“They made me feel like I was safe eating whatever the hell I wanted"

And other horrors of online anti-diet dietitians

Today I’m going to give you my exact thoughts as we read through this article together - if you would like to, you can see the article here. I hope my thoughts help you understand some of the nuance that the authors missed. I get a little sassy. Just to warn you, I did not think it was a great article. My thoughts will be in italics. The original words of the article are not.

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Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating “health at every size” — urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her “mental hunger.”

When I first started reading this article I immediately thought “I know where this is going”. But what already is making me angry is that they don’t even get into why there was a burden that needed to be lifted. Had Jaye attempted weight loss for years that resulted in weight cycling? Has she been discriminated against based on her weight? Had she tried every fad diet that has come out without success? The fact that she was searching for an alternative path in the first place is telling to me. It means that the traditional system had already failed her before she found HAES (Health at Every Size).

She stopped avoiding favorite foods such as cupcakes and Nutella. “They made me feel like I was safe eating whatever the hell I wanted,” said Rochon, 51, a video editor in Wausau, Wis. In two months, she regained 50 pounds. As her weight neared 300 pounds, she began to worry about her health.

Okay here we go. As always, there’s a little truth even in an overall crappy message. Social media is not a great place to get personalized nutrition advice. For someone who has had a disordered relationship with food, the quick quips, cute videos, and buzz phrases are not going to be super effective and creating positive changes. If we go from severe restriction to an all you can eat situation, we are probably going to feel a bit out of control. This is not intuitive eating - it is just doing the opposite of dieting. This woman likely needed the help and guidance of a professional to guide her through these changes… like a registered dietitian. This is not to say that gaining the weight back wouldn’t have happened (weight regain is the most common outcome of dieting even without an anti-diet mindset), but I would bet her weight restoration would have likely been slower and felt a bit less out of control.

The videos that Rochon encountered are part of the “anti-diet” movement, a social media juggernaut

(definition of juggernaut: a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path. …are you kidding me? I cannot imagine that the average person is feeling crushed by the path of the anti-diet movement. My mind is boggled by this choice in wording.)

that began as an effort to combat weight stigma and an unhealthy obsession with thinness. But now global food marketers are seeking to cash in on the trend.

Okay yeah. I like that they include that the purpose of anti-diet education is to help combat the very, very real issues of weight stigma, disordered eating, orthorexia, and extremely profitable (worth $72.6 billion per a quick google search) diet industry. And maybe we do need to be critical of the ways that capitalism is going to capitalism. When business can profit off of a movement, they typically up marketing to meet consumers with what they are wanting to see - see greenwashing, rainbow-washing, and, yes, most brands will follow a diet trend in order to make more money. This is particularly tough to parse out with social justice related campaigns - combatting climate change, supporting LGBTQ+ rights, and helping people take care of themselves - we want companies to support these issues. We just also know that they are making a profit at the same time.

One company in particular, General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement, an investigation by The Washington Post and The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that covers global public health, has found.

General Mills has toured the country touting anti-diet research it claims proves the harms of “food shaming.” It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks. The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels.

Why are RD’s even listed in the title of this article if the beef we have is with food companies trying to make more money? We do have research on anti-diet health messaging helping shift the shame that people feel about food choices. We also have research showing that shame isn’t a great way of encouraging behavior change. So even if your desire is to eradicate all sugar-sweetened foods in order to save the American people… shame isn’t an effective method to accomplish that goal. (By the way, that isn’t my personal goal.) I’m also laughing that the only cereal they list is Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms. God forbid a person eat cereal that is fun and sweet every once in a while!!

General Mills complies with federal regulations and “works closely with a variety of scientific, health, nutrition and other credentialed experts to ensure we provide accurate, evidence-based information,” said spokesperson Andrea Williamson.

Online dietitians — many of them backed by food makers — also are building lucrative followings by co-opting anti-diet messages. Anti-diet hashtags, such as #NoBadFoods, #FoodFreedom and #DitchTheDiet, have proliferated on social media.

Many of them backed by food makers has me cracking up. Do you know the average salary for a dietitian in the US? $66,000. You don’t meet a lot of wildly rich dietitians. Taking sponsorships is one way for a dietitian to make money - I completely agree that any financial partnership needs to be disclosed and that RD’s should be particular about who they partner with, but this is really blowing things out of proportion.

The Post and The Examination analyzed more than 6,000 social media posts by 68 registered dietitians with at least 10,000 followers. The analysis showed that roughly 40 percent of these influencers, with a combined reach of more than 9 million followers, repeatedly used anti-diet language.

Do you want to know what 40% of 68 is? 27. 27 people on social media have a following of 10,000+ people and talk about anti-diet messaging.

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