There’s a great book called A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe that really changed how I thought about processed/ultra-processed foods that some of y’all on this list might enjoy! It’s about the Depression, but it also talks a lot about the evolution of nutrition science and what officials knew and how they used that information to address starvation during the Depression.
Two of the things here that reminded me of that book were an early discussion of how hard it was for farm families to meet their nutritional needs—that late winter was a time when basically everyone was malnourished and suffering from vitamin deficiencies, and how food fortification (ultra processing) has made these kinds of diseases almost unheard of.
The other thing that I remember very vividly is a part of the book where the authors describe young women during Prohibition eating elaborate ice cream sundaes for lunch because this was a healthy option and the sugar would give them energy.
It’s a really interesting, easy to read book if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff—there’s tons of stuff on like the race politics of Depression food policy, how the government tried to teach people to cook, where school lunches came from, the history of home economics… I really enjoyed it, so much that I taught it for a few semesters!
Thanks for the rec, that sounds interesting! The conversation reminded me of "Discriminating Taste" which went into a little of the nutritional guidelines around the same time. Their prescriptions are baffling looking back, but people at the time thought it was the cutting edge of science. It included such gems as "Italians and Mexicans are prone to criminality because their spicy food makes their blood hot".
Hi Laura & Virginia! I really appreciated waking up, opening my phone, and learning about how UPFs are actually a super broad and convenient category of foods. My parents definitely demonized UPFs when I was growing up...and also fed them to us, like, daily.
In general, she tends to push the idea that people need to make smarter or more "rational" individual choices rather than critiquing policy or noting that individual choices collectively have significant ramifications. The kinds of normative statements she makes implicit in her research don't match with the values I would like to see in (and believe are shared by) Burnt Toast. I'm sure you did your own research before collaborating with Dr. Oster, and I am impressed to learn that she's got anti-diet culture viewpoints, but I do have some significant concerns about her other political agendas. I would love to hear your thoughts and understand where you're coming from here - thank you!
Thanks, Alyssa! Glad to have Laura speak to this and for my part, I'll reiterate what I've said before when criticism of Emily pops up here: I don’t agree with Emily on everything, whether it’s about kids, weight, food, Covid or many other topics. I fully support holding thought leaders accountable when they misstep or cause harm. But I so appreciate Emily’s openness to learning and evolving on the issue of kids and weight. She is pretty much the only mainstream public health expert I’ve seen voicing criticism of the new AAP guidelines. And she listened to me when I told her to let her kids eat as much Halloween candy as they want! (You’re welcome again, Emily’s Kids.) More of this from thin allies, please!
Hi Alyssa - I reached out to Emily because I had seen she had recently critiqued a publication linking UPFs with cancer. The headlines were scary and misleading and I appreciated her giving context and breaking down what the study actually said. I don't agree with her on everything and although I think data can be helpful in navigating some decisions we might face (as parents), I also think that reducing things down to data flattens a lot of our lived experience, weaponises science, and as you say, obscures the larger soicio-political landscape. I wasn't aware of her funding sources or that she was particularly controversial - this is new to me so thank you for brining it to my attention. I am also encouraged to see her growth around anti-fatness and know she critiqued the AAP guidelines. Thanks again.
This was very interesting to me! Thank you for this. I honestly would not have said that all my meals contain some UPF (I realize now they do). Also I agree that without UPF a home cooked meal would be nearly impossible. Making tacos with homemade tortillas is a lot more time consuming than store bought tortillas... without UPF I’d never leave the stove 😂
"Why does it feel more comfortable to see a white mom on Instagram making homemade popsicles for her kids and it doesn’t feel comfortable to see a Black mom in a bodega buying slushies?"
I thought a lot about this idea as I read the mind blowing Invisible Child. My bias kicked in as I questioned the family spending limited money on"junk food". But it's really this--giving kids a moment of fun, not having money to buy anything but the cheapest snack to do Or is the issue that she buys FunYuns? Or is the issue that she is homeless and poor and a victim of abuse? And we should solve those issues FIRST.
This was super interesting and informative, with a lot to think about. Thank you!
It's kind of a side note in the interview, but I did want to say something about boycotts. You often see this kneejerk "I heard a bad thing about a company, I'm going to boycott" reaction, and that's NOT a good idea, for a couple reasons. Boycotting gets its power from being an organized response rather than an individual one -- like, I saw some people saying they were canceling Netflix over the WGA strike, as an individual response, and ... ok, let's say you do that, and then the WGA actually calls for a boycott in the future and you have already canceled so you are then not part of the immediate impact of that collective action. Also, it's something where you want to be responsive to what the workers (if it's a labor-related boycott) want, and sometimes individual consumers are all "yeah, boycott!" and the workers are going "no, that threatens our livelihood, actually."
Now, the Annie's case is a weird one because there has been an organized boycott effort, but it's never been totally clear to me exactly what the status of it is. The boycott has been run by the Food Empowerment Project, as far as I can tell, which seems to be a vegan nonprofit. Two different unions had been working with the Annie's workers at different locations. The Teamsters certainly were supportive of a boycott to the extent of approvingly posting articles about it on their website/social media. But it's all a little fuzzy who called for this and whether there's a strategic goal where a boycott serves as a real tool for building power.
So anyway, 1) always look into who is calling for a boycott and be led by the workers and the organizers and 2) in the specific Annie's case it's a little mysterious what 1 would entail. But also, feed your kid.
Oh wow, this is so smart and such helpful context! Thanks for sharing. You're right -- people often start these personal boycotts which... do nothing AND undermine your ability to help in a more concerted effort. Whew.
I often think that people who take these individual actions assume that the entity they are targeting will know *why* they are boycotting or not doing some action. I find this to be a fundamentally flawed premise.
As you point out, if you engage in this type of action in a way that is disconnected from any organized effort, there’s nothing that separates you from the person who stopped buying a brand because the price went up, or the recipe changed, or their store started stocking something else. Maybe if the scandal is big enough and enough individuals take disconnected action at the same time a message might get sent but, that’s making a lot of assumptions.
It’s sort of like voting. You’ll sometimes see people saying that they’re going to protest a given political party by not voting. The problem is, nobody is walking around and finding everyone who didn’t vote and asking them exactly why they didn’t vote.
Protests don’t work if the target of the protest doesn’t know it’s happening or why it’s happening.
this interview was the first I'd heard of the Amy's labor issue, and I really appreciate you sharing your research/impressions of what is happening with the boycott (and I agree on boycotts in general)
I wish every parent, pediatrician, and food policy person could hear this episode.
I actually got teary at many points while listening. I appreciated how Laura highlighted the harms of this kind of food categorization/demonization, particularly in the context of the real nutrition issue we should be attending to: child hunger.
Thank you both for this! I've been hearing a lot about UPF and it felt like more diet-culture scaremongering but I wasn't quite sure. And it struck me as odd that the UPF category is so broad -- it's one thing to distinguish between, say, chicken breasts vs McDonald's chicken nuggets, or corn on the cob vs Cheetos, but lumping every "UPF" together -- and calling it evil -- seemed strange.
What a mind-blowing episode!!! I really appreciate this, and I hurried to subscribe to Laura's substack so I could read her 3 part series (and everything else!)!
And that Birthday Tree!!! LOVE THIS as a tradition! Ice cream in bed, also spectacular! :D
Thank for having me on Virginia - I hope this helps clear up some of the fear and confusion over UPFs!
Thank you for your amazing work!
Re: nutrition science and ultra-processed foods.
There’s a great book called A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe that really changed how I thought about processed/ultra-processed foods that some of y’all on this list might enjoy! It’s about the Depression, but it also talks a lot about the evolution of nutrition science and what officials knew and how they used that information to address starvation during the Depression.
Two of the things here that reminded me of that book were an early discussion of how hard it was for farm families to meet their nutritional needs—that late winter was a time when basically everyone was malnourished and suffering from vitamin deficiencies, and how food fortification (ultra processing) has made these kinds of diseases almost unheard of.
The other thing that I remember very vividly is a part of the book where the authors describe young women during Prohibition eating elaborate ice cream sundaes for lunch because this was a healthy option and the sugar would give them energy.
It’s a really interesting, easy to read book if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff—there’s tons of stuff on like the race politics of Depression food policy, how the government tried to teach people to cook, where school lunches came from, the history of home economics… I really enjoyed it, so much that I taught it for a few semesters!
OH that sounds fascinating.
Thanks for the rec, that sounds interesting! The conversation reminded me of "Discriminating Taste" which went into a little of the nutritional guidelines around the same time. Their prescriptions are baffling looking back, but people at the time thought it was the cutting edge of science. It included such gems as "Italians and Mexicans are prone to criminality because their spicy food makes their blood hot".
Hi Laura & Virginia! I really appreciated waking up, opening my phone, and learning about how UPFs are actually a super broad and convenient category of foods. My parents definitely demonized UPFs when I was growing up...and also fed them to us, like, daily.
I am curious (and this is a question for Laura, posed with care & curiosity first) why you chose to platform Emily Oster? Her funding sources and general political agenda seem, collectively, to be antithetical to the kinds of activism you're promoting. She's previously said some concerning things about funding AIDS treatment in Africa and, more recently, promoted reopening schools during COVID based on flawed science. (see https://proteanmag.com/2022/03/22/motivated-reasoning-emily-osters-covid-narratives-and-the-attack-on-public-education/ and https://www.pestemag.com/featured-posts/oster-nonphpro-2022-73peb for more info).
In general, she tends to push the idea that people need to make smarter or more "rational" individual choices rather than critiquing policy or noting that individual choices collectively have significant ramifications. The kinds of normative statements she makes implicit in her research don't match with the values I would like to see in (and believe are shared by) Burnt Toast. I'm sure you did your own research before collaborating with Dr. Oster, and I am impressed to learn that she's got anti-diet culture viewpoints, but I do have some significant concerns about her other political agendas. I would love to hear your thoughts and understand where you're coming from here - thank you!
Thanks, Alyssa! Glad to have Laura speak to this and for my part, I'll reiterate what I've said before when criticism of Emily pops up here: I don’t agree with Emily on everything, whether it’s about kids, weight, food, Covid or many other topics. I fully support holding thought leaders accountable when they misstep or cause harm. But I so appreciate Emily’s openness to learning and evolving on the issue of kids and weight. She is pretty much the only mainstream public health expert I’ve seen voicing criticism of the new AAP guidelines. And she listened to me when I told her to let her kids eat as much Halloween candy as they want! (You’re welcome again, Emily’s Kids.) More of this from thin allies, please!
Hi Alyssa - I reached out to Emily because I had seen she had recently critiqued a publication linking UPFs with cancer. The headlines were scary and misleading and I appreciated her giving context and breaking down what the study actually said. I don't agree with her on everything and although I think data can be helpful in navigating some decisions we might face (as parents), I also think that reducing things down to data flattens a lot of our lived experience, weaponises science, and as you say, obscures the larger soicio-political landscape. I wasn't aware of her funding sources or that she was particularly controversial - this is new to me so thank you for brining it to my attention. I am also encouraged to see her growth around anti-fatness and know she critiqued the AAP guidelines. Thanks again.
This was very interesting to me! Thank you for this. I honestly would not have said that all my meals contain some UPF (I realize now they do). Also I agree that without UPF a home cooked meal would be nearly impossible. Making tacos with homemade tortillas is a lot more time consuming than store bought tortillas... without UPF I’d never leave the stove 😂
Yup! We’re demonizing a whole group of foods that actually work pretty hard for us!
THIS THIS THIS:
"Why does it feel more comfortable to see a white mom on Instagram making homemade popsicles for her kids and it doesn’t feel comfortable to see a Black mom in a bodega buying slushies?"
YUP.
I thought a lot about this idea as I read the mind blowing Invisible Child. My bias kicked in as I questioned the family spending limited money on"junk food". But it's really this--giving kids a moment of fun, not having money to buy anything but the cheapest snack to do Or is the issue that she buys FunYuns? Or is the issue that she is homeless and poor and a victim of abuse? And we should solve those issues FIRST.
This was super interesting and informative, with a lot to think about. Thank you!
It's kind of a side note in the interview, but I did want to say something about boycotts. You often see this kneejerk "I heard a bad thing about a company, I'm going to boycott" reaction, and that's NOT a good idea, for a couple reasons. Boycotting gets its power from being an organized response rather than an individual one -- like, I saw some people saying they were canceling Netflix over the WGA strike, as an individual response, and ... ok, let's say you do that, and then the WGA actually calls for a boycott in the future and you have already canceled so you are then not part of the immediate impact of that collective action. Also, it's something where you want to be responsive to what the workers (if it's a labor-related boycott) want, and sometimes individual consumers are all "yeah, boycott!" and the workers are going "no, that threatens our livelihood, actually."
Now, the Annie's case is a weird one because there has been an organized boycott effort, but it's never been totally clear to me exactly what the status of it is. The boycott has been run by the Food Empowerment Project, as far as I can tell, which seems to be a vegan nonprofit. Two different unions had been working with the Annie's workers at different locations. The Teamsters certainly were supportive of a boycott to the extent of approvingly posting articles about it on their website/social media. But it's all a little fuzzy who called for this and whether there's a strategic goal where a boycott serves as a real tool for building power.
So anyway, 1) always look into who is calling for a boycott and be led by the workers and the organizers and 2) in the specific Annie's case it's a little mysterious what 1 would entail. But also, feed your kid.
Oh wow, this is so smart and such helpful context! Thanks for sharing. You're right -- people often start these personal boycotts which... do nothing AND undermine your ability to help in a more concerted effort. Whew.
I often think that people who take these individual actions assume that the entity they are targeting will know *why* they are boycotting or not doing some action. I find this to be a fundamentally flawed premise.
As you point out, if you engage in this type of action in a way that is disconnected from any organized effort, there’s nothing that separates you from the person who stopped buying a brand because the price went up, or the recipe changed, or their store started stocking something else. Maybe if the scandal is big enough and enough individuals take disconnected action at the same time a message might get sent but, that’s making a lot of assumptions.
It’s sort of like voting. You’ll sometimes see people saying that they’re going to protest a given political party by not voting. The problem is, nobody is walking around and finding everyone who didn’t vote and asking them exactly why they didn’t vote.
Protests don’t work if the target of the protest doesn’t know it’s happening or why it’s happening.
This is so thoughtful and intentional - thank you!
this interview was the first I'd heard of the Amy's labor issue, and I really appreciate you sharing your research/impressions of what is happening with the boycott (and I agree on boycotts in general)
I wish every parent, pediatrician, and food policy person could hear this episode.
I actually got teary at many points while listening. I appreciated how Laura highlighted the harms of this kind of food categorization/demonization, particularly in the context of the real nutrition issue we should be attending to: child hunger.
Thank you both for this! I've been hearing a lot about UPF and it felt like more diet-culture scaremongering but I wasn't quite sure. And it struck me as odd that the UPF category is so broad -- it's one thing to distinguish between, say, chicken breasts vs McDonald's chicken nuggets, or corn on the cob vs Cheetos, but lumping every "UPF" together -- and calling it evil -- seemed strange.
What a mind-blowing episode!!! I really appreciate this, and I hurried to subscribe to Laura's substack so I could read her 3 part series (and everything else!)!
And that Birthday Tree!!! LOVE THIS as a tradition! Ice cream in bed, also spectacular! :D
Glad this episode checked a lot of boxes for you!
Roxy, I think you'll love Laura's work. Right up your alley!