QUOTE-UNQUOTE UNHEALTHY food. That’s how Christy Harrison, one of a new group of rogue dieticians, describes Chicken McNuggets.
I can’t get enough of how she, formerly a food purist and determined orthorexic, uses that quote-unquote locution on her podcast Food Psych, a deceptively sweet piece of heresy that takes aim at the pieties, sophistries, and perils of diet culture.
At its heart, Harrison’s podcast is an intensive project of pop deconstruction—and if liberation is your goal, it works. It’s ecstatic. It’s terrifying. But while an antidiet project can almost certainly make you happier, freer, and more productive than you are now, you may also be fatter. So there’s that.
A podcast about dieting that might lead to weight gain? Yes, I realize: no. But a friend pushed Food Psych on me, and now I never miss an episode. What once sounded to me like modish self-help has become an authentic philosophical endeavor, chronicled in academic papers, podcasts, books, and social media. At the same time, in seeming to put up for grabs the self-evident connections between food, weight, and health, it can smack of disquieting science denialism.
I’d argue it’s not, and I’m prepared to spell that out. In the past 15 years, public health journals have steadily documented the health risks posed by food restriction. Moreover, the antidiet project is above all a cultural one—a breaking of chains that makes a priority of sustained mental health over the illusion of bodily thinness.
This story is from the February 2019 edition of WIRED.
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This story is from the February 2019 edition of WIRED.
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