Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith: BT Guides

I don’t make everything from scratch.

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Should We Break Up With Family Dinner?

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As I wrote in this essay last fall, I am not the right person to ask about family dinner.

I am not a dietitian, I am not a feeding therapist, I am not a food writer. I’m a good home cook who loves food, yes. I’m a parent of two cautious eaters (one with a dramatic backstory). I am a writer who has applied her journalism training to researching how and why “picky eating” happens and who thinks critically about how diet culture and patriarchy makes it worse. And I have a lot of (evidence-based) thoughts on how we can use the dinner table to foster body autonomy and push back against anti-fatness and diet culture.
But: None of this has ever meant I have perfect family dinners.

I don’t have kids who eat everything (or even most things).

I don’t have kids who want to chat about their day, or volunteer their roses and thorns.

Many nights, I don’t even have kids who want to sit in chairs.

I don’t like meal planning for the week and I flat-out refuse to spend my weekends meal prepping.

I don’t serve a vegetable every night.

I don’t do these things because a lot of what we’ve been told we should do about family dinner only serves to increase the mental load and physical labor of the food-preparing parent (hi that’s me!). And it’s not clear from research that intensive emotional and physical labor is necessary to achieve the benefits of family dinner.

This is especially true if you dispense with the notion that family dinner should be a “childhood ob*sity prevention” strategy. Of course, as I wrote in Fat Talk, it is all too often marketed that way:

[...] the cultural value of family dinner is so often defined through its ability to prevent kids from getting fat. “Lower rates of ob*sity,” along with more coded phrases lie “healthier eating patterns” and “preventing overeating” show up on every list of family dinner benefits [...] frequently cited in morning show segments, on parenting blogs, and by other media. And studies about the link between family dinners and “ob*sity prevention” are always guaranteed a flurry of media buzz. One 2011 evidence review found that eating at least three family meals together per week was associated with a 12 percent reduction in “the odds of overweight.” A more significant finding from the paper was that family meals reduced a child’s risk for disordered eating by a full 35 percent—but the researchers’ own press release led with “family meals promote healthier weights,” and the media coverage followed suit.

This framing is dangerous because it’s misleading: Research has not established any causal relationship between family dinner participation and children’s body size. It also encourages families to use high-pressure tactics to get kids to eat more of some foods and less of others, all of which undermines the potential for family dinner to benefit kids.

I do believe that family dinner is one way to spend some quality time with our people. It gives parents a chance to model how to eat—kids need to watch someone else use a fork before they can figure it out. Sharing meals also lets us keep tabs on how our kids are eating, which is especially important in the tween and teen years when the risk of disordered eating rises. And: The way we approach any meal with our kids can help empower them to trust their bodies and find joy and comfort in food.

If those are also your big picture goals, then this guide might help you navigate some common hurdles.

1. Family dinner matters. But it’s just one option.

Here’s what I wrote in Fat Talk about the importance of family dinners:

When researchers analyze the potential of family dinners to provide a kind of refuge for kids, they document all sorts of positive associations: better vocabularies, and early literacy skills for younger kids, lower risk for developing depression, less substance abuse, and less harmful emotional consequences for teenagers who experience cyberbullying.
But we can’t overlook the role of privilege in this. It’s unlikely that eating together is in and of itself so powerful that it can prevent teen depression, and far more likely that the families who have the time and resources to make family meals a priority also have other privileges that enable them to enrich their kids’ lives and support them through rough times. In other words: If you’re able to worry a lot about getting family dinner “right,” you are likely operating from a place where your kids are already at less risk for the kinds of struggles that family dinner evangelizers claim it can solve.

This means you can release the guilt, if family dinners don’t fit into your life. Work schedules are often at odds with little kid bedtimes, or older kid extracurricular activities. Neurodivergent kids often need a less rigid approach to meals, and this doesn’t mean they or their caregivers are doing anything wrong. And I absolutely subscribe to the wisdom of , who says that family dinner doesn’t need to happen before age 3. (And she has written whole books in favor of family dinner! Is a very big fan!)

Photo by monkeybusinessimages via Getty Images

If you don’t eat dinner together, you can get all those “family dinner” benefits from another shared meal, or even from any shared time that has absolutely nothing to do with food. Think: Car rides (lack of eye contact can be helpful!), bedtime, and other low-stakes activities where part of your brain isn’t also parsing their eating habits and table manners, while hoping they’ll want to open up.

As Lisa Damour writes in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Family dinner is a meeting we have called, with an agenda we have set. My kids hate a prompt like “what was your rose and thorn today?” because it puts them on the spot. They are much more likely to open up if we watch a show together, if I hang out nearby while they’re playing a video game, or when they pop into my room right when I’m about to fall asleep and they suddenly want to talk about all of the things. “The same teen who stays at a distance during the day may pull up close at night,” writes Damour. “When this happens, let’s remember that we’re being called to a meeting we want to attend.”

2. The Division of Responsibility is a useful foundation. But you can tweak it.

There is so much to say about Division of Responsibility, a feeding approach was pioneered in the mid-1980s by feeding therapist and registered dietitian Ellyn Satter—which is why I made it the focus of last month’s BT Guide. Definitely take a minute to read that whole piece if you’ve been curious about trying DOR, or trying it and feeling like it’s not working. With dinner specifically, the main strength of DOR is that it can help parents understand why pressuring kids to clean their plates or even just to eat in certain prescribed ways (by requiring “no thank you bites,”for example) can backfire so spectacularly and create power struggles at the table.

The main drawback of DOR is that it can feel like yet another set of rigid rules to follow, and it’s often marketed and employed as a means to an end, and the “end” is a non-picky child who eats all their vegetables—not because you pressured but because they learned to love them organically over time. This is like hoping intuitive eating will make you effortlessly thin. That’s just not going to be every kid.

But as I wrote in the DOR Guide, we can use this approach as our foundation, and then expand or edit it to meet our family’s needs:

Your interpretation of “when and where meals happen” might include afternoon snacks that serve as dinner for younger kids, or meals eaten in the car on the way to activities, or in front of a screen. You might decide that the kitchen doesn’t close between meals at your house, because you want a child in recovery from an eating disorder or other food-related trauma to know that eating is always okay. Responsive feeding encourages parents to meet their kids where they are, and let go of any piece of the framework that doesn’t serve us—as long as we’re not interfering with our kids’ ability to decide how much to eat, and whether or not to eat something we’ve offered. Kids do need structure, but the goal of structure is to make sure they have enough to eat — never to restrict them from eating too much.

3. Mealtime “hacks” are only helpful when they make mealtimes less work.

The other problem with DOR, especially as we see it filtered through social media, is that it can create a lot of extra work. Satter encourages parents to have at least one or two “safe foods” on the table so there’s always something children can eat if they don’t like the main meal. Her go-to on this is bread and butter, which isn’t a lot of extra work. But if you, like me, parent children who never like the same kind of bread and only one of whom ever eats butter, now you’re solving a Rubik’s Cube on top of cooking a meal.

Figuring out what to cook for dinner that you can deconstruct into options for everyone, or surround with safe sides (covering every child’s needs) is a lot of labor. And then someone has to make the grocery list, buy the groceries, put away the groceries, cook dinner and clean up. (Definitely do serve all those deconstructed ingredients or safe sides in their storage containers, at least, to cut down on dishes!) Satter and other DOR proponents argue that their approach is less work than being a short-order cook, but honestly? It’s just not that much less. Plus, you’re more likely to have kids turning up their noses at at least some of what’s on the table, which for sure feels like more work in the short-term.

I’m not positioning this as an argument against DOR or responsive feeding. I’m just clearly naming that the labor of dinner is significant and best shared by as many people in the household as possible—and yet that very often does not happen, as I know from firsthand experience.

As I wrote in one of my many rants about meal planning:

Meal planning is additional labor. Someone has to sit down and think about dinner at some non-dinner time, when they would rather be working or reading or watching Monty Don reruns on BritBox. That person has to make a whole series of complicated decisions, factoring in what everyone in the family will or won’t eat that particular week. Then they have to check whether some of the ingredients are already on hand, so they don’t end up buying capers when there is an unopened jar in the pantry (and also nobody in their house even likes capers).
Meal planning is a huge part of a household’s mental load. This means that in most households, meal planning is also invisible work to the members of the family not doing it, and even to researchers who track these questions. In this 2019 Pew Research survey, for example, we learn that 80 percent of mothers do all the grocery shopping and meal preparation for their households, but the researchers don’t even ask about planning. Maybe they think it’s obvious that there is no way the non-shopping/non-cooking partner is writing out menus? (Apologies that this research, like most research on domestic labor, is so heteronormative.)
I did find one study from 2013 which asked about meal planning. In this survey of over 3,000 American adults, 40 percent of women reported taking the main responsibility for meal planning, compared with just 6 percent of men. I should note that 60 percent of women and 54 percent of men viewed meal planning as a shared job. But women were much less likely than men to say they took no role in meal planning, which makes me question whether everyone is using the same definition of “shared job.” I suspect at least some of these men were giving themselves participation trophies for answering with a noun when their wife said, “what do you want for dinner tonight?” Occasionally volunteering “pizza!” does not a meal planner make.

The more I come to view food labor as an immovable fact (unless you can outsource the work completely to a private chef), the more firmly I believe that any feeding strategy has to be vetted for how it adds or subtracts from your mental load and physical labor. And if something is going to be more work, it’s worth considering how much extra value it will add to your family meal experiences. Very often—especially when we’re talking about elaborate meal planning, meal prepping, and cooking more from scratch—the benefit to your child may be negligible. These are tasks we take on because we’ve been socially conditioned to equate them with being a “good mother.” But if they make you a more tired parent, a more exasperated parent, a parent with less leisure time, or a person even more acutely aware of the unequal distribution of labor in your home? Maybe they aren’t worth it.

One hack that could be worth it (or feels worth it to me): The dinnertime snack plate. No matter what I make for dinner, I almost always add a plate of cheese, crackers (I let the most selective child pick these), and whatever assorted fruit and veggies they are into at the moment. (Usually it’s strawberries, grape tomatoes and cucumbers.) This is slightly more work than Satter’s “bread and butter” advice, but not as much work as cooking everyone separate dinners, especially because I repeat what goes on the snack plate almost every dinner, or let a child make it. For a long time I resisted this approach because a voice in my head told me I was “catering” to them too much (um, yes, ofc, I am literally the caterer of this family), and because the snack plate never seemed to “go” with whatever main dish I was making. I thought true DOR success meant always finding a recipe that could be deconstructed into elements children will eat. Releasing that pressure has made dinner much easier to execute—and I see it lowering the pressure on my selective eaters too.

Photo by JohnnyGreig via Getty Images

4. Broccoli is not the goal.

Over a decade into parenting, I no longer expect Family Dinner to be… well, much of anything, to be honest. I try very hard not to stress about the broccoli that doesn’t get eaten, or frequently, doesn’t even get served. We read books with most meals, because I know they are chattier at other times of the day. I cook on the nights I feel like cooking. This includes the two or three nights a week when I make the kids’ go-to preferred dinners, and at least one or two other nights when I cook something because it’s what I want to eat, and then add the snack plate (see above) and roll with them eating mostly just that.

And in removing all of those pressures and expectations, I’ve been able to zero in on my actual goal for this meal: Family dinner is where I teach my kids body autonomy. They know that they can listen to their hunger and fullness cues. They know I don’t expect them to put something in their bodies that they do not want there. They know that their comfort and safety matters. And they know that their “no” will be respected here.

Broccoli would be nice. (Reliably sitting in chairs would be even nicer!) But this is what we come to the table to do.

Related Writing By Virginia:

The Burnt Toast Guide to Division of Responsibility

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 10:01:06 GMT

BT Guides are the series where I dig into your most frequently asked questions. We’ve covered: misconceptions about weight and health, talking to kids about anti-fat bias, diet culture in schools, kids and sugar, and how to survive holiday meals (and eating with other people in general).

BT Guides are a free resource, but if you find them valuable, please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription. You can join for just $5 per month (or $50 for the year).

Or you can upgrade to our new Extra Butter tier for $10 per month.

Drop your Qs or Thread Ideas here!

Extra Butters get everything that comes with the usual paid subscription plus a second Indulgence Gospel episode every month, a comp subscription to Cult of Perfect, and a monthly Live Thread with me. Our next one will be next Monday, February 12 at 12pm Eastern. You can ask me anything you like, and we’ll also have a fun Friday Thread-style prompt!

If you can’t make it, but have a question to ask or an idea for a group prompt, you can drop it here and catch up on the thread later. Join now so you don’t miss out!

Division Of Responsibility: Will It Save Dinner?

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On September 17, 2013, my first baby stopped eating. I’ve told this story many times (including in my first book), and for years, I would always say some version of, “Division of Responsibility saved us.” It was, of course, a lot more complicated than that.

It is true that my realizing that we could not “make” her eat, or control how much she ate at any one meal, was crucial to making the space she needed to heal and get back to eating by mouth on her own. It’s also true that over a decade later, I simultaneously consider Division Of Responsibility (which we’ll now refer to as DOR) to be the bedrock of how I feed my kids and…I have some notes. Classic DOR is not the right fit for every family. It’s also marketed (by the folks who pioneered it and by many other dietitians and influencers) as a “fix” for picky eating and a way to “get kids to eat their veggies.” But I don’t know how to use family meals to “fix” picky eating or to “get” kids to eat vegetables. I no longer believe those should be our goals.

There is a LOT to say about DOR, and some of it starts to blur over into just how to think about family dinner in general. This BT Guide will focus on the method itself; next month, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of family dinners themselves. (If you have questions today that this guide doesn’t answer, let me know and I’ll tackle them in the next one!)

10'000 Hours for Getty Images

What is DOR?

When parents hit a wall with a toddler who suddenly drops all their previous favorite foods, or with a preschooler or elementary school-aged kid who wants to live on a snacks and snacks alone, they (we) often find our way to the Division of Responsibility. This feeding approach was pioneered in the mid-1980s by feeding therapist and registered dietitian Ellyn Satter in response to the “clean plate club” school of family dinners, which a lot of us grew up with.

You can read Satter’s official explanation of the approach here. It rests on the premise that feeding is a relationship with parents and children each having specific roles to play.

Parents are in charge of:

When meals and snacks are offered
Where meals and snacks are offered
Which foods are on the menu for any given meal and snack
Preparing (or purchasing) the food

Kids are in charge of:

Deciding how much to eat at any given meal or snack
Deciding which foods to eat from among those offered
Learning to “behave well” at mealtimes

If you’ve never used it, DOR can feel revolutionary or terrifying or both. This is because diet culture has conditioned us to think we don’t know how much to eat (and that any amount of anything delicious is “too much”), but that we nevertheless should be in charge of how much our kids eat, right down to how many bites of broccoli will earn them dessert.

There are really, really good reasons to let go of our need to control how much our kids eat. Here’s how I explained it in Fat Talk:

…the belief that children should eat any food put in front of them, without complaint, doesn’t allow for much individuality of preference. And worse, it frames eating as a moral and a behavioral issue. Kids are labeled early as either “good” or “ba” eaters. And those labels are hard to shake. When the goal of family dinner is clean plates, then a child’s refusal to eat certain foods is perceived as rude, disrespectful, wasteful, or rebellious. No matter what motivation drives it, demanding clean plates is, at its core, a lesson in control. It’s a parent saying to their child, I know what’s best for your boy. You need to put this in your body even though you don’t want to—because I said you should. And this is where the “clean plate club” can become dangerous.

Pressuring kids to eat is also a surefire way to wind up stuck in a power struggle. And research clearly shows that it does not get kids to eat, or teach them to like the experience of trying new foods.

Compassionate Eye Foundation/Gary Burchell for Getty Images

What Does DOR Get Wrong?

DOR doesn’t always meet the needs of neurodivergent families, as Naureen Hunani, a pediatric dietitian and multiply neurodivergent person, explained in this podcast episode:

I do think there is still a lot of value in the child’s jobs in feeding, in terms of deciding whether or not they wants to eat and the quantity. But it’s the what, when, and where that I feel like a lot of people struggle with. Because a parent might think that the family meal table is the best place for the child to eat, but maybe it’s not. I think this is where things get really, really messy, where I have had to sometimes even separate different family members, because it’s just doesn’t feel safe. Or what the other members are eating is just so aversive from a sensory standpoint, the smell. Plus all the demands that come with socializing, when it comes to eating. Some children don’t have the capacity at the end of the day to be able to socialize and, quote unquote, behave well and sit down and all of that.
So for some children, having a little table on the side works better. Or it could be in front of screens, even. For some children that works better because it provides self-regulation and some predictability instead of adding those social demands and all of that. With the what and when and where, we have to really look at the child’s development abilities, feeding abilities, preferences, all of that, and then make the right decision, whatever that looks like.

It’s also very easy to infuse DOR with a diet mindset. If parents are in charge of which foods get served, they might decide to only serve “healthy” food as a kind of backdoor way into restricting treats. We see this explicitly in the way many Kid Food Influencers invoke DOR, claiming that a lunch that offers six kinds of produce and just three M&Ms is adhering to Satter’s principles:

Kid Food Instagram has taught us that we have to retain total control over the family meal experience because our side of the Division Of Responsibility bargain matters more than our kids’ role. So we want that control not because it’s good for our kids (it often demonstrably isn’t) but because it feels like the only way to attain the kind of mealtime perfection that Kid Food Instagram performs. “When influencers translate concepts like Satter’s into oversimplified pastel infographics, they end up conveying the message that it’s on individual parents to optimize our children, fix unwanted behavior, and resolve conflicts in the home around eating,” says Evie. “The clever, peaceful mom is the one who follows the right accounts.”
What’s happening here is both a distortion of DOR and an unveiling of some fatphobia and diet anxiety that has been there all along. Satter’s 1987 book How To Get Your Kid To Eat...But Not Too Much includes a chapter titled “Helping All You Can To Keep Your Child From Being Fat.” Satter’s own perspective and the work of her institute have evolved since then; a more recent post encourages a matter-of-fact, non-shaming response if your child asks “am I fat?” But it’s unclear if Satter has ever fully acknowledged or reckoned with the anti-fat bias woven through her earlier work.

So What Do We Do With It?

In recent years, Hunani and other pediatric feeding experts have begun to advocate for “responsive feeding,” which uses DOR as a foundation, but also empowers parents to make our own adjustments. Your interpretation of “when and where meals happen” might include afternoon snacks that serve as dinner for younger kids, or meals eaten in the car on the way to activities, or in front of a screen. You might decide that the kitchen doesn’t close between meals at your house, because you want a child in recovery from an eating disorder or other food-related trauma to know that eating is always okay.

Responsive feeding encourages parents to meet their kids where they are, and let go of any piece of the framework that doesn’t serve us—as long as we’re not interfering with our kids’ ability to decide how much to eat, and whether or not to eat something we’ve offered. “To me, that is a hard boundary, and whenever we try to manipulate these (through pressure, coercion, bribery etc…) then we have crossed a line in the feeding relationship that will probably cause problems,” writes in her deep dive into what works and doesn’t work about DOR. (If you’re really feeling trapped in the weeds of how to navigate a particular facet of your kids’ mealtime behavior, check out Laura's work.) Kids do need structure, but the goal of structure is to make sure they have enough to eat — never to restrict them from eating too much.

Raising Embodied Eaters Guide

Just a reminder that we have a ‘Dear Laura’ column coming up soon, where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer your questions - you can submit them now to hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk (or drop them below). Give as much detail as you can about the situation. Each month I’ll pick two or three super juicy questions that we can really go deep on. Send …

3 years ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr

In my own house, the extent to which we’re practicing “classic DOR” has varied tremendously over the years. Like Laura, I view the children’s right to be in charge of how much they eat as the non-negotiable. But I prioritize their comfort at meals over their learning to “behave well” at the table, which means we now frequently have dinner with books (yes, even an audiobook on headphones) or in front of a Friday night movie. We’ve also had phases where the schedule gave way to grazing (hi, pandemic!) though I’m lately working us back into set afternoon snack and dinner times because I can see how it helps my kids regulate. (I also love a bedtime snack.) I don’t short-order cook, except when I do. Instead, I serve most dinners with a snack plate—a mix of fruit, veggies, crackers, cheese—that often ends up being one child’s dinner.

DOR has not “fixed” my kids, who are not—and never were—broken. It has not transformed them from cautious eaters into adventurous epicureans. But it helps me avoid micromanaging their eating in ways that would override their body autonomy. And this helps my kids feel safe and seen at the table. Everything else can be a work in progress.

Notes and Sources:

Is Mealtime Miserable? Try This

The “Finish Your Soup” Study

About Responsive Feeding

Division of Responsibility for Toddlers

Dear Laura - The Division of Responsibility Doesn’t Work for my Family - is it me, or the model?

Hey team - welcome to ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer next month - then you can leave it as a comment below or email…

3 years ago · 26 likes · 7 comments · Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr

Dear Laura: If I feed my baby ‘on demand’ - do I have to put limits on their nursing when they’re a toddler??

Hey team - welcome ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer next month - then you can leave it as a comment below or email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk and put ‘Dear Laura’ in the subject. I’m happy to answer Qs about anti-diet nutrition, developing a more peaceful relationship to food and weight-inclusive health, body image challenges, and, of course, challenges with feeding your kiddos. Please give as much detail as you’re comfortable with and let me know if you’d like me to include your name or keep it anon…

3 years ago · 8 likes · 5 comments · Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr

Food Preoccupation, Felt-Safety and Feeding Kids in the Care System

Today I’m sharing a slightly different post format than usual - instead of the usual Tuesday essay I’ve got a Q+A with responsive feeding specialist, Katja Rowell, MD. Responsive feeding and therapy helps children develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, and protects from the harmful impacts of diet culture. Katja is the co-founder of …

3 years ago · 11 likes · Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr

The Burnt Toast Guide to Surviving January

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 10:01:31 GMT

ICYMI, BT Guides are a new recurring series where I dig into your most frequently asked questions. We’ve covered: misconceptions about weight and health, talking to kids about anti-fat bias, diet culture in schools, kids and sugar, and how to survive holiday meals (and eating with other people in general).

BT Guides are a free resource, but if you find them valuable, please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription. You can join for just $5 per month or $50 for the year.

Or you can upgrade to our new Extra Butter tier—now on sale for just $75 per year!

Shop the Burnt Toast Bookstore!

Extra Butters get everything that comes with the usual paid subscription. plus:

A second Indulgence Gospel episode every month
A comp subscription to Cult of Perfect
A monthly Live Thread with me.

Our next live thread will be Monday, January 8, at 12pm Eastern. You can ask anything you like, and we’ll also have a fun Friday Thread-style prompt! If you can’t make it (I get it, time zones!) but have a question to ask or an idea for a group prompt, you can drop it here and catch up on the thread later. Join now so you don’t miss out!

PS. If you already pay for a regular subscription, you’ll only pay the difference to upgrade. Email us with any questions or technical difficulties!

New Year, Same You

Photo by Pakin Songmor via Getty Images

Happy 2024 friends!

Maybe you’re crawling back into work mode today, or maybe you’re feeling renewed and full of energy (must be nice!) but either way—I bet your social media/local media/podcast ads/group texts/etc are inundating you with January Diet Talk. Just in the past few days, I’ve noticed a marked uptick in how many diet-y Instagram ads I’m seeing (can someone explain why they’re trying to make “indoor walking” a trend???). And I’m taking great joy in reporting each one as “misleading,” but whew. It’s gonna get rough out there.

New Year’s Resolutions have been around for about 4,000 years but for most of that time, it was just people pledging loyalty to a monarch, praying to a vengeful god, or promising to pay off debts and plant more crops. Sometime around the late 18th century, we began resolving to work harder, earn more money, and be better, less sinful people. And as modern diet culture became its own religion, Resolution Culture has become all about self-improvement—namely in terms of weight loss goals, of course, but also hydration goals, exercise goals, skincare goals, home organization goals—pantry makeover content is also on the rise!—and so on.

Resolution Culture is about optimizing, it’s about perfection, it’s about buying things, and it’s almost always about setting ourselves up to fail according to a set of arbitrary standards rooted in ranking the value of human bodies. Because if we fail, we have to resolve to do (and buy!) it all over again. And that’s the underlying diet culture business model.

Resolution Culture tends to get especially loud when the world feels especially terrible. I wrote about this in 2021, and I could be writing that same piece today except this year, I’d get to sub in “horrifying global conflict and terrifying presidential election” for “horrifying pandemic plus a national reckoning with racism.” Good times!

Keeping us laser-focused on personal growth keeps us locked into capitalism (so much self-care shit to buy!). It also distracts us from the bigger picture. To be clear: I’m not here to guilt trip anyone who buys themselves something pretty/tasty/comforting because life is a lot and sometimes we need that dose of joy. But Resolution Culture keeps us focused on ourselves and our bodies. And these personal projects get in the way of us naming and dismantling larger systems of oppression. As Christyna Johnson recently posted on Instagram, this can even happen if your resolution is not to diet—if that’s as far as you take it:

It seems that many have conflated rejecting the diet mentality with dismantling diet culture. One is about the individual, the other is about community. The ultimate goal of dismantling diet culture is liberation. [...] In your efforts to dismantle the diet culture within, do not stop at the food or the aesthetic of your body. That’s not the mission. Liberation asks us to consider who is not free, and work to free them.

Here are five strategies for navigating Resolution Culture this month:

1. Think about what you can do to help in the bigger fight for liberation.

Is this the year you join your school’s wellness committee to work on getting anti-fat bias out of the curriculum and cafeteria? Can you set up a recurring donation to NAAFA, to support their work in passing more laws banning weight discrimination around the country? Can you advocate for more inclusive seating in your workplace, place of worship, local theater, or any other communal space you participate in? Notice where anti-fat bias shows up in your neighborhood, and look for ways to support solutions.

2. Resolve to add more to your life instead of resolving to take away.

Do you need a new joy-bringing non-diet hobby? Do you need more time in your schedule to cook, or see friends, or go for long walks? As Christy Harrison said in this long ago podcast interview:

I would advocate for a “new year, do you” kind of thing where you’re working to try to really connect more with yourself. [...] Instead of making a resolution to try to lose weight or to “get healthy” by cutting out all kinds of different foods or going on the latest plan/template/protocol/lifestyle change, really think about just getting back in touch with your own body’s needs.

3. If you want to make a movement goal, think about how to divest it from diet culture.

Maybe you don’t re-up your Barry’s Bootcamp membership and force yourself to tune out the body shaming this year. Maybe you use that money to support the work of an independent, weight-inclusive fitness creator like Lauren Leavell, Jessie Diaz-Herrera, or Martinus Evans. (And remember, if you’re exercising, you need to be eating.)

4. Give yourself permission to opt out.

You can hop off social media for a few weeks (or longer!) while the January diet noise is so loud. You can mute group chats that are going in toxic directions. You can skip social gatherings where you know the diet talk will be intense.

5. Cultivate fat affirming, body inclusive community.

This can look like so many things: Starting a body liberation book club, going on a unlikely hikers hike, making a friend soup, driving a neighbor to a doctor’s appointment. Connecting with people we love and forging new connections with people who share our values makes us all less susceptible to the isolation and loneliness of diet culture and capitalism. Plus fat friends have the best recs.

The 2023 Body Liberation Gift Guide

Corinne Fay — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 10:00:40 GMT

I know, I know you have received 900 gift guides already! But I’m an atheist who unapologetically loves Christmas, and a Suburban Mom, so holiday shopping is pretty much my Super Bowl. And while I realize those are absolutely not everyone’s identities here, capitalism provides so many reasons to buy gifts at this time of year! And maybe that process would be a lot more fun if those gifts happened to be at least loosely body liberation-aligned? (And one of them is the world’s best toilet seat? Keep reading!)

The Burnt Toast Bookshop is here for you.

We’ve got a curated list of book gift recs for everyone on your list, whether they are a hardcore fat lib activist or your mom who is body positive-curious but also keeps re-downloading Noom.

All of these links go, of course, to Split Rock Books, my local indie and purveyors of the BT bookshop, which for this holiday season is both online and a shelf in their brick and mortar store—Hudson Valley readers, take note!

As always, if you buy (or have bought) Fat Talk from them, you can take 10 percent off your order with the code FATTALK.

OR you can get 10 percent off if you buy any 3 titles in our gift guide—just use the code TREAT at checkout.

The perfect tree-side read. (Child’s hand, donut ornament optional.)

For Your Preschooler Who Just Called A Lady in the Grocery Store “Fat”

Big by Vashti Harrison (signed copies available!)
One to read and reread because the spare text and stunning illustrations are doing so much. And here’s Vashti on the podcast.

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder
A joyful celebration of every kind of body diversity, size very much included. And here’s Tyler on the podcast.

Little Witch Hazel by Phoebe Wahl
Cheers to gorgeous fat rep that never makes that the plot, because Hazel is a little too busy managing a whole enchanted forest. (Plus maybe you need Phoebe’s Gnome Wall Calendar?) Here’s Phoebe on the podcast.

For Your Angsty Tween Who Is Starting to Feel Weird About Swimsuits

A nice stack of Crystal Maldonado novels because we can’t choose between Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, No Filter and Other Lies, and The Fall of Whit Rivera. (Here’s Crystal’s first appearance on the pod, and stay tuned for more Crystal next week!)

Dear Sweetpea by Julie Murphy
Cheers to a fat protagonist whose storyline doesn’t center exclusively on her weight. Also a great read for kids navigating separation and divorce.

For Your Cool Teen Who Already Listens to Maintenance Phase

Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu
Because they watch all those makeup TikToks but also want to deconstruct some beauty standards. Yes, you could wrap this with a Sephora gift card and not feel conflicted about it. (Here’s Elise on the podcast.)

Big Girl: A Novel by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
An unforgettable coming of age story exploring queerness, gentrification, and Black girls in diet culture. Also, are you even raising Gen Z right if they don’t learn to appreciate 90s hip hop. (Here’s Mecca on the podcast.)

Phoebe’s Diary because Phoebe Wahl truly works for all demos. This recipient probably also needs this sticker, or maybe this one.

The Body Liberation Project by Chrissy King
To be clear, this book is not YA. But Chrissy weaves her personal experiences growing up Black and in a bigger body into her breakdown of diet culture, anti-fatness and white supremacy in a way that the youths will relate to, especially if they’ve gotten into fitness culture and maybe want to get the hell out. Plus she’s got amazing style and a really good Instagram! (Here’s Chrissy on the podcast.)

For Your Best Friend Who Needs to Get Into Feminist Romance Already

Every book in the Brown Sisters trilogy by Talia Hibbert, or at the very least start her off with Get A Life, Chloe Brown. 10/10, no notes, the fem-rom by which all others are measured.

A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
Haven’t read yet but going to endorse anyway because Julie Murphy + plus size adult film star protagonist + holiday theme! Enough said.

For Any Mom Who Is Trying To Be Less Diet-y (and Still Needs to Cook Dinner)

Dinnertime SOS by Amy Palanjian
Truly not biased even though she’s my best friend — but the approach to dinner in this book is low-key life-changing. Here’s Amy on the podcast.

Simply Julia: 110 Easy Recipes for Healthy Comfort Food by Julia Turshen
For a super special gift, pair this one with one of Julia’s virtual cooking classes (I’ll be co-cooking with her on January 14!) or even a 5 pack so they can try a bunch. (Here’s Julia on the podcast.)

For Your Dad Who Keeps Saying He “Needs To Get Back In Shape”

Slow AF Run Club by Martinus Evans
Because it’s packed with practical advice and strategies and makes it clear that running is for every body. (Here’s Martinus on the podcast.)

For Anyone Who Needs a Starting Point

You Just Need to Lose Weight: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon
Nobody breaks it down—or better arms you for that holiday conversation with your uncle who thinks he understands the ob*sity epidemic—than Aubrey. (Here she is on the pod and on the pod again.)

Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing and Liberation by Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant
There are a lot of books that promise to help you work on your relationship with your body. Reclaiming Body Trust helps us put our personal body struggles into the larger framework, to understand how our struggles fit into the systems of oppression we all live under. (Here are Hilary and Dana on the podcast.)

For Everyone On Your List

But especially any parent, teacher, coach or person who cares about raising kids with body autonomy!

Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
For anyone who has thought, “I want this kid to love their body. I don’t want them to diet or get an eating disorder. But I also just don’t want them to be fat.” (Here’s Chapter 1, and here’s everything else Fat Talk-related.)

The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America
Where it all began! A nuanced exploration of how diet culture gets baked into every meal, and every food struggle—plus my own story of helping my baby learn to eat again.

Signed copies of both my books are available exclusively through Split Rock Books; just make a note in the order comments if you’d like me to personalize this for your gift recipient (or you!).

The Gift of Good Email (and Podcasts!)

For $15, any mom or mom-adjacent person in your life will be delighted to get , my new mini-podcast, co-hosted by about the intersection of motherhood, public performance, and bodies.

Give Cult of Perfect!

For $5 for a month, or $50 for the whole year, a gift subscription to gets your recipient behind every paywall and into our whole world: Ask Virginia, Indulgence Gospel episodes, podcast bonus content, and our delightful Friday Thread chats with several thousand new best friends.

Give a gift subscription

For a gold star gift: Give them Extra Butter for $120, and they’ll get all of the above (Cult of Perfect too!) plus even more bonus content.

Now Here’s Some Cute Stuff Virginia and Corinne Love Even Though They Aren’t Books

They also aren’t strictly about body liberation, though many are (fat art lovers, get ready!) and for the rest, we think it’s implied. You’ll also get Virginia’s current East Fork obsession and Corinne’s incredible underwear find, and maybe those are gifts for you to give yourself?

The Burnt Toast Guide to Eating With Other People

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 10:01:31 GMT

ICYMI, BT Guides are a new recurring series where I dig into your most frequently asked questions. Here’s the first, on weight and health, the second, on talking to kids about anti-fat bias, the third, on diet culture in schools, and the fourth, on kids and sugar.

BT Guides are a free resource, but if you find them valuable, please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription. You can join for just $5 per month (or $50 for the year).

Or you can upgrade to our new Extra Butter tier for $10 per month.

Drop your Qs or Thread Ideas here!

Extra Butters get everything that comes with the usual paid subscription plus a monthly Live Thread with me. Our next one will be Monday, November 20 at 12pm Eastern. I’m experimenting with a lunch hour chat for everyone who told me nights are too jam-packed with kid bedtimes, etc. And I feel like I’ve talked about myself plenty, so while I’ll still answer as many Qs as I can in the hour, we’ll also have a fun Friday Thread-style prompt because I want to hear from you too!

If you can’t make it (I get it, time zones!) but have a question to ask or an idea for a group prompt, you can drop it here and catch up on the thread later. You can also check out our first such thread to see if this will be your jam. (Clearly biased but it was VERY MUCH MINE.) Extra Butters will also get a bonus Indulgence Gospel every month and a comp subscription to Cult of Perfect. Join now so you don’t miss out!

PS. Substack still doesn’t have the ability for Extra Butters to pay monthly, but I’m continuing to troubleshoot. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Your Holiday Eating Survival Guide

I’m running this guide (an update/amalgamation of several previously published pieces) a week before American Thanksgiving for a reason: It’s Feast Season in many parts of the world, and that means it is also “eat with people you don’t normally eat with” season. Which can mean seeing people who haven’t seen you since your body changed, and might have an opinion about that. “For my extended family on my mother’s side, a standard greeting at holidays is literally, ‘How much do you weigh?’” noted one commenter in this Friday Thread.

Feast Season can also mean seeing people who don’t spend a lot of time around your kids, and will have opinions on how they still don’t eat green foods or don’t know how to use a knife and fork.

And Feast Season also means you or someone you know is working very hard to put on elaborate meals. And that person (again, it may be you! It has sometimes been me!) may experience how much everyone eats or doesn’t as a direct validation (or not) of their/our efforts. Also, sometimes one person can be all of these people! It’s a lot.

We are a culture that demonizes appetite and fatness, and yet centers every major celebration on food. We are wired to show love through food, but also taught to apologize for loving food. We tie our understanding of children’s behavior to how they behave around food, even though we model such strange behavior ourselves.

We are also a culture that sets impossibly high standards for the execution of these feasts, and yet makes the labor required invisible, or at best, a dumb meme. (Also this one, this one, and this one. Honestly, anyone still confused about why women are angry all the time can just Google “Thanksgiving mom memes.”) On Instagram, it’s not just the turkey glamor shot, but also the homemade pies, the layered tablescape, the children dressed in subdued but coordinating autumnal hues, #grateful. In real life, all too often, it is still women scraping plates in the kitchen while men talk politics or watch football.

But here’s the thing: You deserve to enjoy your Thanksgiving meal without judgment or acrimony. Your kids deserve the same. Your bodies do not need to be up for discussion, or subject to more the oblique and veiled references that many families trade in. It’s okay to say you aren’t available for that conversation. And it’s okay to make the labor visible and more equitable. Here’s how.

Judgment-Free Holiday Meals With Kids

For our kids, this begins with accepting that mashed potatoes can be dinner, as I wrote for the New York Times back in 2019, and say again every year. That column is geared towards parents of picky eaters, but I think it contains a lot of universal advice. Micromanaging your child’s plate in the middle of a big family feast is only going to make the day less fun for both of you. That’s true whether you’re paranoid that they aren’t eating enough vegetables, or that they are eating too much pie. (Also: There is no such thing as too much pie.)

A few years ago, one of my best mom friends texted that she was dismayed that her kids didn’t want to eat anything at their Friendsgiving celebration. She finally pulled out applesauce pouches and string cheese and felt like a failure. “Is this my embarrassment that my kids are so close-minded?” she wrote. “I’m just stunned at how particular they are. Like they taste the nuance in bread [and know if it’s not our usual bread].” Amy, of Yummy Toddler Food, was also on the chat and wrote back: “Can you hold your frustration about their particular food likes and dislikes, but distance it from being the thing that decides whether or not a meal was a success or that you were a successful parent in that experience?”

And this is maybe, the whole key. It is frustrating when kids don’t eat; when they don’t appreciate our effort; when they don’t seem to be developing the palates we expected them to have by certain ages. And we’re allowed to feel all of our feelings about that. But how much should that factor into how we or they experience a holiday? Does that mean we are not allowed to truly enjoy or “succeed” at Thanksgiving (or any other adult-oriented menu) until our kids can enjoy it with us? And, what if they never get there?

I’m reminded of how this mom had to stop framing her son’s pickiness as a problem to fix and it feels even more critical to make that shift around the holidays. I’ve interviewed adults who were labeled “problem eaters” as kids. And too many of them remember family holidays as days of failure.

Okay, but what if you’re chill about your kid only eating (so much) pie but other relatives might not be?

Make a call or send an email today to let them know that you’re aware of their concerns, but want to take that off the table at Thanksgiving. Here’s the magic phrase I learned when reporting this NYT piece from Jenny McGlothlin, a feeding therapist at the University of Texas Dallas Callier Center and co-author of two fantastic books on picky eating:

“We know that Johnny is a pretty cautious eater, and we’re trying a no-pressure approach that’s working very well for him, so this year at Thanksgiving, please follow my lead.”

Then if a comment inevitably pops out anyway, you can circle back: “Dad, please follow my lead on this.”

You should also push back, kindly, when other adults try to label your child’s eating style or appetite:

“The way your children eat does not define who they are,” said Crystal Karges, a registered dietitian nutritionist who focuses on mothers and families in San Diego. Instead, respond to their queries with a phrase like, “She’s doing quite well exploring food on her own terms.” You can also redirect the conversation away from eating with, “Oh, do you know what she’s really enjoying right now?” And then talk about any milestone or activity your child loves that has nothing to do with food, Karges suggested. “Many people gravitate towards food conversations because it’s easy small talk,” she said, “but you don’t have to let your child become their focus.”

And don’t be afraid to set similar boundaries around discussions of your child’s weight or growth trajectory. As I wrote in the conclusion to Fat Talk:

One gentle way in might be to mention, before a visit, that you’ve noticed your child becoming more body conscious recently, so [weight and diets] are topics you’re working hard to avoid, and you’d appreciate Grandma and Grandpa’s help. Then when a comment inevitably comes up, you can jump in and say: “This is what we talked about. We’re not doing [this] around the kids.” If you have a partner, co-parent, sibling, or friend who will be there, loop them in ahead of time so they can also help enforce the boundary and redirect the conversation. And when you do have to cut off a hurtful comment, stand in solidarity with your child: “We trust her to listen to her body.” “We trust his body to grow.” “We’re not worried about their eating/growth trajectory/jean size.”

PS. If the child at your holiday table that gets this kind of pressure isn’t yours, I also forever love Corinne’s response to these comments: “Wow, we’re really talking a lot about what this kid is eating.” Sometimes a (mostly) neutral observation is all it takes to help other people realize they’re over the line.

Fatphobia at the Holiday Table

It’s also valid to set this boundary if you don’t have kids, of course. If you’re fat, or your body has recently changed, “I’m trying to steer clear of diet talk right now because I haven’t found it helpful. I’d love your support on this.” I’d start by having this conversation with a family member who could be an ally to you. Can they help deflect or run interference if the comments start up on Thursday? Or if they won’t be there, can they be on text support standby in case you need to take a break and vent about the weird thing your grandma said?

Consider whether it’s worth talking to your “worst offender” relatives ahead of time as well. At the very least, you might plant a seed, or at least find they are less shocked when you remind them that this topic is off limits for you. Writer and fat activist Ragen Chastain has a fantastic workshop on dealing with fatphobia at the holidays and you might want to just go watch the video right now. She’s also covered how to respond to holiday fat shaming here and here.

And we should all remember Corinne’s Neutral Anthropologist approach here too: “Wow, it’s so interesting that you’re commenting on my body.”This also works if the person is commenting relentlessly on their own body or eating habits: “It’s so interesting you won’t let yourself eat chocolate.”

Making Holiday Labor Visible

But remember that so many of these relationships exist in a gray area. It’s the aunt who taught you to swear and to shop, but also lives on SlimFast. It’s the grandpa who put you through college but will also never pick up a dirty dish in his life. It’s the cousin who plays so well with your kids but also never shuts up about Paleo.

And it’s the mothers and grandmothers who have worked so hard to make this meal, and so many other meals. If you are trying to set a boundary around body and diet talk with the person who does most of the labor to make your holiday meal happen, make sure you are also taking time to appreciate their labor and contribute to it in whatever way you can. (You don’t have to be a great cook to load the dishwasher!) They have lived through decades of diet culture and they are now watching younger generations march towards fat acceptance and a freer relationship with food. Maybe, they are wondering why these options were never on the table for them.

I say that not to harm of anything your mom or grandma has said to you about your body. But if you’re going to show up to that relationship, it’s essential to find some degree of empathy for them. Because Millennials and Gen Xers , as I wrote here. And that’s part of why these conversations feel so impossible. We’re wrestling with our own biases and insecurities and our families are the people most likely to say the silent parts out loud. And sure, our mothers had Martha Stewart, but we have all of Instagram teaching us how to manufacture cozy season.

So, yes to setting the boundaries. But also yes to doing our own work. Yes to appreciating the roads we didn’t have to walk, or that are made even the tiniest bit smoother by those who went before. And yes to questioning perfectionism in all of its many forms: The body talk, sure, but also in the expectations we put on this holiday, and on each other.

The Burnt Toast Guide to Kids & Sugar

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 09:00:01 GMT

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BT Guides are a free resource, but if you find them valuable, please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription. You can join for just $5 per month (or $50 for the year).

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Extra Butters are going to get everything that comes with the usual paid subscription plus a monthly Live AMA thread with me. Our next one will be tomorrow, Wednesday October 11, from 8-9pm EST! We can talk about diet culture, anti-fatness, divorce, fat fashion, gardens… I’ll answer as many Qs as I can in the hour, plus everyone chats amongst themselves too. It’s the best.

Drop Your Qs Here

If you can’t make it (I get it, time zones!) but have a question to ask, you can drop it here and catch up on the thread later. You can also check out last month’s thread to see if this will be your jam. (Clearly biased but it was VERY MUCH MINE, you all are a blast to hang out with.) Extra Butters will also get a bonus Indulgence Gospel every month and other fun stuff tbd. Join now so you don’t miss out!

PS. If you were already a “founding member,” you’ve been automatically converted to Extra Butter status! Comp subscribers, I’m still working on how to get you all access to Extra Butter content—stay tuned.

Photo by Peter Dazeley via Getty Images

But What About Sugar?

Last week, we met some friends at a local playground. As the kids ran off, one of the moms brought out a box of pastries she’d picked up for us to share. “Are you still doing your fasting thing?” she said to one of the dads, who nodded and sighed. Suddenly nobody—except me!—was reaching for a croissant. The box of sugar sat on the picnic table in front of us like a bomb nobody wanted to defuse.

Anytime I take my kids to a playground, a birthday party, or any activity that will combine snacks and other parents, I find myself bracing for what I call The Moment. The Moment is when an adult will say something anti-sugar, usually within earshot of children. These comments are usually quite well-intentioned: Parents and caregivers tend to believe fervently in the existence of sugar highs, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. (More on that in a minute.) Parents and caregivers have been told that our job is to teach kids to “eat healthy,” and we interpret that to mean “as many fruits and vegetables as possible, whatever the cost.” And we live in a culture that informs us, early and often, that sugar is the worst thing we could let our children eat.

None of this is true.

Demonizing sugar to children both overstates its potential health risks and increases the likelihood that they’ll develop the kind of fraught relationship with treats that can lead to disordered eating and eating disorders.

I’m publishing this guide very deliberately a few weeks before Halloween, because this coming season—from trick-or-treating on through the winter holidays—tends to be especially laden with treat-related anxiety, until we crash land in January. (Don’t worry, we’ll do a special January Diet Culture Guide then!) But the framework we’ll discuss here can be applied to all sorts of high treat scenarios, any time of year. It may also help you rethink how you and your family interact with sugar on any given day.

The Big Lie: Sugar Gets You High

So about those sugar highs. Here’s what I learned when I reported a2020 New York Times article called “Sugar is Not The Enemy:”

The theory that sugar intake could lead to what was then called “the neurotic child” was first proposed in the medical literature in 1922 and later gained popularity during the 1970s, when researchers were first trying to understand and treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
[...But] the sugar high concept was decisively debunked by a double-blind, controlled study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994. In that experiment, researchers recruited a mix of normal preschoolers and those whose parents described them as sensitive to sugar, then randomly assigned some kids to eat sugary food and others to eat foods sweetened with aspartame. (Nobody — including parents, kids and researchers — knew which child ate what.) No behavioral or cognitive differences were detected, and as Dr. Richard Klasco, M.D., reported in The New York Times’s “Ask Well” column, these results have been replicated in several subsequent studies.
But how to square this scientific reality with parents’ impressions of how sugar affects their children? “Our brains and bodies can feel a burst of energy after eating sugar, especially if it’s been awhile since we’ve eaten and we’re feeling low on energy,” explained Anna Lutz, M.P.H., R.D., a dietitian in private practice in Raleigh, N.C. “That’s because table sugar is a simple carbohydrate that breaks down quickly in our digestive tract, to reach our bloodstream.” But that quick burst doesn’t translate into hyperactivity or tantrums.

I share this research not to deny the experience of anyone who has noticed their child’s behavior changing soon after eating sugar. But because it’s worth considering the context for that behavior: Are they at a birthday party or other highly stimulating event where emotions would be running high no matter what? Are they hearing parents make a lot of anti-sugar comments? Are you getting tenser as they get more icing-covered? Kids know when they’re eating in ways they know we won’t like. This can make them more frenetic about eating a lot of that food, or more anxious that they’ve eaten too much. And then our expectations are met, and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.

Birthday parties aren’t the only place kids pick up on our sugar fears. When we require kids to eat their lunch in a certain order (treats last!) or tell them they have to finish their main meal in order to earn dessert, we are quite literally rebranding “treats” as forbidden fruit. But scientific research has known for years that this will backfire. Being told they have to “earn” certain foods makes kids want them more, and makes them much less excited about the salad we tell them to slog through first. And because these messages are so pervasive, it’s virtually impossible to study the physiological impact of sugar on humans alone. Our emotional responses to sugar—learned in early childhood and reinforced ever since by diet culture—are always coming into play.

That’s why the sugar high myth also helps to pave the way for the sugar addiction myth, which we apply to both kids and adults. As I explain in Chapter 7 of Fat Talk:

It’s not that delicious food has no impact on our brains—but it doesn’t induce [a] total lack of control in the way most people think. “Eating pleasurable food does induce a dopamine response,” says Sumner Brooks, MPH, RDN, an eating disorder dietitian in Portland, Oregon and co-author of How To Raise an Intuitive Eater. Dopamine is also known as the “feel good” hormone. It surges in our brains whenever we experience pleasure, and defenders of the sugar addiction model cite this as evidence because the sugar-dopamine response can look like the response seen in the brains of people using narcotics. But we also get dopamine responses from purely benign activities like seeing a puppy, hugging a loved one, or feeding our babies. [...]
We don’t tend to crave straight sugar, eaten from the bag with a spoon; we are more often drawn to foods that provide a combination of sugar, fat and salt because they offer us a certain blend of taste, texture, and mouthfeel. “These foods feel rewarding and can induce strong cravings for many reasons, the most common of which is deprivation,” says Brooks. That deprivation can be physical; because our bodies require glucose for survival, we will crave carbohydrates when we aren’t getting enough of them. But this isn’t addiction, at least, not any more than craving water when you are thirsty makes you a hydration addict. Sugar deprivation can also be psychological: “People who have been restricted, [have] dieted, or [have been] food insecure in the past may experience a constant looming emotional threat of deprivation, which makes their drive to eat sugar even more intense,” Brooks explains. [...]
When researchers study sugar addiction in rats—creatures without diet culture—they can only show rats engaging in addictive behaviors (eating huge quantities, or compulsively and repeatedly pressing a lever to make more food appear) with sugar if they first inflict a diet upon them. Restriction breeds fixation.

Photo by Atlantide Phototravel via Getty Images

So What Should We Do Instead?

1. Embrace Habituation

OK, so you can see how restriction backfires. What’s the solution? Habituation, which psychologists define as “the diminishing of a physiological or emotional response to a frequently repeated stimulus.” Contrary to what every diet influencer has ever told you: The more sugar we eat (freely, without guilt or atonement), the less frantic we feel about eating sugar.

I love how explains habituation in this piece:

A helpful example is when you go to a new city, you’re hyper aware of the sounds and noises that are unfamiliar; the people talking on the street, the ambulances and planes flying overhead. But after you’ve been there for a while it all blends together into background noise. [...] giving sweets more frequently makes them a bit less shiny. Kids are always going to be interested in sweets. Habituation doesn’t mean that they will never want sweets, and if that’s the goal of this work, then we need to talk.
Habituation just means that sweets keep their place as one part of our food life. If we offer sweets infrequently, we limit kids' choice as to whether they take it or leave it. They will only ever take it because it’s never available. When we offer sweets often, it opens up a bit more space for kids to tune into whether they actually want it, or if they are only taking it because it's there.

I’m personally seeing habituation in action in my pantry right now, where a giant tub of M&Ms has been sitting, three-quarters full, for about a month. One of my kids was on a real M&M kick over the summer and would pour herself cereal bowl-sized servings at snack time. But after a few weeks of M&M adoration, she habituated. She still enjoys a handful here and there. But the fixation phase passed quickly because she wasn’t restricted. Indeed, I expected her initial fixation because I bought M&Ms on a whim after not having them in the house for a few months (because we’d all lost interest awhile back). The novelty of bringing them back sparked an initial “obsession.” But once she remembered she could rely on them being generally available, she relaxed.

Habituation seems to be an innate human skill, related to our internal hunger, fullness and satiation cues. So you don’t have to teach your kid to habituate; you mostly just have to get out of their way. But remember that restriction can be clear-cut (having a “no candy” rule in your house). But it can also be far subtler: Maybe you buy the M&Ms but regularly count out your kids’ servings or have a “Sugar is for Saturdays” rule. Maybe you casually refer to all candy or other sugary treats as “junk” or talk about “being bad” when you eat them. All of this can create a culture of restriction that may trigger kids’ scarcity mindsets around certain foods even if they get to eat them pretty often.

If your kids still seem hyper-fixated on sugar even after you start serving it more often, evaluate whether your family’s larger food culture might contain some of these less overtly restrictive messages. And be patient with everyone if this is new. If you’ve just lifted a longtime sugar ban, of course your kids are eating more right now. They haven’t habituated yet! And to do that, they need to trust that you aren’t going to change the rules again.

2. Use Structure to Support Body Autonomy

When I talk about my kids sometimes eating a cereal bowl-full of M&Ms or multiple types of orange snack crackers, people often assume this means our house is a lawless wasteland where the children raise themselves on red dye and high fructose corn syrup. I mean, it doesn’t sound horrendous, but it’s definitely not what’s happening.

As I’ve written before, I subscribe to the basic tenets of Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility, which puts parents in charge of when meals happen, where they happen, and which foods get served, while leaving kids in charge of how much they eat and which foods they eat from what we’ve offered.

In addition to the overall meal framework, many families who do well following Satter’s standard dessert advice, which is to include one serving (say, a couple of cookies) alongside main meals. Satter argues that this approach neutralizes treat foods, because kids have regular access. She also encourages parents to plan other opportunities when kids can eat as many cookies or other treats as they want in one sitting, so kids also have the opportunity to experiment for themselves with the “how much” part.

After years of interviewing dozens of families (and hearing via comments, DMs and emails from hundreds more), I’ll say: Your mileage may vary. Laura Thomas notes the inherent anti-fatness of the “one serving” rule here. Nevertheless—a household that has already done a ton of work divesting from diet culture and who introduces the “one serving” policy with dinner early on may have a lot of success with this approach; kids are mostly happy to pick their nightly treat and not stressed about wanting more or different, because this has just always been the routine (and they know there will be other times when they get to eat a lot of treats). But a household where caregivers are still unlearning restriction, may find that the one serving rule triggers a ton of backlash and power struggles. And regardless of household culture, a kid going through a growth spurt, or newly enamored of Oreos, or just extra hungry that day or (insert any other reason here) might just want to eat five or nine Oreos sometimes.

In my house, if we have a good dessert on hand (I make brownies most weekends, but otherwise don’t have it together to plan an actual dessert for every meal?), I will put a plate of it out with the rest of the meal. (Except for ice cream, because, melting.) But I don’t hold them to a one serving rule. I do invoke manners and ask kids to check if everyone else has had some first, before taking seconds or thirds, but otherwise let them decide the “how much” for themselves and roll with the fact that one kid might be eating brownies for dinner that night. I don’t worry if we don’t have a dessert planned, because they know what our other treat options are, and that they’re allowed to grab one as an after dinner dessert/bedtime snack.

I also keep those treats (like the M&Ms) in our snack cabinet right next to granola bars, crackers, and apples, so they are fair game for after school snacks too. We have meals where treats aren’t part of the mix too, and nobody really notices. Do my kids eat more sugar than a household actively avoiding sugar? Sure. But they aren’t anxious or fixated on it — they take comfort in treats, but they don’t feel out of control around treats. And that’s my goal.

Whatever approach you take to managing treats in your house, remember that yes, kids need structure—they aren’t ready to make all the food decisions by themselves. But the goal of our mealtime structure isn’t to limit kids around food. It’s to make food (including sugar) predictable and reliable so they can trust they’ll get enough.

Photo by MarsBars via Getty Images

3. A Note Language

As I mentioned above, one way we reduce or prevent an unhealthy fixation on sugar is by changing how we talk about sugar. Labeling it “garbage” or “not real food” silos it in unhelpful ways for kids’ brains. But you may have noticed that I use the word “treat” throughout this piece. I do that because for most of us, sugar is a treat—by which I mean, a favorite food. Naming it as such helps me and my kids think about the role that brownies or candy might play in a meal or snack. Of course this gets murky, fast: Chocolate chip pancakes are a regular breakfast staple in my house; chocolate chip cookies are treats. But rather than think restrictively— “maybe we shouldn’t have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast!”—I consider this an opportunity for flexibility: Maybe cookies are a good stand-in for that part of their breakfast on days when I’m out of the right pancakes. You can recognize that food categories are arbitrary and still use categories to organize your personal food preferences without attaching moral value to those categories.

Because here’s the crucial thing: Treats are not bad! Diet culture tries to convince us otherwise, of course. So if your knee-jerk association with “treat” is “something I’m not allowed to have!” or “only on weekends!” then you might want to come up with another, even more neutral-for-you way of talking about sugar. But we can reclaim “treat” as a loving, positive way to talk about favorite foods.

The Burnt Toast Guide to Diet Culture in Schools

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:00:20 GMT

ICYMI, BT Guides are a new recurring series where I dig into your most frequently asked questions. Here’s the first one, on weight and health, and the second one, on talking to kids about anti-fat bias.

BT Guides are a free resource, but if you find them valuable, please consider supporting this work with a paid subscription. You can join for just $5 per month (or $50 for the year).

Or you can upgrade to our new Extra Butter tier for $10 per month.

Extra Butters are going to get a bunch of… extra butter, starting with a monthly live AMA thread, where we can hang and chat about literally anything you want. Our first live thread will be tomorrow (Wednesday September 13) from 8-9pm Eastern. If you can’t make it (I know, I know, time zones!) but have a question to ask, you can drop it here and catch up on the thread later.

Drop your Qs here

I’ll make this live thread available to all paid subscribers so we can test it out together. (Don’t worry, you’ll get an email when we’re ready to start.) Starting next month, this will be an Extra Butter perk only — join now so you don’t miss out!

PS. If you were already a “founding member,” you’ve been automatically converted to Extra Butter status! Thank you!

How (And Why) Does Diet Culture Show Up At School?

Photo by Maskot via Getty Images

1. In the Cafeteria

Last year, my then-kindergartener told me she wanted to stop packing treats in her lunch because “I never have time to eat them.” When we dug further into what was happening, I learned that the (hard-working and dedicated) staff that supervise the kindergarten lunch at her school were in the habit of telling kids to eat their lunches in a specific order: Sandwiches and fruit or veggies first, cookies and chips last.

I get where this rule comes from: Lunch periods are too short and teachers want to make sure kids “fill up on the right stuff” before they have to herd them out to recess. But this kind of lunchroom policy is rooted in a good food, bad food mentality that doesn’t serve kids. Maybe a parent has packed some foods the child doesn’t like, and if they don’t eat their chips or cookies, they won’t eat anything else that day. Maybe a cautious eater or a neurodivergent child who only eats a short list of safe foods has brought only chips or cookies. Even for typical eaters, research shows that if we keep foods neutral, kids tend to eat more and eat a bigger variety of foods than if we tell them they have to earn dessert by finishing other foods first.

And that’s just one way diet culture shows up at the school lunch table. Some schools have far more overt anti-fat policies, like “prevent childhood ob*sity” posters that hang on cafeteria walls, long lists of banned foods (that include anything “processed” or high in added sugar), and even more stringent lunchbox policing or shaming.

None of this helps your kid—or any kid in that school—eat an enjoyable lunch.

What you can do: First, figure out if your child is reporting on an official school policy or a one-off comment made by a teacher. (In our case, it sounded like some aides pushed the “veggies first” rule, and some realized their jobs were hard enough without worrying about what order 36 five-year-olds ate their lunch in.) If it’s a top-down school policy, you may need to reach out to the school’s food service director or other administrators and ask for a conversation. If it’s teacher-dependent, it’s better to talk to them directly (and respectfully). With older kids, you might even let them decide how important this is for you to speak up on: Do they want a parent sending an email, or would they rather talk through with you how they might advocate for themselves? With younger kids, a lunchbox note can be a great move. (That’s the route I took, along with making a plan with my kid that any treat she didn’t have time to eat at lunch could be the first thing she had for afternoon snack when she got home.)

And P.S. This isn’t just a teacher problem. Parents and other caregivers also send diet culture to the cafeteria.

2. On the Curriculum

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of just some of the diet culture-based school assignments that readers have sent my way over the years:

Food logs: These are commonly assigned in middle or high school physical education or health classes. Students are told to write down everything they eat for two weeks, and tally the calories, fat, carbs and protein. Some curriculums then encourage students to write a new, “healthier” meal plan for themselves—effectively teaching them to diet.
Food categorizing: The most popular version of this is an assignment where kids get two paper plates and a pile of food photos and are told to sort the foods into “healthy” and “unhealthy” plates, as happened to journalist Mallary Tenore Tarpley’s daughter. I’ve also seen it done on white boards, in computer games, or as part of a food log project.
Word problems assigned in math class about counting calories.
Reading comprehension tests that use an article about the ob*sity epidemic or healthy eating as the text students need to comprehend.
School weigh-ins and BMI tracking: Around half of all states tally students’ weight and calculate BMI either annually or in certain grades. Some schools take this information from student medical records, but too many schools are still putting kids on scales, even though we know this doesn’t make kids healthier and can cause harm.

All of these assignments teach fat kids that their bodies aren’t safe or welcome at school. They teach thin kids that their body size is their biggest asset. And they teach any kid vulnerable to an eating disorder how to do it, which makes it especially concerning how often these assignments show up in middle and high school — the peak high risk years for eating disorder onset. Weight and food tracking assignments do not belong in a safe, size-inclusive school.

The good news is that you can opt your child out of most of these things, though you may need to request an alternative assignment or be prepared to accept a lower grade. The bad news is that opting your own kid out doesn’t make the assignment go away—and could stigmatize your child if they are the only one sitting it out, especially if they are in a bigger body. So in addition to skipping the assignment, consider how you can advocate for changes in your school’s curriculum so these assignments get retired. Tell other parents why you’re opting out and encourage them to do the same. (This is especially important for BMI screenings—we need parents of thin kids to opt out, so it’s not just the fat kid who isn’t getting on the scale!)

For classroom assignments, have a conversation about your concerns with the teacher and try to suss out if this was their own idea, or an assignment mandated at a higher level—and then follow up accordingly. As I reported for the New York Times in 2020:

School nutrition curriculums are usually written at the county or state level, and must be in accordance with the National Health Education Standards set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the standards themselves are fairly open-ended, the C.D.C. also created the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (known as HECAT) to help school districts make sure their curriculums meet the national standards. For nutrition, HECAT details specific curriculum objectives by age: By grade 2, for example, students should be able to “demonstrate effective refusal skills to avoid unhealthy food choices.” By grade 5, they should be able to “state personal beliefs to improve the food and beverage selections of others.” By grade 8, they should be able to “explain various methods available to evaluate body weight.”
“HECAT is a disaster. We should not be teaching children to weigh themselves or eat to maintain or lose weight,” said Ganginis, who began advocating to change Maryland’s health curriculum after her then-kindergartner came home saying, “My teacher says I’m not allowed to bring potato chips anymore because we have to have a healthy snack.” [...] After Ganginis discussed her concern about the school’s nutrition curriculum with her daughter’s classroom teacher and principal, she testified at a county health council meeting, and was advised to find out who wrote nutrition curriculums at the state level. She found the state’s Health Education Specialist, who welcomed her suggestions, and two years later, Maryland’s newly revised state health curriculum includes no mention of weight and takes an “all foods fit” approach to nutrition rather than labeling foods as good or bad. [...]
Ganginis acknowledged that her advocacy was likely successful because of her professional expertise, but encourages non-dietitian parents to speak up as well. “I didn’t feel heard until a change was made,” she said.

3. In Classroom Culture

This is maybe the toughest piece for parents to navigate because it’s so often anti-fatness embedded far more subtly, into the atmosphere and ephemera of your child’s day. It’s your first grader’s teacher telling the class she’s not eating bread. It’s my eighth grade math teacher who put a weight room in his classroom closet and would bust out his reps (with lots of grunting?!) while we took our pre-algebra tests. It’s an English class reading list with no overt ant-fatness, but no attempt to center fat protagonists either. It’s the way dress code violations are disproportionately handed out to fat kids and kids of color, and not to thin, white kids because their bodies don’t make adults uncomfortable.

And it’s all of the ways that teachers’ implicit anti-fat bias plays out in their relationships with students: One study found that they are more likely to assume that girls in larger bodies read at a lower level than thinner peers and that boys in larger bodies are worse at math. Another study of 162 physical education teachers found that they had lower expectations of their students in bigger bodies, in terms of both their physical abilities and social skills. And this 2013 analysis of data collected on kindergarteners found that a student’s weight had a bigger impact on a teacher’s assessment of their academic ability than their test scores.

We can’t solve every one of these. And there’s a difference between the way a teacher performs their relationship with their own body and the way their bias impacts their students. You may not love that your child’s teacher is discussing her diet with the class, but both her decision to diet and what about her personal life she chooses to share with her students are her choices to make. What can you do is use her comment as an opportunity to name your own values. Talk with your kid about why you don’t think dieting is necessary or useful, but that a lot of people feel pressured to do so anyway by this thing called diet culture. Talk about how it’s still totally fine to love and respect this teacher; how we often love and respect people who make different choices than we would and we don’t have to let their choices change us.

If the educator’s comments feel more targeted, or you have a kid who would be especially vulnerable to such conversations (because they are already stigmatized for their body size or they are recovering from an eating disorder), then it might be time for you to have a conversation with the teacher, or (for older kids) to ask your child how you can support them setting boundaries and advocating for themselves. (I’d also consider how to take this conversation to the school if you see classroom culture blending with, or influencing curriculum or official policies, like dress codes, or classroom policies about what kids can bring for snack.)

One last thought: The culture of any institution changes slowly, and while it often requires speaking up in protest, it also requires community building and allyship. So don’t just look for diet culture—look for teachers and school staff doing their part to challenge existing norms, and ask what you can do to have their back.

The Burnt Toast Guide to Kids & Anti-Fat Bias

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 09:01:00 GMT

ICYMI, BT Guides are a new recurring series where I dig into your most frequently asked questions. Here’s the first one, on weight and health.

Today we’re going to get into how we have these conversations with kids. Those moments when your 4-year-old calls someone fat in the grocery store, or your 11-year-old asks if he’s too fat are so hard and awkward to navigate. But they are also when we can do some of our most important work as parents, and towards changing our larger cultural conversations about bodies, food and health.

How Do We Talk To Kids About Fatness and Anti-Fat Bias?

Photo by kali9 via Getty Images

1. Know that saying nothing says a lot.

It’s normal to freeze up the first time your kid calls someone fat, calls themselves fat, or asks you how much you weigh. So know that you don’t have to get this right in the first conversation, because Fat Talks are never just one conversation. But I find parents are often reluctant to have any conversation about fatness. They don’t want to name the potential for a should-be-benign activity like eating more vegetables or using a fitness tracker to perpetuate anti-fatness, even if they are worried about the impact of such an activity on their kid. They don’t want to name the fatphobia in a child’s favorite show or book or talk to their kids about anti-fatness and diet culture more broadly because they don’t want to introduce their kids to these ideas, in case that new knowledge plants insecurities that their child isn’t already struggling with.

Alas: Research shows that kids learn that fat bodies are bad in preschool and early elementary school. So even if they haven’t voiced this to you yet, odds are, they already know what you’re afraid to tell them. And you risk doing more damage by not filling the void.

But by talking about this—even when it’s uncomfortable, even if you get some of it “wrong”—you can offer the counter-narrative they need. You can explain that all bodies are good, and all bodies deserve dignity and respect. If they are engaging in a behavior that concerns you (frequent workouts, lots of mirror checking), talking about that now will open up the door to a conversation if that habit becomes problematic or stressful for your child. Because if they think you approve of step counting and then they find themselves getting obsessive about it, they may feel ashamed to share that with you. But if you’ve noted, “some people love these things, and some people find them really stressful, let’s check in and see how it feels for you?” you’ve let them know it’s okay to need help navigating this.

That said: You can always say less about your kid’s body and their eating habits if your tendency is to nitpick or critique. Silence is absolutely preferable there!

2. Reclaim “fat” as a good way to have a body.

“You’re not fat, you’re beautiful!” “Don’t say ‘fat,’ that’s not nice!” and “I’m not fat, I’m fluffy!” are all well-intentioned things parents say to children when fatness comes up—and every single one of them reinforces to kids that fat is a bad way to be.

Here are some replacement scripts:

“Yes, you’re fat, and we think that’s great!”
“All bodies are good bodies.”
“Yes, that person is fat. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, which is so cool! But we don’t talk about anyone’s body without their consent.”
“Are you worrying about body size right now? Tell me about it.”
“We never want you to feel like you need to take up less space.”

If all of those feel scary to say out loud, you’ll want to start by doing your own work around this, both in terms of your body and your child’s—because your child’s body size is not your fault and it’s not your job. (A fat positive therapist can be helpful here.) In addition to changing how you respond when fatness comes up, think about how you can build fat community, and how you can lean into making your home safe and welcoming for all bodies. Choose art with beautiful fat bodies. Read books and watch shows with strong fat protagonists. If you’re buying a new piece of furniture, talk about how you’re trying to choose something that will work for all bodies. Talk about the fatness spectrum. We’ll talk more about food in an upcoming guide, but for sure, keep weight talk away from your family dinner table and make sure you’re consistently encouraging every kid to honor their hunger, regardless of body size.

Once you’ve made fat just another great way to have a body in your house, you’ll start to feel much clearer on how to navigate the times when kids call each other fat, or have the word weaponized against them. These instances also won’t feel so momentous because you will have normalized fat positivity as your baseline. And taking the negative connotations away from weight means you don’t have to get hung up on the times when your child’s weight is a perfectly reasonable thing to need to know, like when you’re sizing a carseat.

3. Name Anti-Fatness and Diet Culture

Just like we know that white parents have to talk to our kids about racism because if we don’t, we raise kids with racist beliefs, we have to talk to our kids about anti-fatness in order to raise kids who are fat positive, whether they are fat themselves or straight-sized allies. But you can know that on paper and still struggle to execute it — because the thought of our kids encountering diet culture in the wild is deeply unsettling. You may have a knee-jerk impulse to ban Barbie or TikTok or avoid any other place your child is likely to encounter negative body messages. But that’s another kind of diet mentality. Our goal isn’t to keep our kids in diet culture-free bubbles forever, or only expose them to the “right” kinds of messages. It’s to help them navigate diet culture, and be resilient in the face of anti-fatness. To do that, they need a combination of critical thinking skills and the fundamental knowledge that their value is not tied to their appearance.

When kids have those tools, anti-fatness — whether it shows up as a Disney princess, a Harry Potter character, Peppa Pig, or a throwaway joke on literally every sitcom ever—becomes so much easier to name and start to dismantle. This also means that you don’t need to ban your kids from engaging with this stuff, because restriction will only breed fixation. But you can be curious, name what you see, and ask what they think. If they know they can explore these trends without losing your respect or facing your judgment, it’s a lot safer for them to come to you with questions, or just decide on their own that it’s not for them.

4. Talk to thin kids about anti-fat bias and thin privilege.

A common response to my push for parents to talk about fatness is: “Yes and my thin kid struggles so much too, because people say awful things to her!” These comments are toxic and unhelpful, and no child deserves to have their body objectified or policed by other people (especially adults). And, it’s important to understand that anti-fatness is the bedrock of thin shaming too. When we tell a thin person to “eat a sandwich,” or marvel at how they can “eat so much and stay so skinny!” we’re really saying that we envy their thinness because we don’t want fatness. That’s harmful for any fat kid within earshot to overhear. And it teaches thin kids that they need to stay thin in order to be considered pretty or valuable.

Instead, we need to normalize for all kids the fact that bodies change—many thin kids are fat adults and this is not a failure. And we need to help our thin kids understand how they benefit from systemic thin privilege. Yes, even if they also experience skinny shaming, even if they struggle with disordered eating — the world is still built for their body size in ways that are problematic and leave other people out.

You can and should still validate your thin child’s anxieties about whether their body will be accepted by the world — the world makes that really hard, after all! But rather than reassuring kids they are pretty or thin (which only reinforces that those are traits to hang onto at any cost), we can explore with them why pretty feels like it matters so much. Then they can consider whether that’s a value they want or need to hang onto, or not.

5. Talk to fat kids about their experiences of bias—and the magic of their bodies.

The most important thing we can do for our fat kids is believe what they tell us about their bodies, and their experiences of the world. Fat kids are often adultified from an early age. They are likely to be bullied by peers and by adults, including family members. They get picked last for the team, or they may not join the team because the uniform doesn’t fit. And none of this is their fault. Here’s what I wrote at the end of Fat Talk, about what fat kids have told me they need to help them navigate this world:

What fat kids need is to know that we see them, we accept them, and we know they are worthy of respect, safety, and dignity. They need to know we believe this unconditionally; that we would not love them more if they weighed less because our love already has no limit. And they need to know that we trust them to be the experts regarding their own bodies and physical wants and needs. [...] And fat ids need to know that we know the world. They need to see us advocate for them with doctors, teachers and family members who see their weight as a problem. One magic phrase you can use in almost every scenario: “I trust their body.”
[...] We can’t rush past how hard and isolating it can feel to be a fat kid with our determination to help them love their bodies. Depending on what they’ve been through, loving their bodies may not always feel possible. So, if they tell us they don’t want to be fat, we must hear it. But we can validate how hard it is to be harmed by anti-fat bias without upholding that same bias: “Our culture makes it so hard to be fat. But your body is never the problem. I never want you to make yourself smaller. I want you to take up all the space you need in the world.”

Parenting in Diet Culture Book List

PICTURE BOOKS

Beautifully Me by Nabela Noor, illustrated Nabi H. Ali

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder (And here’s Tyler on the BT Podcast!)

Dino-Gro by Matt Myers

Her Body Can by Katie Crenshaw and Ady Meschka

I Am Enough by Grace Byers, illustrated by Keturah A. Bobo

I Love My Body Because by Shelly Anand and Nomi Ellenson (here they are on the pod!)

We’re All Works of Art by Mark Sperring, illustrated by Rose Blake

Your Body Is Awesome: Body Respect for Children by Sigrun Daníelsdóttir

Every Body: A First Conversations Book About Bodies — the first kids book I’ve seen that names white men as the reason for anti-fat bias!

MIDDLE GRADE BOOKS

All of Me by Chris Baron

Chunky by Yehudi Mercado

Good Enough by Jen Petro-Roy

Starfish by Lisa Fipps

Taking Up Space by Alyson Gerber (on the pod here!)

PUBERTY AND BODY IMAGE BOOKS

Celebrate Your Body (And Its Changes, Too!): The Ultimate Puberty Book for Girls by Sonya Renee Taylor

The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens by Elyse Resch

Love Your Body by Jessica Sanders and Carol Rossetti

No Weigh! A Teen’s Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom by Signe Darpinian, Wendy Sterling, and Shelley Aggarwal (here’s Signe on the pod!)

You Are Enough: Your Guide to Body Image and Eating Disorder Recovery by Jen Petro-Roy

YOUNG ADULT BOOKS

Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy (also VERY excited for her picture book, Chubby Bunny, out October 2023!)

Every Body Shines, edited by Cassandra Newbold

Faith Taking Flight by Julie Murphy

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado (Also all of Crystal’s books, also here she is on the podcast)

Love is a Revolution by Renee Watson

The Other F Word: A Celebration of the Fat and Fierce, edited by Angie Manfredi

BOOKS FOR PARENTS

Body Happy Kids by Molly Frasier

How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: Raising the Next Generation with Food and Body Confidence by Sumner Brooks and Amee Severson (here’s Amee on the podcast!)

Raising Body Positive Teens: A Parent’s Guide to Diet-Free Living, Exercise and Body Image by Signe Darpinian, Wendy Sterling, and Shelley Aggarwal (here’s Signe on the pod!)

When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder by Lauren Mulheim, PsyD

The Burnt Toast Guide to Weight and Health

Virginia Sole-Smith — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 09:01:13 GMT

So I know I said earlier this month that I didn’t have big plans for Year 3 of Burnt Toast, other than to keep doing what seems to be working here. (Reporting on anti-fat bias and diet culture, writing personal essays about various facets of these issues, answering your questions, interviewing great podcast guests, and chatting with you all about all of the above but also clothes, books, plants, etc.)

Photo by Zing Images via Getty Images

But in continuing to reflect on the past two years, and read your responses to the reader survey (you can still take it through the end of this week!) I’ve come up with one new recurring feature idea: Guides. One thing that makes the Burnt Toast community distinct is that we are a real mix of folks who have been steeped in fat liberation for decades now, and folks who are (I say lovingly!) fresh off their last Noom download and just starting to wrap their heads around these concepts. This means that two themes were threaded through your responses to the reader survey: “I tend to tune out when you do the more fat politics 101 content” and “sometimes I feel lost because there’s so much I’m still learning here.” Both extremely fair takes depending on where you are in your diet culture divestment journey!

Here’s my solution: I’m going to continue to write essays and features that take us deep into the nuances of these questions, knowing some of those come with a bit of a learning curve for newbies. But I’m also going to start a regular series called Guides, where I’ll dig into your most frequently asked questions. As you’ll see from the first Guide below, these will be a mix of new writing and a way to collate everything I’ve already written or recorded on that particular question—but it will now be much easier to find because the Guides will all be listed together under one tab on the Substack homepage. I’ll also link to other sources who have done better/deeper dives on particular questions, so if you’re wrestling with questions about the science on weight and health (that’s today!) or how to navigate family dinner (coming up next!), you’ll find a whole bunch of rabbit holes you can go down to get all the nuances of your questions answered.

OG Fat Lib/Anti-Diet Readers: You can absolutely opt out of the Guide emails (which will come about once a month) by unchecking that box in your account settings. But I actually hope a lot of you won’t, because I’m hoping the comment sections on these Guides can become a place for further learning and discourse. Only contribute to the extent that feels interesting or doable to you, of course—but know that your fact-checking and additional resources and insights are very, very welcome here. (Comments will remain paid only because that keeps the trolls out, but just email me for a comp if you’d like to engage and that’s a barrier.)