North Americans have come to demand.
But that also we can all take joy and pleasure
(28:48):
in food in whatever ways that means to people. And
I think on one side that's a really vague and
open description or almost a non answer, but I think
that's where we need to get, the really open, fluid
way of being with food. Does that make sense? I
(29:09):
love that, Yes, absolutely, Like what we need is fewer
singular answers. Yes, exactly. A flexity, nuance, intuition. Okay, so
I kind of want to ask how your I mean,
I see you as a fat positive feminist, you know,
in this space doing incredible work. I'm curious about what
(29:31):
this looks like as a mom, Like, how does this?
I mean? Oh, my god, Like the Parenting Food Conversation
is its own ten hour baby series narrated by David Attenborough.
But but like, you know, what does it look like
for you as a mom? Oh, it's so fraught. It's
my daughter's nine and I have a son who's six.
(29:55):
When my daughter, when we lived back in Ontario, I
I would give my daughter like I do still a
variety of different foods in her lunch, you know, everything
from apples to chips, to a sandwich to yogurt to
you know, cookies or cake or whatever, and trusting her
to make decisions around what she puts in her body
(30:16):
at recess or lunch or whatever and when she's hungry. Well,
the school was not having that. So the school on
a number of occasions told her that she couldn't eat
you know, the treat that I'd given her, or she
had to save it until the end of the day. Wow.
And then the lunch monitors were taking food out of
(30:38):
kids lunch bags, like the so called unhealthy food, and
so I talked to the principle and the vice principles
about why that is totally unacceptable for them to be
taking food away from kids, but also to be teaching
kids that, you know, they can't trust their bodies to
know when they're hungry or what they're hungry for. You know,
(31:00):
so once in a while I can pull out the
dietitian card. And so that is an instance where I
did pull a bit of rank with expertise and say, listen,
you know, I've got a PhD in this. You you know,
don't you dare take food out of my kid's lunch bag. Again.
I think I'm particularly attuned to this with my daughter,
partly because of the ways that diet culture I think
(31:21):
is particularly cruel to women's bodies. But I think also
because I do see so much of myself in my
daughter as well. You know, she's a big kid as
I was, and it just brings back for me the
bullying that I experienced as a kid, and you know,
it breaks my heart to know that I'm sure she's
(31:43):
also experiencing that. And one of the ways that that
came out is on her sixth birthday, she asked me
if she was thin, and I didn't know how to
respond to that. You know, she's not thin, but there's
bullying happening in her environment around weight, there's fat phobia
(32:06):
in her environment. How do I respond with, No, you're
not thin, and that is perfectly normal, and that is
that your body is perfect, just the way it is.
And sometimes I don't know if I if I get
it right, but you know who knows. There's all this
mother guilt too, you know that adds to it. So, yeah,
(32:28):
it's just fraught. It's just a constant battle. Oh, I mean, yes,
I can imagine. I mean, it's it's interesting for me
as someone who is not sure if she wants to
be a mother. Like one of the questions that comes
up is like, what does it mean to bring a
little fat, brown baby into this world? Just knowing that
(32:50):
they'll I mean, the likelihood that they'll be traumatized, the
likelihood that I won't know how to navigate these things.
It's just like, I mean, it's just so much and
I think like that that absolutely that preemptive, like even
as sort of just thinking about it. I have preemptive
mother guild. Um. But I mean I think like there's
I think there's something really beautiful in what you're talking about,
(33:12):
which is like this. I mean, there's so much going on.
It's like, you know, you're doing the work of justice.
You're going in there and you're being a dissenting voice,
and that's so powerful in the school. But I think
from an individual perspective, it's like that beautiful capacity to
reparent yourself um on some level. And I think that
like for for um, for parents who are fat positive,
(33:36):
who are trying to teach their children that all food
is good food, that they can trust their bodies right,
Like I think I think that that work is about repair,
you know, for ourselves as well. And I'm sor I'm
sort of curious. Do you have like some simple frameworks
or um or rules or sort of policies or mottos
(33:57):
that you have in your household around food? H Well,
I mean you kind of said it all food is
healthy food, like all food is good food. Um. You
know one of the things that I you know, often
say in response when they come home with the oh no,
that's not healthy because they learned that at school, I
try to impress upon them that what healthy eating looks
(34:21):
like is eating a variety of foods and you know,
filling up your tummy. That's that's it, I mean, filling
up your tummy. Yeah, yeah, I think that is how
we should all live with respect of food, you know,
when we when we're thinking about what healthy eating is.
(34:41):
And I would also say that that's an evidence based
way of understanding what healthy food is. And I don't
think we really need anything more complex than that. However,
I would say that, like going back to something I
said earlier, I do think that nutrition science and more,
you know, the sort of complex city of what healthy
eating that nutrition science gives us is important in some instances.
(35:05):
You know, for example, for a Celiac who can't eat gluten,
nutrition science has been immensely important. But for most of us,
what healthy look eating looks like is just that eat
a variety of foods and you know, to your hunger
cues essentially. Yeah, I mean I think, like for me,
it's like, you know, how do we up the pleasure
(35:27):
on eating and then how do we lower the steaks
for everyone on eating as well? Yeah, my last question
is what's your recipe for the change we need to see. Alternatively,
in the change we need to see, soup, what ingredient
are you bringing? Oh that is a good colostion, My goodness. Okay,
(35:52):
so the change that we need to see, Okay. The
ingredient that I bring, I think is what I value
about myself actually and about the opportunities and experiences I've had.
Is that respect for what science can do for us,
(36:13):
but also that valuing of science only being important insofar
is it allows us to advance justice or advance love
and advance dignity. You know. Uh wow, I just love that.
Oh my god, science in service of love, dignity and
(36:36):
justice absolutely right, Like, oh my god, oh my god,
that was so amazing. Um, fill your tummy. And also
science and service of justice, love, these are the takeaways.
Oh my god, Jennifer, thank you so much for being
on rebel Pleasure. I love this. I want to do
this more often. Yes, yes, thank you for enjoying delicious
(37:01):
croissants and you're amazing. We've talked a lot about science
and medicine this season. Talking with jen I realize that
for most of my life I haven't felt there was
any option besides do whatever my doctor, and the culture
says or rejected all outright. That's the thing about being fat,
(37:26):
or a woman, or any marginalized person. You've learned again
and again that the people you're supposed to trust don't
know how to give you what you need. And it's
so hard to find a third path, an accessible path
forward that gives you the facts you need without the
(37:48):
ideological trash you don't. I crave that third path, full
of dignity and autonomy, the idea that the rules of
Patricia could be simple, the idea that science shouldn't exist
if it's not in service to love and justice. That
is the medicine we need. I want to go back
(38:14):
to that lunchroom story I told you, and I want
to rewrite it together. In this version, I'm still dying
for the bell to ring. Since we're dreaming big here,
New Kids on the Blocks Pruner Joey McIntyre is my boyfriend.
Joey and I run hand in hand the lunchroom. It's
(38:35):
Pizza Tuesday, and I get in line for my steamy slice.
The lunch lady, Miss Vanessa asks how hungry are you today?
And I yell with complete joy, very hungry, Miss Vanessa
she laughs, pats her tummy, which is as round as mine,
and says eat as much as you want. Rebel Eaters
(39:07):
Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is
Jordan Bailey, Lacy Roberts is our managing producer. Sarah nix
edits the show, and our executive producer is Greta Khane
and I'm your host. Virgie Tovar Ben Shano is our
mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer
and Mitchell Johnson for the production assist and Taka Yauzawa,
(39:31):
who wrote some of the music we use in the show.
If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and
share the love by writing a review on your favorite
podcast app. See you next week.
It's nineteen ninety one. I'm nine new Kids on the
Block is my favorite band. I am the proud owner
of a trapper keeper and a pocket rocker, And I'm
sitting at my rickety school desk that's got to be
eight hundred years old, and watching the hands on the
(00:23):
clock above my teacher's head tick in slow motion, inching
toward noon. Finally the bell rings, the doors open, and
out of every classroom, a wild, screeching herd of children
heads to the lunch room. Lunchtime was the best, worst
(00:48):
time of the day. Best because Doug gossip and snacks,
worst because I always still felt hungry when it was over.
I usually had homemade lunches, brown paper bags filled with
foil wrapped chicken brass sandwiches. But oh man, sometimes I
(01:08):
would get to take part in the school's pizza Tuesdays.
The plastic wrap that enveloped each rectangular foil encased slice
steamed with condensation, like the backseat of a high schooler's car,
but instead of forbidden makeouts inside, there was something better. Cheese.
(01:32):
Oh man, I love that cheese, and the little globs
of translucent orange fat that formed heavenly little pools and
the three Measley Pepperoni lily pads that floated on top
of it. My cheese lust was only overshadowed by my shame.
I remember looking down at my empty rectangular foil tray,
(01:56):
still hungry just like I was on most days at
the end of lunchtime, and thinking, why isn't this enough food?
What is wrong with me? Even back then, I knew
I was supposed to want less food than I did.
I knew I was supposed to feel full sooner. I
(02:19):
looked to some of my classmates who would eat a
few bites and then throw out the rest. What was
their secret? As an adult who is now raising fur
babies too, very hungry Netherland dwarf rabbits named Lulu and
John Candy, I asked on behalf of my little kids self.
(02:40):
Why was there never enough food? Why wasn't I ever
encouraged to eat until I was full? Why was I
so ashamed of something as natural and innocent as my appetite?
I want to introduce you to someone who has some
pretty amazing thoughts on these types of questions, my friend,
(03:03):
doctor Jennifer Brady. I wish you were here to eat
this jam with me. I know it's so good. I'm
going to send you some of this jam I make it.
Oh my gosh, Holy mulligers, I can't wait. Hold on,
let me finished chewing. I am not offended by talking
with food in your mouth. Jennifer is a freaking dietitian
(03:28):
with a PhD, an Assistant Professor of Applied Human Nutrition
at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia, and she's
a mom of two kids. She studies the history of
home economics and the roles of health professionals in social justice.
Jen's educational background kind of makes her the ultimate expert
(03:52):
on nutrition. She knows what she's talking about. But what
truly amazes me about Jen is that she has a
very simple prescription for our cultures issues with food. What
healthy eating looks like is eating a variety of foods
and you know, filling up your tummy. That's that's it.
(04:15):
I mean, filling up your tummy. Yeah. I think that
is how we should all live with respect of food.
You know, when we when we're thinking about what healthy
eating is. And I would also say that that's an
evidence based way of understanding what healthy food is. I mean,
(04:35):
I don't think we really need anything more complex than
that clapping. Beyond laying down culture smashing wisdom, I learned
the jet loves croissants, and because she's a home eck queen,
she put together a whole spread of croissant accompaniments for
(04:57):
our call. Let me first preface this by saying that
I love eating with my fingers. I love eating with
my hands, so I've got a bunch of picky hand things.
I have carrots. I have some pickles that I've made. Um,
I make a lot of pickles and jams, so I
have some eggplant pickles. I have some gherkins. I love gherkins,
(05:26):
and I have some jam that I save only for croissants,
which is like a pear and coco nib jam. Gosh,
the croissant is central though pear and coco nib jam.
That sounds really magical when you so, when you told
me that you'd chosen the croissant, I immediately began searching,
(05:46):
as you know, all over San Francisco for the croissant
of my dreams. And when I shared this with you,
you shared with me your croissant philosophy, which I love,
which is there's only good and better, And I felt
that through my whole entire body when I read your
email that said that, and I knew you weren't just
talking about croissants. I mean, I just sort of felt
(06:09):
like so anyway, um, yesterday I went out and I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna get croissants in preparation for
the interview, and I entered a little bit of I
decided to call it crnception, which is croissant plus inception.
It was a little bit of a croissant time looping
situation where I would buy a croissant and then I
(06:31):
would eat the croissant because it was completely irresistibly delicious looking, right,
and then I would have to go buy another one
and be like this one is really the one for tomorrow,
and then I would eat that one. So it was
kind of a fun I was like, oh my god,
this could go on forever, Like I could just be
(06:51):
in this loop forever, and like what a fantastic loop
it would be in. Should we partake? Yeah? Absolutely, Okay,
let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, I'm gonn I'm
gonna take my first night. I'm gonna try and make
it a loud crunch o. Right, so good, I'm feeling
(07:12):
that it sounds so good. Yeah, I'm like enjoying my
fingers getting shiny butter. It's like one of my favorite feelings.
You can lick that butter off your fingers now, Okay,
So tell me about the significance of the croissants. Yeah, well, um,
(07:32):
I mean, in some levels, it's just delicious, and so
it's significant just for that reason. I mean, I think
it's a food that is just about pleasure for me,
which is a huge part of eating that I try
to be really conscious about. We don't take time to
savor and we're so focused on health and nutrition and
(07:55):
eating for a purpose that isn't about just loving it
and and tasting it and the textures and the sensuality
of eating and croissants. To me, like, it's the pleasure part.
It's the using your body or being in your body
in a way that allows you to experience all the wonderful,
(08:19):
joyous things that come with having a body. I mean,
whether that be eating, whether that be going for a run,
whether that be you know, feeling wind in your hair,
whether that be having sex, making love. That's all wrapped
up and having a body, and that's the beautiful thing
(08:42):
of having a body, and diet culture, I think really
fucks that up for us and it really teaches us
to hate our bodies. Does the diet culture ever get
tired of ruining people's lives? Answer? No. Jennifer has done
lots of or to the grandmothers of her profession, from
(09:03):
early dieticians to the women who founded Hume Economics. Her
work takes us from the science of dietetics to the
movement for food justice today, and her journey began when
she was just a kid. I was a fat kid
growing up, and that was, you know, like it is
(09:25):
for many kids, a source of bullying, not just from peers,
but from my parents as well, from teachers, really from
everyone around me, even people that I trusted and you know,
were meant to take care of me and love me.
What really was a turning point for me in getting
(09:48):
more deeply invested in dieting and disordered eating. I broke
up with a someone I had been with. It was
a pretty significant relationship, broke up with them and just
sort of fell into something that was already deep like
(10:09):
deeply ingrained in my relationship with food because of my
childhood and and you know, I don't know if I've
completely pulled that apart yet I feel like it's something
that I'm I continue to learn about how that happened,
and why that happened, and how I feel about it now.
(10:29):
So I was struggling with an eating disorder, although I
wouldn't have been able to articulate that at the time
because I was so it was like there was two
parts of me. One that did was sort of engaged
in disordered eating, believe me up in particular, I was
(10:50):
binging and purging, and then another part of me that
almost didn't even know that other side. It was like there,
I was so split from my body. But I will
say what I do know for sure is that going
into dietetics after that experience only made it worse. Dietetics
(11:13):
is a field that studies the effects of food on health.
We've heard the terms dietitian and nutritionists, but until recently,
I didn't know that there's a pretty big difference. It
takes a lot to be able to use the term dietitian,
years of education and then a formal internship. When you
(11:34):
become a dietitian, you're a credential healthcare provider. On the
other hand, there are no credentials required to become a nutritionist.
Jen went down the dietetics path. She was first drawn
to it because she was interested in both science and
in food, but she found that the process of becoming
(11:55):
a dietitian impacted her relationship with her body. Becoming a
dietitian made me more heavily invested in controlling my body.
It's not just the learning. It's not just the what
we learn in dietetics about you know, quote unquote obesity
and weight management and all and all of that that
(12:20):
we imagine dietitians roles to be. But it was just
even the culture of the profession is so very toxic
and particularly toxic in terms of relationships with food and
bodies and eating. And you know, it's not random that dietitians,
based on the research, dietitians struggle with eating disorders. There's
(12:42):
some research showing that there's a particularly high prevalence of
eating disorders among dietitians, and that that's not random, right.
I think a lot of people think of dietitians a
sort of experts in eating, experts of food. And you're
saying that there's this really toxic culture. I would love
(13:04):
to hear more about you know what that was like. Well,
I mean, first of all, in dietetics, the the sort
of view of food is a very you know, as
something that you can understand through the nutrient components, through
um the calories program, through the you know, the vitamins
(13:25):
and minerals that are contained in that food. And you know,
I think that that stuff is important. However, you there's
a there's an aspect of becoming a dietitian or becoming
a professional that is an embodied experience and is a
is one of shifting your personal identity. And so when
you're learning about a you know, body weight and quote
(13:47):
unquote obesity in that way, it you take that on
and internalize it. It's not just about becoming a dietitian,
earning a credential and sort of carving out a career.
But looking like a dietitian is about is not about
science sub course, looking like a dietitian is about whiteness.
(14:10):
It's about femininity. It's about yeah, white supremacy, it's about capitalism,
it's about all of these other things that have come
to mark the culture of the profession. You know, the
drill by now Rebel Eaters, let's break this diet culture
poop garbage down. As we've learned from other Rebel Eaters
(14:36):
Club guests, the world of medicine and healthcare, just like
every other part of our society, is steeped in fatphobia
that includes dietetics and nutrition. The people who enter those
fields end up facing a lot of pressure to stick
to the status quo. If they have their own issues
(14:58):
with restriction or disordered EA, they will likely not be
encouraged to interrogate them because the thin ideal is still
the standard of ultimate well being in pretty much every
health profession. Sometimes going into these fields can even create
issues with food. There are rad examples of people like
(15:19):
Jennifer who are pushing back, but they face a lot
of resistance. We even heard doctor Janet Toma Yama talk
about this in the second episode. This is all part
of a cycle that keeps things the way they are.
Just for the record, you don't need to be thin
in order to be a dietician. We can interrupt this
(15:42):
poop garbage cocktail by naming it when we see it,
by hiring fat nutritionists and advocating for weight neutral practices
in educational environments. There's another dimension of dietetics and nutrition
that is played an important role in its history, and
(16:02):
that's gender. Over ninety percent of dietitians are women. This
is in part because we have culturally associated food with
care work and care work with women for a really
long time. Back in the mid eighteen hundreds, there was
(16:22):
one particular group of smart women who thought if they
could legitimize care work, women might be able to finally
get more power. These women were the mothers of dietetics
and the founders of home economics. You know, most people
when you say home economics, they think of their Grade
(16:44):
seven experience of home economics, you know, sewing pencil cases
and making muffins. And we could chuckle and say, oh, yeah,
that's so silly, you know, baking muffins and sewing pencil cases,
But those are the survival skills of life. You know,
knowing how to so on a button or mend a
shirt and to provide food for yourself and others that
(17:07):
you love and take care of is really important and
really valuable work, but it's often not valued by society.
And so home economics, in large part, was about politicizing
and valuing domestic labor. As the labor that literally runs society.
(17:28):
A lot of the women that were advancing these ideas
at the time were largely disenfranchised. They had no access
to higher education for the most part, and no access
to financial independence. You know, women involved in home economics,
we're fighting for access to some of those things, and
(17:51):
for basic education for women who were tasked with running
households with some basic knowledge to be able to do
their jobs, and for those jobs to be valued. Imagine
the power of saying, yes, what I do is work
(18:11):
and should be legitimized in a culture that, for the
most part, didn't believe that women were even worth educating.
In the eighteen hundreds, home economics wasn't a class you
took in seventh grade. It was a movement. Here are
some of the things women were in charge of back then.
(18:32):
Dealing with sewage there was no city government managing sewage
back then, figuring out what to do with garbage, no
garbage trucks, and taking care of people who were sick
because medicine still had a long way to go, quote unquote,
women's work included managing things that were matters of public
(18:54):
health before that was really a thing. In eighteen forty one,
an early advocate of home economics, Catherine Beecher, sister of
Harriet Beechristowe, published a treatise on Domestic Economy for the
use of Young Ladies at Home and at school. It
was about the importance of women's roles in society, a
(19:16):
spicy subject at the time. In those days, science and
reason were seen as the realm of men. A woman's
place was the emotional realm and taking care of the home.
But Beecher's book turned that on its head. It showed
how young women could bring a scientific approach to their
(19:36):
duties in the home. Now, Catherine Beecher wasn't exactly arguing
for equality. She agreed that women belonged in the home,
but she was saying that women should be educated in
the sciences that applied to their work in the home.
It opened the door for women to pursue higher education,
be taken seriously, and get paid. Ellen Swallow Richards is
(20:03):
considered the founder of the home economics movement, and she
took it a step farther. She believed that home economics
had the power to liberate women. If science could help
make women's work more efficient, they could have more time
to pursue other things like dare I say, smashing the patriarchy?
(20:25):
Pretty fucking cool. Actually, one of the things that people
don't know about home economics was it also wasn't just
about cooking and sewing. Home economics had a really well
developed theoretical but also practical knowledge base around a variety
(20:45):
of different things finance like personal finance, you know, how
to how to budget, and it was also about design
and architecture. They were thinking about reproductive rights. They were
doing advocate to see around reproductive rights and women's rights
throughout the sort of you know what we understand is
(21:06):
being the second wave of feminism. So anyway, I love
this stuff because it's so to me. It's just like
all these really important threads we've together. In the context
of the time, home economics was radical, but looking back
(21:26):
at it from where we sit today, the movement had
some of the very same challenges we still see in
mainstream feminism. First, there were many different factions that wanted
different things. Second, the movement was made up of white
middle class women, and that meant that the progress they
created ended up only being available to other white middle
(21:48):
class women. So yeah, the push for home economics was flawed,
but this movement is also part of the reason I
got to grow up in a culture where women have
careers and get to go to college. After the break,
we're going to take a look at how my college
years landed me right in the middle of a food fight.
(22:17):
We are back. Like I said in the last episode,
I lived in Berkeley after I moved away from home.
I was learning how to fit into a new community,
one that was much wealthier and whiter than the one
I grew up in. I noticed that good food was
a core way of relating. Good food meant something very specific,
(22:40):
not just flavorful or worthy of seconds, but also local,
quote unquote clean, and definitely not from a fast food restaurant.
I was proud to know the names of famous foodies
like Michael Pollen and Alice Waters. It made me feel
like I belonged, and honestly, like I'd earned access to
(23:02):
an exclusive club full of people who I suspected were
better than me. I remember going to lectures where sustainable
food advocates would point to fat people as the ultimate
evidence of global food system failure. I was deep in
diet culture, and I didn't think twice about what these
(23:24):
smart reputable, well dressed. Usually men were saying about people
like me. They didn't relate to food the way my
family had raised me to. This fight over the future
of food wasn't just about what you ate. It was
about who you were good or bad, clean or dirty,
(23:48):
healthy or ill, thin or fat. Sure, foodie culture celebrates eating,
but there are still bs rules about who gets to
enjoy food and how. I think the pleasure of food
also needs to be understood as a as political. If
(24:09):
at one point it was about eating right, which meant,
you know, controlling your weight and eating for health, we
we just shift the goalposts, so now it's about pleasure
and affording certain things and um putting on airs and
the pretense of eating, which is, you know, one of
the reasons why I like eating with my fingers because
(24:29):
I think it for me. I feel like it rejects
and maybe I'm overselling it, but I don't. I don't
feel like a ready for me. It's also a political
act in that you know, you can uh, it's it's
rejects that pretense of eating with this sort of you know,
(24:50):
middle class ideals I guess of uh using the certain
fork and using the certain knife sucking on your fingers,
sucking sauce off your fingers, to me is both pleasure
and politics, right, Like, I mean, I remember moving to
San Francisco and learning that people eat pizza with a
knife and akh and just kind of I was just like,
(25:12):
I don't, I can't. I mean for me eating with
my fingers, sort of saying like I want to get
my hands sturdy. I do not want to be a
person who is completely just like separated from the butter
and the grease on the oil and the tomato sauce
or whatever it is, Like how did it end up
on my elbow? There's something like so beautiful about that, Yeah, exactly.
(25:35):
And I think eating pizza with a knife and fork
is the epitome of that sort of middle class disconnection
with our food and with our bodies as well, and
then the application of those rules of who's in, who's out,
who knows what they're supposed to be doing with food,
(25:57):
And that's like this marker of class and status. I
have to say that if you eat pizza with a
knife and fork, we do not hate you, I promise.
I name checked this practice though, because the first time
I saw it, I immediately felt this downpour of shame.
(26:20):
Oh God, I've been eating pizza like a caveman my
whole life. And honestly, there are many food practices and
behaviors that are sort of meant to elicit that response.
They draw a line between the distinguished and everyone else.
Like think of how many spoons and forks there are
(26:42):
at the table setting of a fancy restaurant. Insider knowledge
is required to navigate the utensil situation. I remember being
at a restaurant a few years ago and not remembering
how to pronounce the French word for fries, frights or frets.
My palms were drenched. And if you didn't grow up
(27:04):
going to restaurants with a wine list, like you have
no idea why a waiter might bring you in tiny glass,
pour wine into it, and then just stand there while
you drink it like a perv. Jennifer has all sorts
of ideas about what fat, positive, equal opportunity and more
(27:25):
fun food culture would look like. I mean, I think
it's a world where, not to simplify it, but I
think it's a world where we don't eat pizza with
a knife and a mark, where we eat with our fingers,
engaging with food and touching our food and feeling our
(27:47):
bodies as part of that. But it's a way that
joy and pleasure can be inclusive and can be something
that you don't need to have a lot of money
to do. There's no rules that we can expand our
thinking about what pleasure but also meaning, Like for me,
(28:07):
what is healthy about food? When I think about what
healthy means, it's what brings joy and pleasure and meaning
to someone's life. And so I think, you know, in
thinking about a world that has food justice, it's similar.
It's about a world where the production of food is
(28:28):
meaningful for people and isn't oppressive. You know, we don't
have migrant workers who are taken advantage of to produce
the cheap food that North Americans have come to demand.
But that also we can all take joy and pleasure
(28:48):
in food in whatever ways that means to people. And
I think on one side that's a really vague and
open description or almost a non answer, but I think
that's where we need to get, the really open, fluid
way of being with food. Does that make sense? I
(29:09):
love that, Yes, absolutely, Like what we need is fewer
singular answers. Yes, exactly. A flexity, nuance, intuition. Okay, so
I kind of want to ask how your I mean,
I see you as a fat positive feminist, you know,
in this space doing incredible work. I'm curious about what
(29:31):
this looks like as a mom, Like, how does this?
I mean? Oh, my god, Like the Parenting Food Conversation
is its own ten hour baby series narrated by David Attenborough.
But but like, you know, what does it look like
for you as a mom? Oh, it's so fraught. It's
my daughter's nine and I have a son who's six.
(29:55):
When my daughter, when we lived back in Ontario, I
I would give my daughter like I do still a
variety of different foods in her lunch, you know, everything
from apples to chips, to a sandwich to yogurt to
you know, cookies or cake or whatever, and trusting her
to make decisions around what she puts in her body
(30:16):
at recess or lunch or whatever and when she's hungry. Well,
the school was not having that. So the school on
a number of occasions told her that she couldn't eat
you know, the treat that I'd given her, or she
had to save it until the end of the day. Wow.
And then the lunch monitors were taking food out of
(30:38):
kids lunch bags, like the so called unhealthy food, and
so I talked to the principle and the vice principles
about why that is totally unacceptable for them to be
taking food away from kids, but also to be teaching
kids that, you know, they can't trust their bodies to
know when they're hungry or what they're hungry for. You know,
(31:00):
so once in a while I can pull out the
dietitian card. And so that is an instance where I
did pull a bit of rank with expertise and say, listen,
you know, I've got a PhD in this. You you know,
don't you dare take food out of my kid's lunch bag. Again.
I think I'm particularly attuned to this with my daughter,
partly because of the ways that diet culture I think
(31:21):
is particularly cruel to women's bodies. But I think also
because I do see so much of myself in my
daughter as well. You know, she's a big kid as
I was, and it just brings back for me the
bullying that I experienced as a kid, and you know,
it breaks my heart to know that I'm sure she's
(31:43):
also experiencing that. And one of the ways that that
came out is on her sixth birthday, she asked me
if she was thin, and I didn't know how to
respond to that. You know, she's not thin, but there's
bullying happening in her environment around weight, there's fat phobia
(32:06):
in her environment. How do I respond with, No, you're
not thin, and that is perfectly normal, and that is
that your body is perfect, just the way it is.
And sometimes I don't know if I if I get
it right, but you know who knows. There's all this
mother guilt too, you know that adds to it. So, yeah,
(32:28):
it's just fraught. It's just a constant battle. Oh, I mean, yes,
I can imagine. I mean, it's it's interesting for me
as someone who is not sure if she wants to
be a mother. Like one of the questions that comes
up is like, what does it mean to bring a
little fat, brown baby into this world? Just knowing that
(32:50):
they'll I mean, the likelihood that they'll be traumatized, the
likelihood that I won't know how to navigate these things.
It's just like, I mean, it's just so much and
I think like that that absolutely that preemptive, like even
as sort of just thinking about it. I have preemptive
mother guild. Um. But I mean I think like there's
I think there's something really beautiful in what you're talking about,
(33:12):
which is like this. I mean, there's so much going on.
It's like, you know, you're doing the work of justice.
You're going in there and you're being a dissenting voice,
and that's so powerful in the school. But I think
from an individual perspective, it's like that beautiful capacity to
reparent yourself um on some level. And I think that
like for for um, for parents who are fat positive,
(33:36):
who are trying to teach their children that all food
is good food, that they can trust their bodies right,
Like I think I think that that work is about repair,
you know, for ourselves as well. And I'm sor I'm
sort of curious. Do you have like some simple frameworks
or um or rules or sort of policies or mottos
(33:57):
that you have in your household around food? H Well,
I mean you kind of said it all food is
healthy food, like all food is good food. Um. You
know one of the things that I you know, often
say in response when they come home with the oh no,
that's not healthy because they learned that at school, I
try to impress upon them that what healthy eating looks
(34:21):
like is eating a variety of foods and you know,
filling up your tummy. That's that's it, I mean, filling
up your tummy. Yeah, yeah, I think that is how
we should all live with respect of food, you know,
when we when we're thinking about what healthy eating is.
(34:41):
And I would also say that that's an evidence based
way of understanding what healthy food is. And I don't
think we really need anything more complex than that. However,
I would say that, like going back to something I
said earlier, I do think that nutrition science and more,
you know, the sort of complex city of what healthy
eating that nutrition science gives us is important in some instances.
(35:05):
You know, for example, for a Celiac who can't eat gluten,
nutrition science has been immensely important. But for most of us,
what healthy look eating looks like is just that eat
a variety of foods and you know, to your hunger
cues essentially. Yeah, I mean I think, like for me,
it's like, you know, how do we up the pleasure
(35:27):
on eating and then how do we lower the steaks
for everyone on eating as well? Yeah, my last question
is what's your recipe for the change we need to see. Alternatively,
in the change we need to see, soup, what ingredient
are you bringing? Oh that is a good colostion, My goodness. Okay,
(35:52):
so the change that we need to see, Okay. The
ingredient that I bring, I think is what I value
about myself actually and about the opportunities and experiences I've had.
Is that respect for what science can do for us,
(36:13):
but also that valuing of science only being important insofar
is it allows us to advance justice or advance love
and advance dignity. You know. Uh wow, I just love that.
Oh my god, science in service of love, dignity and
(36:36):
justice absolutely right, Like, oh my god, oh my god,
that was so amazing. Um, fill your tummy. And also
science and service of justice, love, these are the takeaways.
Oh my god, Jennifer, thank you so much for being
on rebel Pleasure. I love this. I want to do
this more often. Yes, yes, thank you for enjoying delicious
(37:01):
croissants and you're amazing. We've talked a lot about science
and medicine this season. Talking with jen I realize that
for most of my life I haven't felt there was
any option besides do whatever my doctor, and the culture
says or rejected all outright. That's the thing about being fat,
(37:26):
or a woman, or any marginalized person. You've learned again
and again that the people you're supposed to trust don't
know how to give you what you need. And it's
so hard to find a third path, an accessible path
forward that gives you the facts you need without the
(37:48):
ideological trash you don't. I crave that third path, full
of dignity and autonomy, the idea that the rules of
Patricia could be simple, the idea that science shouldn't exist
if it's not in service to love and justice. That
is the medicine we need. I want to go back
(38:14):
to that lunchroom story I told you, and I want
to rewrite it together. In this version, I'm still dying
for the bell to ring. Since we're dreaming big here,
New Kids on the Blocks Pruner Joey McIntyre is my boyfriend.
Joey and I run hand in hand the lunchroom. It's
(38:35):
Pizza Tuesday, and I get in line for my steamy slice.
The lunch lady, Miss Vanessa asks how hungry are you today?
And I yell with complete joy, very hungry, Miss Vanessa
she laughs, pats her tummy, which is as round as mine,
and says eat as much as you want. Rebel Eaters
(39:07):
Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is
Jordan Bailey, Lacy Roberts is our managing producer. Sarah nix
edits the show, and our executive producer is Greta Khane
and I'm your host. Virgie Tovar Ben Shano is our
mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer
and Mitchell Johnson for the production assist and Taka Yauzawa,
(39:31):
who wrote some of the music we use in the show.
If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and
share the love by writing a review on your favorite
podcast app. See you next week.
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