Stay ConnectedBurnt Toast is your body liberation community. We’re working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants.
Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).
Copyright: © Virginia Sole-Smith
Welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions and some answers around fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.
Today I am chatting with my good friend and neighbor, Melinda Wenner Moyer. Melinda, welcome.
EPISODE CREDITS
Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.
Producer: Kim Baldwin.
Logo design: Deanna Lowe.
Theme Song: Farideh.
Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku
Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron
Follow us on social!
Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.
Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.
Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.
Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!
Welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!
This is a newsletter where we explore questions and some answers around fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.
And today, I’m really pleased to be chatting with Anna Sweeney, who is a social-justice oriented disabled dietitian. You probably Anna know from Instagram where she is @dietitiananna. She is also behind the awesome “You’re Nicer With Carbs” t-shirts.
I just ordered a shirt this morning, I’m super excited about it. Anna, welcome.
EPISODE CREDITS
Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.
Producer: Kim Baldwin.
Logo design: Deanna Lowe.
Theme Song: Farideh.
Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku
Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron
Follow us on social!
Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.
Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.
Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.
Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!
Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!
This is a newsletter where we explore questions, and some answers, about fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health.
I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.
I’m so excited today to introduce my guest, Marquisele Mercedes, or Mikey. She is a writer and doctoral student from the Bronx who is completing her PhD at Brown University School of Public Health, specializing in weight stigma, racism and critical public health studies. And oh my goodness, we need her work so much.
I’m putting Mikey’s Patreon right here at the top of the transcript, because I hope everyone reading/listening will check it out and support her work.
Welcome, Mikey. Thank you for being here.
EPISODE CREDITS
Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.
Producer: Kim Baldwin.
Logo design: Deanna Lowe.
Theme Song: Farideh.
Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku
Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron
Follow us on social!
Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.
Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.
Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.
Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!
Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions, and sometimes answers, on fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture and the author of The Eating Instinct, and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.I am so thrilled today to be chatting with Aubrey Gordon. Aubrey is the author of What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. She is @yrfatfriend everywhere on social media, and the co-host of the very beloved Maintenance Phase podcast. Aubrey, welcome.Aubrey Thanks so much for having me, it’s a delight to talk to you. As always. VirginiaI’m delighted, and I know my readers are going to be so delighted. So I’m bringing you on to talk about the concept of thin privilege, because I think, this is a concept that’s very hard for folks to wrap their brains around. Whenever I talk about it on social media, it inspires a lot of angry comments, a lot of defensiveness, and just a lot of feelings that come up around this concept. I’m hoping we can unpack that, and discuss how parents can explain thin privilege to our kids. Because part of the problem is that people haven’t heard of thin privilege, and now they’re grown up. So let’s start with the basics. What is thin privilege?AubreyI would say thin privilege is how folks benefit from a proximity to thinness. So whether or not you feel like you yourself qualify as “being really thin,” the closer you are to looking thin, the more thin privilege you get. Congratulations! And that includes many fat people, right? I have more thin privilege at about 350 pounds than someone who’s fatter than me does. The idea is that the closer that you get to thinness, the more you actually don’t have to think about your body or your size in terms of how other people relate to it and treat it. You may think about it quite a bit internally, but most of your struggles with your body relate to internal challenges and not to institutions rejecting you, or individuals treating you differently.So, someone with more thin privilege than me might not have to worry about strangers on the street shouting “hey, fatso” at them. Or they might not have to worry about whether or not a doctor will agree to treat them. Or they might not have to worry if they get on a plane, will they be allowed to stay on that plane, or will they be escorted off the plane without a refund and without recourse. It doesn’t mean that folks in smaller bodies don’t have challenges to work through with relationship to body image. I think it’s really important to note that thin privilege is about how other people treat you, not how you feel about your own body. So you can still have profound body image struggles, but that doesn’t change how other people treat you, even with body dysmorphia, even with eating disorders, even with whatever you’re working with. Other people still perceive you as a thinner person and treat you as a thinner person, regardless of how you perceive yourself.Virginia I think that distinction between your own emotions about your body versus how the world perceives your body is crucial. And that’s what makes it hard for folks who feel like, “I’m miserable in my body, so how can I have thin privilege?” But it’s all the things you just said, it’s that you can move through the world freely, even though you might be tormented in some way by your body.AubreyIt can be upsetting and call up defensiveness in the same way that talking about any kind of privilege can. As someone who has grown up white and middle class and remains white and middle class, I have been told consistently throughout my life that my accomplishments are my own. I haven’t really had to look at the ways in which the wind is at my back, right? And the ways in which structures are built to support me specifically as a white person and a middle class person. And I think this is a similar thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re less accomplished. It doesn’t mean that you don’t struggle with your body image, it doesn’t mean that anything inherent about you has changed. It just means becoming more aware of the ways in which the world receives your body.VirginiaSo I was reading some of your writing about this (and I’ll link in the transcript to all the many fantastic articles you’ve written on thin privilege [like this one and this one], and one statistic that really jumped out at me was that just under 50 percent of American adults tried to lose weight between 2013 and 2016, according to the CDC. And you noted that white people and people with higher incomes were the most likely to be engaged in weight loss efforts, meaning that those of us with particularly pronounced privileges are the ones most likely to be engaged in activities to try to reduce our size. Is thin privilege something that already privileged people are actively seeking out?Aubrey Absolutely. Part of that, to my mind—there’s less research on this, this is all just me spitballing—but, to my mind, that is tied to the very explicit history of racism broadly, and anti-Blackness in particular. It’s tied to how we think and talk about fatness and fat people. It’s also tied to our relationship between class and fatness. Overwhelmingly, we are met with these media caricatures of fat people as being poorer than thin people, we are met with caricatures of fat Black folks, particularly as being the most abrasive of fat people, right? And most domineering or least intelligent or whatever—it sort of supercharges any of our existing associations with a community. So, yes, thin privilege is something that we seek, and it’s something that we seek in order to escape the ways that we actually do see fat people being treated: frankly, significantly worse than thin people. So folks will feel defensive of and disconnected from a sense of their own privilege, while at the same time on some level, kind of consciously cashing in on it or trying to figure out how to gain more of that privilege.Virginia I was talking to Deb Burgard about this a few years ago, and she said, a lot of the body positivity movement is small fat women trying to get their white privilege back, trying to move themselves back up the ladder, in a way. The intersection of all of this is fascinating, and uncomfortable. It’s hard to look at how we’ve benefited from these systems.AubreyI also think the hard thing about bodies is that we do live and operate in a culture that makes absolutely all of us feel like garbage in our bodies. Like 100 percent of people. It’s set up so that all of us feel bad. And part of the challenge is that we conflate how we feel about our bodies and how we’ve been made to feel about our bodies, with how much privilege comes with being in that body. And we’ve got to do a better job of disentangling those things, which will allow us to actually honor both of them more.Virginia Let’s talk about thin privilege with kids. I see this coming up in a couple different ways. One example that I talked about recently on social was a friend shopping for softball pants for her 8-year-old daughter, and finding that her daughter can’t wear the same uniform that her peers are wearing.AubreyThat’s so—listeners cannot see my face. But it’s a sad, bummed face. VirginiaI was a thin kid. I never had to think about whether the uniform would fit me. Or how that becomes a barrier to participation. If you’re the kid wearing sweatpants when everyone else is wearing the uniform, you don’t feel like you can play the sport in the same way. What other ways do you see thin privilege show up for kids?AubreyI think a big one is the built environment. For me in middle school and high school, those desks with a chair attached were like a real special kind of hell. I couldn’t flip the desk down, I would just have to sort of like, sit in the chair with the desk flapped up, which was like a little flag waving like, “Hi, everybody. I’m the fat kid. Hello! Look over here.”So I would try and write on my knee. And my notes were kind of garbage. It just made things—not insurmountable, but it was more difficult than it should have been.It is rare that schools or teachers are outfitting schools—and the same can be true of parents at friend’s houses—with furniture, knowing the weight capacity and that sort of thing. I ended up opting out of a lot of playdates with friends and physical games. I remember going to laser tag, and there was a point at which I stopped going, because I thought the laser tag vest thing wasn’t going to fit me anymore. So I stopped going to friend’s birthday parties. There is sort of a social isolation element that comes with all of this stuff. And I think, you know, it never would have occurred to me at the time. But boy, oh, boy, like just a thimble full of awareness from anybody’s parents could have gone just miles and miles and miles.VirginiaWhat should that look like? A lot of my readers are parents. Some of them are parents of fat kids, a lot of them are parents of thinner kids or kids with degrees of thin privilege. How do we talk to our kids about this concept? How can we be more mindful of exactly what you’re saying: thinking through the logistics of the birthday party, thinking through the logistics of the sports team, or whatever it is to make environments more inclusive for kids?AubreySo I come to this conversation, not as a parent, but as a very proud and engaged aunt. So a grain of salt from a guy who’s not taking care of kids around the clock. But I do think that talking to your kids about, “Do you think everybody can do this? Do you think everybody would be comfortable doing this? Who do you want to have there? Oh, I’m not sure if this kid could do that.” I think this works around size, I think it works around disability, I think it works on a lot of stuff.I have, as you can imagine, been very open with my niece and nephew both about what I do and what I write about, and why it matters. And I felt nervous about it, because it feels sort of “controversial” or high stakes or something to talk to kids about body stuff. But as with talking to kids about trans issues, or race, or disability, or any sort of social issue, they are totally down. And it has opened up this vein of conversation that I don’t think I would have had with them. My niece, who’s now 14 will come to me and be like, “My friend is constantly telling me how fat she feels, and I’m actually fatter than her, so it feels really bad to me. But I don’t want to take away how she’s feeling, but also she calls her little brother ‘fat’ as an insult.” So we have these pretty rich conversations to unpack all of those competing things.Because when you just sit down with a kid and you’re like, “Listen, man, sometimes people are fatter than other people. And sometimes people are mean to people who are fatter than other people or think that they don’t deserve the same things. And so we’re going to do a little looking out for fat people. What do you say?” That’s pretty much it and I don’t actually know a kid who isn’t moved to be a helper. So just tapping into that goes a long, long way.VirginiaI’ve found that in talking to my own kids about body size, they can use the word fat in this very unaffected, natural way that is so beautiful to me, as someone who had to go through the process of reclaiming it. It’s like, this won’t be something you have to reclaim. This will just be a word for you. Oh!AubreyI feel like the conversations that I have with folks who are parents is with parents who are not fat, raising kids who are not fat, right? And they’re really nervous that they’re going to have the thin kid who’s calling everybody fat.The way that I’ve handled that is to just be like, “Hey, this is a totally neutral word. Some people get their feelings hurt by it. So check in with people about what words they’re okay with. And then if they're okay with it, you can use it, it’s fine.” Creating even a sliver of daylight between what the word itself means and how people experience that word, can help kids navigate that. We do this all the time with words related to your private parts. There are lots and lots of times that we’re sort of teaching kids about when and whether words are appropriate. And this is another one of those.Virginia I also think you can talk about bodies in a really positive, normal way, and also teach your kids that we don’t talk about the bodies of other people, just like we don't touch the bodies of other people without their consent. If your 5 year old yells it out in a grocery store, that’s a great opportunity to say, “Hey, you know, we don’t actually yell out people’s physical characteristics in public, because you just don’t know how that’s gonna land. But it doesn’t mean that their bodies are bad. It just means that we respect that people’s bodies belong to them.”AubreyI think a totally neutral parallel is: You don’t show up at a party unless you get an invitation to that party. It doesn’t have to be like loaded and heavy. You don’t take a book from the library, if you haven’t checked it out and made sure it’s available. There are lots and lots and lots of ways that we check on something first before we go ahead and do it.VirginiaThose are great examples. So steering away from kids for a little bit: You talk a lot about fat people having these different levels of thin privilege, and why it’s so important to articulate the difference between what I as a size 16 experiences versus what you experience. And that’s something that the body positive space, the Health At Every Size space, we haven’t always been great at doing that. The small fat ladies like myself have done a lot of damage, and we have some karma to work off. So I have a question from a reader that’s actually a little more about health privilege than thin privilege, but I think they’re very related and I would love to get your take on this.She writes: “I’d like there to be more conversation about fat people who do have chronic health issues that medical professionals insist are brought on by how we eat or how we move, particularly diabetes, which is the dirty word of our culture right now. So many people dealing with this health issue are given poorer care because of the fatphobia of their doctors. Having this disease is like an open invitation to be judged and demeaned. The discourse stressing that it’s possible and even likely to be perfectly healthy and fat, while true, leaves out those of us who aren’t ‘perfect’ or ‘healthy in this paradigm. This is more of a screed than a question.” AubreyThere’s so much to unpack and I’m so deeply glad that this person wrote in about this, because this is a thing that I feel extremely passionately about. When we’re trying to defend ourselves against anti-fat bias and anti-fat attitudes and behaviors, the thing that is most tempting and the easiest to do is to grab on to the closest other privilege that we have, and go: I might be fat, but I eat really healthy and I shop at the farmers market; or I might be fat, but I workout all the time, and I have a gym membership; or I might be fat, but I’m perfectly healthy, and my blood work is probably better than yours. All of which makes sense as a desire to defend ourselves.When we do that, what we’re saying is that fat people who are disabled and chronically ill are not deserving of the same things that we’re deserving of. That’s not necessarily our intention when we say those things, but that is the function. It sends a really clear exclusionary message, in the same way that when thin women tell me that body positivity is only for people who are happy and healthy, which is sort of code for, like, not fat, right? So, not you, everyone else can feel okay about their bodies, but not you, is sort of what we’re doing when we say that we’re perfectly healthy. And we’re reinforcing the idea that our perception of someone else’s health is acceptable data…
Full show notes at the publisherWelcome to the now-weekly audio newsletter! It’s like a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. And just in case you don’t like listening (or that’s not accessible to you), I’m including a transcript (lightly edited for clarity) below.Audio newsletters are now coming out every Thursday. But starting next week, they’ll be for paid subscribers only. If you’d like to be one of those people, click here. If you’re wondering what “paid subscriber” means, read all about it here.VirginiaHello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions (and some answers) about fatphobia, diet, culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture. And I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today I’m really pleased to be chatting with Anna Lutz, a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders and family feeding in Raleigh, North Carolina. Anna also blogs at Sunny Side Up Nutrition and co-hosts the Sunny Side Up Nutrition podcast with Elizabeth Davenport and Anna Mackay. Welcome, Anna, it's so good to have you here!AnnaI’m so glad to be talking with you today! Thank you so much.VirginiaI’m bringing you on today to talk about growth charts. I hear from parents of kids who are low on the growth chart and are getting pressured to move them up higher, and of course, I hear from lots of parents whose kids are in the 90/95th percentile and are being told that this is a huge problem.And I think there’s a weird mindset, which I see from both from parents and pediatricians, that somehow our goal is to get everyone into the 50th percentile. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what growth charts are supposed to do? And what are the misconceptions that you see coming up about them?AnnaThe way I like to explain growth charts is that they are made up of data pulled from thousands and thousands and thousands of children, that gets put into a chart that we can read, as a visual representation. And each time your child goes to their doctor for their well child visit, they’re plotted on this chart. And so if you take your eight-year-old to the doctor, they’re plotted, weight for age, let’s say it’s the 25th percentile. All that means is if you had 100 eight-year-olds in a room together, 75 of them would weigh more than that child and 25 of them would weigh less. So it’s putting them on a bell-shaped curve at that moment.What we know is, over time, most children follow their own curve. So for example, this child, most likely, from age two to 20, will most likely fall somewhere along this 25th percentile. Now, there are exceptions to that, and we can get into that. But I think you hit the nail on the head. Growth charts do not mean that we’re all supposed to be at the 50th percentile. All it does is look at a population of kids, and see where does your child fall? And their point on the growth chart is just information.VirginiaBreaking it down like that, it makes me realize that it also really only tells you this one data point about your kid. And we give this data point a huge amount of weight, right? I mean, we think this says whether they're healthy or not healthy, but the way you’re explaining it, it’s got nothing to do with that.AnnaExactly. And, you know, it’s going to depend on, are they in the middle of a growth spurt? You know, what is happening at that particular moment, when you happen to take them to their well child visit? Did they just have a stomach bug for the last two weeks, and they’ve lost some weight that they’re going to regain pretty easily in the next month or so? Well, that plot point is going to look really different than if you had taken them to their well child visit a month from now. So I really like to help people see it as information that we can interpret. I think there is some value in it. But sometimes we misinterpret it, and put too much value on it.VirginiaAnd you and I have talked before about the way growth charts were constructed. In terms of the populations that they’re based on, they don’t necessarily represent kids today that well.AnnaRight. The CDC growth charts that we all are using came out in 2000. So now, they’re 21 years old, and they were based on data that was collected before that, clearly. I’m not sure what the plans are for making new growth charts, but just having that information is important. They are really big sample sizes, so that's a positive thing, you know; they were created using data from lots of children from that time period, across the whole United States. But again, if we’re taking one child, and we’re comparing them to a huge population, again, it’s just information. If you're thinking about a very specific demographic, it may not make sense to compare this child in a specific demographic to the whole United States population.VirginiaWhen I looked it up, I saw that the data for the BMI-for-age chart was collected somewhere between the 1960s and the 1990s. And it was predominantly white kids that were in their samples at that point. So again, this is going to be very not reflective of lots of kids today. Let’s talk a little more about when kids fall off their curve, or jump up their curve, all the different negative ways that it gets talked about. You mentioned something like a stomach bug should not be cause for alarm, puberty is another time where kids often appear to be losing their curve or their trajectory in some way. So talk a little bit about why that’s not a time to panic.AnnaRight around puberty, a few years before, a few years after, there’s—for both girls and boys—a jump in height and a jump in weight, and the rate of height gain, and the rate of weight gain is higher. But again, these growth curves are all based on averages. If you have a child that goes through puberty earlier than average, their increase in rate of weight gain and increase in rate of height gain is going to be earlier. So it’s going to look like they’ve veered above their growth curve. And if you have a child that has a later onset of puberty, they’re going to look like they start to fall off their curve, because they’re not gaining in height or weight at that same rapid pace that this average visual representation shows. What happens is, usually, after puberty, the child kind of goes back to where they were. And again, that’s typically, every child is different.VirginiaI hear from lots of parents, and I’m sure you do, too, that around age 10 is when the pediatrician says, “Well, let’s think about a diet” or, “we’re concerned about this big jump they’ve had.” And it’s sounding like what you’re saying is, first of all, a) diets for kids are always a terrible idea, and b) this may not be any kind of problem, this may just be where they are. AnnaWith a 10-year-old, you might not know yet that this child is going through an earlier puberty. It just might be this kind of “jump in their growth curve” that’s the first indication that they might be going through an earlier puberty. And that’s not all that abnormally early, just earlier than average. So yes, we all need to take a deep breath and trust that the body knows what it’s doing. And, you know, growth curves, I like using them, because I think they can give us some information. But I don’t think we need to kind of hold them up as the be all, end all. VirginiaI had a question from a reader saying her kid had always been in the 60 and 70th percentiles, and when they went in for their checkup, post-pandemic, he’s jumped up to the 80th percentile. I think this was a six year old. And the pediatrician was immediately very alarmed about this and immediately jumped to, you know, it’s all the junk food, it’s the pandemic, and the way there’s so much snacking and went to this whole place with it. That feels like several leaps. What are you hearing right now, in terms of how people’s fear about the “pandemic weight gain” is fueling this?AnnaI feel like it’s putting blinders on us trying to talk about what’s important. You know, I think people’s weight changed during the pandemic. First of all, you know, you and I have talked about this, but: Kids’ weights were supposed to change. So first of all, yay. But, for children and adults whose weight went up maybe more than “expected,” I don’t think that’s the conversation that needs to be happening. We need to look at how are we all doing with our mental health, how are we doing with taking care of our bodies? I would expect for people’s weight to change in a year that our schedules changed so much. So what I worry about is how this hyper focus on that change over the last year is keeping us from having the conversations that we need to be having about how the pandemic has affected all of our mental health and well-being.VirginiaAbsolutely. So this may be a symptom of something going on with your kid, but the solution is not to cut out snack foods. That’s not going to deal with the underlying stuff.AnnaExactly. That’s how I like to think about it, this information from a growth curve is some information. It’s like a little flashing yellow light, like something might be going on, let’s be curious about it, it could be an indicator of something else. But we can’t only try to just turn off that light, and then assume everything will be okay.VirginiaIt’s like, if your “check engine” light comes on, saying yes, I will be putting duct tape over that!AnnaExactly. That doesn’t solve it.VirginiaI’m interested too in how often I hear that seeing kids in a higher spot on the growth curve immediately translates to a conversation about food. This actually happened with my younger daughter who’s always been on the higher end of the growth curve. And when she was around, you know, 18 months or so, my husband took her in, and it wasn’t our usual pediatrician. I think at that point, she was 90th percentile or wherever she was. And immediately, the pediatrician looked at her spot on the growth chart and turned to my husband and said, “So is she eating a lot of white foods?”Anna18 months old? Virginia! Goodness gracious.VirginiaI knew you’d love that. By the way, at that point, she was a very eclectic eater who tried everything. My other child, who’s in a small body, tends to be the “white food kid” in our house. And this is not to shame white foods—they’re great! But he immediately saw her body size and made this assumption without asking questions, without gathering more information. And, you know, it was a baseless assumption. I think naming that as what it is, which is fatphobia, is really important.AnnaIt is. There is research that shows that children in larger bodies do not eat more than children in smaller bodies. [NOTE FROM VIRGINIA: This research can be found here, here, and here.] This assumption that because someone’s in a larger body, the pediatrician then needs to figure out in what way that child is “eating too much”—it’s not even based on any fact that children in larger bodies do eat more. It’s just amazing that that’s exactly where we all go. And, to be realistic, unfortunately, that’s how pediatricians are being trained right now. Their whole training needs to be adjusted.VirginiaYes, it really does. I’m going to link in the transcript to the letter that you’ve put together that parents can take to their pediatricians. But let’s talk a little bit about how parents can take the focus off weight in these appointments. What are some strategies for navigating that?AnnaI really like to encourage parents to ask their pediatrician not to discuss weight in front of their children. You know, these concepts are super abstract. They’re confusing, even for adults. So if you have these two adults, the doctor and the parent, sitting there looking over a chart saying this is too big, this is too little, what’s going on? Is your child eating too many white foods? It can be super confusing and scary to a child. The whole message is: There’s something wrong with this child that the doctor is so worried about, that the parent needs to figure out how to fix.There’s the letter that I wrote with Katja Rowell on our website that you can email to a doctor, or you can print it out and hand it to them. What I’ve done with my children is—I said it verbally when the children were younger, and then before I take them in to their well child visit, I send a quick message through the patient portal. And I just say: “As a reminder, please do not discuss weight in front of my children. If you have any concerns, feel free to print out the growth chart and we can talk about it privately.” And I’m still amazed that when that conversation is taken out of the visit, so much more important stuff can be discussed.VirginiaBecause then you can actually talk about things like mental health and these other factors. I think that’s great. For someone who hasn’t had a chance to do that, or the message didn’t get through, which can also happen, and it comes up during a visit anyway, is there language you like to use to help change the conversation, shut it down? What do I say in the moment, if it’s coming up in front of my kids?AnnaThat’s a great question. I think I would say, “That is not something I’m concerned about, but we can talk about it later if you’d like.” I’d say something like that, or I would say, “I’m not concerned about how my child is growing, let’s move on to something else.” I do want to acknowledge, I have a lot of privileges—I mean, my kids’ doctor knows what I do for a living. So there’s a lot of reasons that I feel comfortable doing that, and it might be harder for other people. That’s one reason we wrote that letter, to make it a little easier. You can hand it to someone and the research is all laid out. But any way you can steer the conversation to something else is helpful. And if the doctor is not open to it, is it a possibility to find a different doctor? Again, that might not be a possibility, but consider it.VirginiaAnd if they go the food route? The mom who wrote to me was saying the doctor’s immediate comment was “no more juice boxes” without asking how often they even have juice boxes. You as a dietitian can navigate that really easily, but what are some talking points we can use? How do we push back? I think the food shaming is hard because you feel very attacked. It’s “oh, God, I’ve been caught out doing this bad thing.” And it’s hard in the moment to remember that there are no good foods and bad foods. How do I communicate that to a doctor? Anna That’s a great question. I think coming up with a line that feels true to you ahead of time can help. So could it be, “I’m not concerned about my child’s eating.” It could be, “if you want to talk more specifics about my child’s food, we’ll need to talk about it later or on email.” But not getting into the nitty gritty of all those questions about—I just went last week, you know, it’s the juice, it’s the “how many fruits and vegetables are they eating? Are they drinking milk?” And for a more sensitive child, they’re gonna start to latch on to these messages.VirginiaYeah, I’ve heard that kids will come home and say, “Mommy, the juice is bad.”AnnaExactly: “Why are you giving me that, I don’t understand?”or “I don’t eat enough vegetables.” For a sensitive kid who maybe is a “pickier eater” and they hear the doctor saying these things, it can feel super scary. If you are worried about your child’s eating, then maybe say, “Is there a referral you could give me? Is this a conversation we could have later?” I just don’t think it’s appropriate to have it when your 4, 5, 8, 9 year old is sitting there.VirginiaOne line I started to use is “she’s really good at listening to her body.” I kind of figured this out when my older daughter was going through her early feeding challenges, and as we were getting to sort of firmer…
Full show notes at the publisherWelcome to Burnt Toast, a newsletter from Virginia Sole-Smith, which you can read about here.Time for another audio newsletter! It’s like a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. And just in case you don’t like listening (or that’s not accessible to you), I’m including a full transcript (edited lightly for clarity) below.This conversation builds on my previous piece on how to dress our post-pandemic bodies, which might have changed a little or a lot over the past year and a half. If you missed Part 1, you can read that here.VirginiaHello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions, and some answers, about fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. And today, I am chatting with Shira Rose, who is an amazing eating disorder therapist, activist and body positive style blogger who really gets fat fashion. About two weeks ago, I wrote about this topic, and you guys had a lot of questions. So I am bringing Shira on to talk more about all of this. Welcome, Shira!Shira Rose Thank you. It’s so good to be here.VirginiaI should also say that Shira and I are also In Real Life Friends, not just Internet people. We met when I was reporting a story on weight stigma and eating disorders. And then we bonded over our mutual love of puppies and giant chocolate chip cookies and many other things.Shira Rose Oh my God, I miss those Levain bakery cookies.VirginiaOh, yes. Okay, Shira, I’m excited to talk to you about clothes. But before we get to that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you became a body positive style blogger in the first place and a little bit about what clothes mean to you?Shira Rose I think a big reason why I became more into fashion than the average person was because growing up in a larger body, I had no access to clothes. And so I remember being a teenager, and dressing like I was 70 and 80, which is not what a 15 and 16 year old wants to be doing. And that was just another way that I felt different. I mean, I already felt different cause I was bigger than everyone else. And the world let me know that that wasn’t okay. But then on top of that, I couldn’t even dress in a way that reflected who I was. And I don’t think people understand it. It’s like, “it’s just clothing, it’s not a big deal.” It is a big deal, when clothes become another way that you’re different in a world that already makes you feel like your body is wrong for being larger. So I think not having that access made me feel just even more uncomfortable in my body, more isolated, more separate from everyone else. And so it was really important to me that I try to make my blog as inclusive as possible so that I’m never another place where people feel like they don’t fit in. And then, of course, I’m a therapist, and I treat people with eating disorders as well as being in my own recovery. And so Health at Every Size, and intuitive eating, and fat positivity are topics that are incredibly important to me.Virginia Totally, that makes sense. You’ve shared some on your socials and on the blog about how, as you’re progressing in your eating disorder recovery, clothing becomes complicated at these different points. There’s a lot that clothing sort of continues to bring up. And you recently had a pretty big deal event of burning some old clothes that were too small and that you had been holding onto for a long time. So, tell us a little bit about what that was like. And, you know, how you’re feeling about clothes right now?Shira Rose I’m kind of glad you asked me this question because I feel like social media maybe portrays this idea that I just burnt these clothes, and it was so cathartic, and it was so liberating, and now I feel better and I can close the door and move on. And the reality was that I didn’t feel this like I had some aha moment, when I was burning my clothes. I felt sad the whole time. Then I locked myself in a bathroom and cried for two hours. It was really, really hard. And just to be clear: A lot of people that have eating disorders do not lose weight, and their eating disorder is still valid and severe and is worthy of getting help. I want to put that out upfront. But with my eating disorder, I did go from being in a larger body to being in an average to small body. And it was a small body that I was dying in, but I was congratulated for every step of the way, because I finally looked the way people thought I should look. And [now in recovery] losing access to the clothes that I had in that smaller body is really hard. It’s once again a reminder again that my body is different and I can’t just walk into a store and find clothes that fit me anymore. And that’s been really, really, really hard to contend with. I think fashion has come a little bit of a way since I was a teenager, but now people are like, “Oh yeah, but these three stores exist! Everything’s great!” And that’s not the case.VirginiaLike it’s three stores, compared to the world.Shira Rose Exactly. So at nine out of 10 stores, I’m not going to find clothes that fit me and I’m saying this as somebody in a small fat body, so it’s significantly harder for someone that’s in a mid- to super-fat body who literally has access to maybe 10 stores total in the entire world. And if that’s not your style, too bad, that’s all you have.VirginiaThat is your style, because that’s the only clothing you can put on your back.Shira Rose Yeah, unless you learn how to sew somehow. So I think it’s been really hard. But it was important for me to do that. Because I think leaving the door open is risky. When I have the clothes in front of me that are too small, I can be like, “Well, I know how to go back and fit into them.” But I really want to make sure that that’s not an option. And I want to close as many doors as I can to my eating disorder. And so it was important for me, but it’s still really, really hard.Virginia That’s interesting. So for you, it was not this sort of cathartic release of the eating disorder. It was more of like, a tool for protecting yourself and protecting your recovery. But then, of course, there’s all this grief that comes with that.Shira Rose I mean, there’s definitely also the drama of lighting it on fire! And just to be clear, I donated and sold nine gigantic bags of clothes. This was just stuff that I couldn’t sell or donate. But yeah. I would have liked it to be cathartic, but it wasn’t quite that. You know what it was, it was working really hard to let go of an eating disorder that I’ve had for 22 years. There has been a lot more grief with that than I expected.Virginia I think so many people listening to this can relate to how clothes can kind of symbolize and hold those feelings for us. I think that’s very relatable and very real. So now I have some questions from readers. And this is more practical shopping stuff people are struggling with and because you are so plugged into particularly plus size, fashion and fashion in general. And it’s weird that we separate them out, they should be the same thing.Shira Rose I wish. One day.Virginia So I thought you would have some really good ideas for people. So, the first question, this person writes: I wear a size 22 US women’s sizing and tend to dress very casually for the most part. I feel very frustrated by how many garments are made with extremely thin, clinging material, or polyester blends that look ratty after a few washings. But I don’t even know where to look for good quality plus size clothes. A few people have suggested Universal Standard, but their casual stuff also tends to be made with thin, drapey, clingy material, any idea of somewhere else I can look?Man, that polyester blend is the worst, and it is everywhere.Shira Rose It really is. And I think what’s hard is that you can’t go, most of the time, you can’t walk into a store and touch things and feel them and try them on. With plus size fashion, you’re kind of limited to ordering all the things online and then trying them on and then having to return, if you have the energy to do that.VirginiaUntil your credit card explodes.Shira Rose Yeah. So Universal Standard is a great place, but there are going to be some things that are more clingy and some things that are not. And it’s really about looking at the materials of the clothes, and then maybe ordering a few things and trying them. And if you have the energy returning the things that don’t work. Some other brands that I thought of were WRAY or Nettle Studios, because they’re the more sustainable brands, which I found have better quality fabrics. But they are very specific styles. So if that’s not your style, then you might not love it. But I just wanted to throw out those options. I would just look at the materials, and also just try all the things on.VirginiaThat makes sense to check the fabrics. I do find that plus size clothes, you tend to see less of things that are just made with just cotton or just linen and I don’t know if that’s because they think they’re creating a more comfortable fit? Do they think stiffer fabrics are harder to fit to bigger bodies? I don’t know what the behind-the-scenes math is on that, but it is very irritating. Okay, next question: I would love to hear about navigating swimsuits and activewear. I love swimming, but it’s hard to find a plus size training swimsuit, almost everything is cut to be very modest, which means I can’t really move around, those high cut legs make it so I can actually move around and kick. Similarly, I would love to wear sports bras and racerback tops for hiking or yard work. But I’m not sure where to start, particularly with how expensive activewear can be.And I’ll also add that I feel like the flip side of plus size swimsuits is that they’re often very cleavage-y and there’s no boob support. It’s like one or the other. And that’s not great for being active either. Like if you’re me, and you’re chasing your kids around on the beach, and you don’t want your boobs falling out in front of everyone.Shira Rose Okay, so I have good news and bad news for this question, I think. I’ll start with the bad and go to the good after, so we can end on a high note. But when it comes to swim, I don’t know if it’s even worse this year because of COVID, but there really are not a lot of options. I can throw out the ones that most of you have already heard of, which are Torrid, Eloquii, Swimsuits for All. And then maybe department stores that might sell a few plus size swimsuits. But to be honest, they’re not that great. I mean, I haven’t found great options that I like, at all.VirginiaI’m gonna add Lands’ End swimsuits. Which I think I told you that once and you were like, “those are mom swimsuits.” And they kind of are, but actually like, I have a really cute navy blue one with a little eyelet lace ruffled trim, and it’s not too cleavage-y. I don’t know that it would be good for active swimming. But yeah, they definitely have more sporty options, too. And they have very inclusive sizing.Shira Rose You reminded me, I did see a cute little tie-dye, colorful one from them that was not that bad. If you’re into that.VirginiaAnd like, if you just want like a basic black situation, Lands’ End has a good, solid selection.Shira Rose I think they go to 24? I don’t know exactly. We could probably check afterwards. VirginiaI can put that in the transcript with their ranges. [UPDATE: They go up to size 26.] Did you say you had any good news?Shira Rose Oh, yeah. The good news is that I feel like activewear has some really cute things and they’ve come a long way. Some of my favorites, I would say Girlfriend—and they're sustainable too, which is nice—they go up to 6XL. Day Won, they go up to size 32 and they have some really cute pieces. And then Superfit Hero goes up to 7XL, which is really nice. And then if you want a more budget-friendly one, I would say Old Navy. They go up to 4XL and people really actually like a lot of their things. So I feel like there's a lot more going on with cute and comfortable activewear.VirginiaWhich is great, that's huge. That's a big change. Okay, next question is: “What can I wear that isn't a tunic and leggings but also is a tunic and leggings because that's all I wear?” I love this question.Shira Rose This question makes me laugh and like, you do you, first of all! I would think of ways maybe to spice up the leggings, if that’s something that you’re comfortable wearing. So maybe finding really comfy, cute jeggings or finding leather leggings for more of the winter/fall.VirginiaI thought of your leather leggings for this! You have really cute ones.Shira Rose Thanks, I don’t know that those are still going to fit, but hopefully I'll find a good replacement.VirginiaYeah, they were great.Shira Rose Anyway, so you could spice up the legging game. If you are into dresses, maybe try a comfy, flowy oversized dress and you have a tunic look. And then depending on what your thighs feel like, I always wear bike shorts underneath for comfort and for no horrifyingly uncomfortable chafing. But you know, also, if you like wearing leggings and tunics, that’s fine too.Virginia I also think that kind of outfit combination gets demonized as a “fat girl outfit.” And I think we need to reject that. Because it can be really freeing to find a uniform that works for you. And that feels good on your body. And then you can just like get three or four or five versions of it and like have your week figured out and remove the stress from your life, it can be so helpful. And I feel like not getting hung up on is this outfit on trend is helpful. f it feels good in your body then just go with that. I think that's great.Shira Rose Exactly.Virginia The last question we're going to do is: “Jeans for a bigger belly that stay up?” I have this question. This is like the story of my life with jeans. If you are more of a—to use women’s magazine terminology—“apple-shaped person.”Shira Rose Yes. We are fruits. VirginiaYes, exactly. But a lot of women’s jeans are assuming an hourglass figure, so the waist cuts in. So if you’re not shaped that way—which I’m not—you end up having to buy bigger to fit your waist, but then the legs are too big, so you’re just like constantly yanking them up. It’s a whole journey we’re on.Shira Rose That is like the literal story of my life. I have tried on more jeans this month than I’ve tried it in my whole life, which isn’t saying much considering I grew up in a cult and didn’t wear jeans, which is a whole other story. But oh my God. [AN IMPORTANT NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: Shira asked me to add that she regrets her use of “cult,” here. She writes: “I don’t feel that way about the religion as a whole but my specific upbringing made me feel that way at times. I’m sorry for using that word and honestly, if I could take it back, I would.” —VSS]Okay, this is a weird find that’s only helpful if you’re under size 18, but I love my Express jeans. They have these knit ones that feel like leggings but they look like jeans and they have cute styles. I feel like a lot of jeggings are kind of boring, but they have cute ones but you have to be under a size 18 so it’s not going to be accessible for everyone. And then honestly, this is also again, not ideal, but the Old Navy jeggings that have the elastic top. So you wouldn’t want to wear anything tucked in for that because that’s not the cutest look, unless that’s what you like. And they’re cheap, but they they stay up pretty nicely. And so any jegging type of jean that has that elastic top.VirginiaLike the Rockstar jeggings?Shira Rose Yeah, but only some of them have that top so look for those. But also like Liverpool denim, like, a bu…
Full show notes at the publisherWelcome to Burnt Toast, a newsletter from Virginia Sole-Smith, which you can read about here. This week, I’m trying out my first audio newsletter! If that’s a confusing concept for you, I get it. Technology is so extra. Think of this as a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. And just in case you don’t like listening, or that’s not accessible to you, I’m including a full transcript (edited lightly for clarity) below. I’d love to know what you think of this conversation, and of the whole audio newsletter idea — should we do more? (Leave a comment or hit reply to let me know.) I really miss my old podcast (more on that below), and I’d love to bring you more of my conversations with favorite researchers, activists, weight-inclusive healthcare providers and other writers I love.For now, here’s my conversation with Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. She answers your questions about picky 1-year-olds, ice cream-shaming 3-year-olds, raising intuitive eaters with food allergies, and more. Virginia Hello, and welcome to the first audio version of Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a feminist writer and author of The Eating Instinct. And joining me today is Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. Amy, welcome! Amy Hello! Virginia Thank you for being here with me. For those of you who don’t know, Amy and I are also best friends. And we are co-hosts of the currently-on-hiatus podcast Comfort Food. But Amy is also many other things. So Amy, why don’t you tell people about yourself and your work? Amy Sure. So my primary work right now is on YummyToddlerFood.com. I do recipes, feeding advice, sanity — sanity for parents with little kids...Virginia I thought you were gonna say “sanity” full stop. And I was like, that’s amazing.Amy I wish! I am also the author of a kids cookbook called Busy Little Hands: Food Play. And what else? I have three little kids. I live outside of Des Moines, in Iowa. And I’m, you know, so tired of cooking like everybody else.Virginia And she’s not getting a dog because we were just talking about that and about how I have a dog that maybe I shouldn’t have. But she’s smarter than me. So I mean, we used to do this podcast Comfort Food, and we hope to someday do it again, when there’s not a pandemic, and we have more reliable childcare than we have in our lives these days. But if you guys like this conversation, and you want more of me and Amy, you can find, I don’t know, like 80 episodes or so, that we did over at ComfortFoodPodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I’ll do that plug. And of course, all of Amy’s work is YummyToddlerFood.com. So the reason I wanted to have Amy on is because lots of folks have been sending in questions that are very small-child-specific. And while I have parented small children, I don’t consider myself an expert at feeding them. But Amy, not only parents them, but also, you know, has helped thousands and thousands of parents figure this stuff out. So the first question we’re going to answer is one that I think every parent has, at some point, which is: My baby used to eat everything. And now at 13 months, 15 months, 19 months, it seems like she’s dropping foods every week. Am I really supposed to just let her decide how much to eat?Amy Well, you don’t have to... but you maybe should. Okay, so this is an incredibly common question. I think the thing that most parents don’t realize is that 1-year-olds grow less slowly than they did as babies. And so they are naturally less hungry, even though they are more mobile and all over the place. And so your baby, as a baby might have eaten all sorts of things, because their hunger and just what else was going on in their life was very different. And now as a toddler, they may be less hungry, and more interested in all the other things that they now realize they can do. And so parents often see this as picky eating, when, if they’re just less hungry, they’re not going to eat as much or as many foods. And it can sort of snowball, if you then put yourself in the position of trying to figure out what they’ll eat. Because even if they’re not actually hungry, they may still eat some favorite snacky foods because those are easy to eat. And they’re comforting, they taste really good. But they may not eat other foods that you want them to eat. And so then you’re like narrowing the list of foods that they may eat. So what I recommend instead is just continuing with the Division Of Responsibility, which, if anyone follows Virginia, you probably know what this is. But it’s where it’s clearly delineated what your job is, at meals, your job is to decide what’s served, your job is to decide when the meal is and where it happens. And then we leave the kids to decide which foods and how much of them to eat, if at all. And by doing that, you really free yourself up from worrying about how many bites they took. Because as you know, as an adult, if anyone tells you how much to eat, or ask you to eat more or less, you’re going to have an immediate emotional reaction that is very disconnected from actual hunger. And so the less we can make that happen with this age, in particular, when all they really want is control, the better. And I think the saner everyone will feel during mealtimes. That may mean that your kids eat a lot less than you expect. But it also means that you’re not going to be fighting with them to get them to take a certain amount of bites at every meal.Virginia Which is exhausting and crazy-making. Amy And I think too, if you can consider what they’re eating over the course of a week or even two weeks, it’s probably going to look a lot better than what they didn’t eat for lunch today. Because they may eat a ton of breakfast and then not eat a lot of dinner. Or every other Tuesday, they may eat seven meals. There’s no one right way for kids to eat. And I think a lot of times, we’re trying to force them into this mode of eating certain amounts of food groups at every meal. And that’s just not the way that kids naturally eat.Virginia Yeah. And this phase can go on for many years, we should say, too. I mean, I have a 7-year-old, you have an 8-year-old, and we still see, you know, not this exactly. But versions of this from time to time. So don’t feel bad, if you’re listening and have an older kiddo still in this phase. Amy Well, and at least as they get older, they can verbalize more. And you can suss out what the true issue is. With 1-year-olds, it’s really hard because even if they can talk, they cannot always use the right words, or explain things exactly. And so it’s the combination of all of those challenges that make 1-year-olds tricky. And also, it can just be really jarring for parents to give their kid dinner, and then they just don’t want any of it. Virginia Yes. It is super maddening. For sure. Okay, that is really helpful. And for anyone who’s like Division Of Responsibility?! I will link to some stuff in the transcript. So those words that I just said, probably have a link on them if you’re reading this, and you can learn more. So okay, next question. And this, I think, is going to kind of build on what we were just talking about: How do you get kids to eat the stuff their body needs without them thinking all the "other stuff" is bad? One of mine won’t eat veggies unless I sing each body part saying thank you, like her eyes sing thank you when she eats a carrot.I don’t mean to be laughing at the mom who sent in this question. But I do feel like you’re making your meals harder than they need to be? Or perhaps just more musical. Yeah. Amy over to you!Amy So my initial response is: How do you know exactly how much their body needs? Does anyone know exactly how much anyone’s body needs? Virginia It’s not X number of carrots achieve eyesight. Amy Right. I think when we see portion size recommendations, and we see charts, and we see plates with servings on them, we assume that that is the perfect amount that our child needs. But it may or may not be. And so a lot of times we’re chasing these very arbitrary amounts that may or may or may not be what our kids actually need. So I think it’s very difficult in the culture that we live in, to not feel this pressure. Because we’re getting it from all sides. Like all day long, I feel like my inbox is filled with pitches for kids products that are like going to do all of you know, all of the things.Virginia Get them into Harvard and make a ton of money. Amy You know, I see products developed by neuroscientists. But food doesn’t really work that way. And so I think, honestly, if you just don’t worry about that, and you serve a range of foods, with a range of flavors, and a range of textures, and colors, you’re going to get all of that stuff in what you’re offering your kids without having to do math, without having to count grams, or percentages of vitamin A. And it’s much more pleasant to, to come at it from the side of, “food is delicious, in all of these many ways.” How can I prepare this in a way that that’s easy for my kids to eat? That has a flavor that they like, and that I want to eat, too? You don’t need a master’s degree in nutrition science. I think we’ve like lost the plot a little bit on what matters, sort of big picture when we’re feeding our kids. Because this anxiety is not helpful to anyone. It’s not helpful to that mom, I bet she’s not enjoying her meals, and it’s certainly not helpful for that kiddo. And those nutrition messages for little kids are incredibly confusing. And I just think are beyond comprehension for the age group.Virginia Agreed, agreed. That said, if the carrot song was really good, I kind of want to hear it? But yeah, I feel like, unless you’re, I don’t know, very musically inclined, this is maybe more work than you need to be doing. But I think what this question kind of also gets at, and that you’ve touched on a little bit, is that we have this idea of how our kids should eat, which is not based in the reality of how kids really eat or how most families can really manage to eat. And it really mostly comes from diet culture, right? It comes from, as you said, these people sending press releases for crazy products, or the influencers we see on social media claiming that this is the perfect way to eat. So can you connect the dots on some of the subtle ways you see diet culture showing up but family mealtimes?Amy Sure. A big part of it is the control. It’s the question of, can I really just let my child eat fill in the blank, and really trust them to eat according to their own hunger. It's the doubt. We just don’t believe that our kids are capable of this. We’ve been told that we’re not capable of it. And so why on earth would we trust tiny little kids to do something that we can’t do? And so that’s one thing. Another is the pressure to have, quote, unquote, balanced meals. I remember seeing a post that was like, “an apple is not a balanced snack,” and you have to add all these other things. And that’s great. But that doesn’t mean your kid’s going to want to eat all those other things…Virginia Or sometimes you just want an apple, right?Amy And that’s not a bad thing. Just because you don’t eat a protein at every meal or snack, does it mean that you’ve done something wrong? I think about all of those subtle messages about the way in which we’re serving foods, that some things are not right, or that some things are not good enough. I mean marketing, yes, is one thing. But I sort of think that the way that we talk to each other about food is even worse. It’s the way that someone in your family, their relationship with food, might influence you, in ways that are less overt than a message on a package about it not being junk food or something. It’s much harder. That’s sort of a depressing road to go down, because it’s harder to deal with. But I think the subtlety of those messages that we’re hearing, just in our day-to-day life, are really hard to block out. And they really make feeding kids confusing when it doesn’t have to be.Virginia Yes. I think, as parents, we often need to sit with: Am I really worried about my kids intake here? Or am I worried about how I’m being perceived as their parent because we tie so much of our self-worth as a parent to their eating performance in a way that’s problematic. And if it’s more that you’re like, “Grandma’s gonna make a comment” or “my friends’ kids all eat XYZ and my kids don’t.” I think that’s a good way of being able to tell that this is more of a cultural noise thing.Amy I mean, even just think about — well, this isn’t gonna apply to you, because I know you don’t care about this the way a lot of people do. But let’s say, you have a meal, like a dinner, and there’s no vegetable —Virginia It is Wednesday at my house. Continue.AmyFor many, many people, the immediate feeling is that you’ve somehow failed, you somehow didn’t do it right. And that meal is incomplete. But that’s not true. I think, if we’re trying to check off boxes of “I got my protein in today, I got all of these like macronutrients,” I just think we're going to make ourselves crazy. VirginiaEspecially with kids who, as you said, their intake varies over a day over a week, like this might not be a day when they’re eating vegetables, right? Amy I have sometimes have to almost force myself to just give them mac and cheese. And to just prove to myself that everyone is fine. Sometimes you just need to see it to believe that it’s fine. And then the next day, your kids might eat all the broccoli. You know, there’s other messaging around like feeding babies, where if they eat certain foods as babies, that will [supposedly] prevent picky eating, or if you feed them a certain way with solids, you’ll skip the picky eating phase all together. And it’s not true. And it’s incredibly damaging to parents who have more challenging kids, because it just sets you up to feel like you did something wrong.Virginia Yeah, totally. I think that’s so true. It’s really sad. Okay, this question is maybe a little bit diet culture and a little bit manners, and I just didn’t even really know what to say, so I’m making you answer it. Okay. She writes: Before COVID, I met my boyfriend’s cousins and their children for the first time. It was a birthday party celebration with lots of food. I had a piece of cake and was also offered a packaged ice cream sandwich, which I accepted. [Virginia: That sounds like a great combination.] The 3-year-old daughter of one of the cousins took it from me to put back in the freezer, because I already had a piece of cake and two desserts wasn’t healthy for me. I was pretty shocked but didn’t insist on eating the ice cream sandwich. I haven’t seen them since. But I expect we’ll get together late this summer when we’re all vaccinated. If a situation like this happens again, how would you suggest I handle it?Amy Maybe you invite them over and have a dessert bar, and everyone gets to eat as much as they want? Just, take it to the other extreme? I don’t know. I mean, I totally understand like, in the moment, that would be difficult to react to if you had no inkling that it was coming. Virginia Yeah, if a 3-year-old just stole your ice cream sandwich and also shamed you for it. Yeah.Amy I think, if it were to happen again, you can say something like, “These both sound really delicious to me, I’m going to eat them!” The End. Or “This is what I’m having for dessert!” The End.Virginia I like that you’re making it about your own choice versus like, needing to sort of chastise the child who, let’s be honest, is being pretty rude in that moment.Amy Mind your own business?Virginia Yeah. But you don’t want to make it into a parenting thing. You don’t have to parent that child around this issue.Amy Right. I think that that’s where you would probably get into a very murky territory. But…
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