WaPo on Anti-Diet Dietitians, Brené Brown on Social Media and Moral Outrage, and More
Kicking off our new monthly link roundup with a critical take and some good reading/listening, plus a few juicy bonuses
Today we’re launching something new here that I’m excited about: a monthly link roundup! Each month I’ll be offering a small collection of links from around the internet that are relevant to the Rethinking Wellness conversation, along with some quick takes (and occasional deeper dives) for paid subscribers. This first edition is free except for a few juicy bonus bits at the end, and starting next month the takes/dives will be paywalled. Hope you enjoy!
Links
Here are some pieces that got me thinking this month. I generally enjoyed all of these, but links are not endorsements of every single detail in the piece or everything the writer ever wrote.
Why are we so susceptible to the wellness industry and its overpromises? By
No, GLP-1s Are Not Miracle Weight-Loss Drugs By
What's Missing in the Debate Over Women Ditching Birth Control By
How Does Questionable Research Happen? By
Quick Takes
I really liked this episode of Brené Brown’s podcast with social psychologist William Brady on social media, moral outrage, and polarization. I’d come across Brady’s work in my reporting for The Wellness Trap, and I included some of his research on how social media amplifies moral outrage in my chapter about how social platforms have not only aided the spread of wellness misinformation but also actively undermined our collective well-being. This interview is a deep dive into that research that discusses online group dynamics, the human need for belonging, why moral outrage is both important and dangerous, and Brady’s fascinating history of growing up in the evangelical South and becoming an animal-rights activist before going on to study moral psychology.
In case you missed it, New York Magazine did an enormous feature on podcaster Andrew Huberman that spent a little time critiquing his questionable wellness advice but focused mostly on his alleged terrible behavior with women. The accusations are pretty awful, and the responses from Team Huberman sometimes bizarre: when accused of cheating on one woman while trying to have a child with her via IVF, the spokesperson denied that they’d decided to have children and clarified that they “decided to create embryos by IVF” (as though there would be any other point to undergoing such an expensive and grueling procedure, and I speak from experience!). But ultimately, I don’t think media zeroing in on Huberman’s personal life (as bananas as it may be) does a lot of good. Being the subject of what fans and critics alike have described as a hit piece has made him a martyr in some circles, and has given fuel to conspiracy theories about shadowy forces trying to silence him for his views. I think the big story about Huberman is what I discussed here last month: he pushes dubious supplements and diet/lifestyle protocols, using early-stage research that isn’t good science and may cause more harm than good, especially for anyone with a tendency toward disordered eating. But of course that story is a lot less sexy!
I finally had a chance to listen to this great podcast episode about The Cult of Chiropractic from
(who is also this week’s guest on Rethinking Wellness!). It’s a bit snarky at times, but it’s also balanced and acknowledges the many reasons why people are attracted to the chiropractic field. Amanda offers some fascinating history to start, and the main part of the episode is a conversation with chiropractor and chiropractic critic Trevor Zierke, who has great insider info on all the weirdness in that field. If you’ve heard farfetched claims that chiropractic interventions can help with things like hormone balance, gut health, cancer, and more, you’ll want to check this out.
Deeper Dive: WaPo on Anti-Diet Dietitians
There’s an article I’ve gotten a few questions about and wanted to address now rather than waiting for my next Q&A. Last week, The Washington Post published a feature about food manufacturers that are partnering with anti-diet dietitians and profiting from their messages.
I was briefly quoted in that piece, but very little of my response made it in, so I wanted to share it in full (including copious links to scientific studies).
also wrote a great response to the Post piece yesterday, and had some thoughtful things to say about the need for nuance in anti-diet / non-diet messaging, so I’d encourage you to check those out as well.Before I share my responses, I’ll just say this for the record: I don’t take money from the food or beverage industry and never have (unless you count a tiny, family-owned tea company that sponsored two Food Psych episodes 7 years ago). I also don’t have financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, supplement companies, diet companies, or almost anyone else in the health/wellness industry. I’ve deliberately turned down those opportunities because they’d create a conflict of interest, which would be problematic even if the sponsorship didn’t materially change the content of my work—though there’s a distinct possibility that it might, judging by the evidence on financial relationships in scientific research. (I also don’t necessarily condemn dietitians for partnering with industry, as I’ll discuss shortly.) My views on diet and wellness culture are entirely my own and aren’t influenced by industry sponsorships.
The Post piece quoted a sentence from my 2019 book Anti-Diet that I really should have written with more subtlety: “Most chronic diseases blamed on weight can most likely be explained by other phenomena, such as weight stigma and weight cycling.” As I shared here several weeks ago:
Overall I still stand behind my work in Anti-Diet and Food Psych—it’s based on solid scientific evidence and informed by my clinical experience and interviews with people whose perspectives are invaluable—but I wish I’d been more nuanced in my delivery. I used words like “most” when I should have said “many,” “can” when I should have said “could,” “is” when I should have said “may be,” as scientists do—because all evidence is inherently limited. I omitted qualifying words that would have made my arguments less punchy but ultimately more able to withstand scrutiny. In letting myself be influenced by the norms of our algorithm-driven media environment, I’d strayed from journalistic rigor and started sounding more like an influencer. And I realized that wasn’t in line with who I am or the contribution I want to make to the discourse.
Post writer Caitlin Gilbert reached out to me for comment on that line from Anti-Diet, and I sent this response:
I wrote Anti-Diet five years ago, and if I were writing it today I’d use more nuanced language. But it’s still my view that many chronic diseases blamed on weight could actually be explained by other phenomena: there’s substantial scientific evidence that weight stigma and weight cycling are risk factors for heart disease, mortality, diabetes, some forms of cancer, and more, and that these risks are independent of BMI. Some possible reasons for this link: the stress of weight stigma creates dysregulation across many physiological systems (including the cardiovascular, metabolic, and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems), and weight cycling has been shown to create an increased inflammatory response and impaired glucose response in mice. Given that the traditional approach to weight management and high BMI often results in weight cycling and increased weight stigma, I agree with many researchers that a weight-inclusive approach (including physical activity independent of intentional weight loss) is preferable.
Here are a few more scientific references to support these ideas, and I’ll gladly send others if you have specific areas you want to dig into:
https://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1468.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6678837/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0189180
[Duplicate links removed]
In the piece, my response was condensed down to this short paragraph: “Harrison, a registered dietitian and podcaster, said in an email that if she were writing the book today, she would use ‘more nuanced language.’ She maintained her opposition to ‘intentional weight loss’ and said she still believes that ‘many’ chronic diseases linked to weight have other causes, citing research documenting the harms of stigma and dieting.”
In fact, the research I cited above doesn’t just document the harms of stigma and dieting; it also specifically supports my argument that many chronic diseases blamed on weight could actually be explained by other phenomena, such as weight stigma and weight cycling. I wish I’d included this other paper that spells it out even more clearly:
Weight cycling can account for all of the excess mortality associated with obesity in both the Framingham Heart Study [69] and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) [70]. It may be, therefore, that the association between weight and health risk can be better attributed to weight cycling than adiposity itself [63].
I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to really engage with that evidence and consider its implications.
I’m not denying that there’s a correlation between higher weight and certain health outcomes, and I don’t think anyone in the anti-diet space should—though the correlation sometimes goes in the opposite direction than you might expect, with higher weight linked to better survival outcomes for people with established cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and numerous other conditions. Still, there is a well-documented association between higher weight and various poor health outcomes, such as a higher risk of getting CVD and diabetes in the first place.
But as the golden rule in statistics goes, correlation does not imply causation. And scientific research points to other possible reasons for that link, like the independent risk factors of weight stigma and weight cycling, among other things. Rather than jumping to blame weight itself for the higher rates of some chronic diseases among larger-bodied people, I think we need to take these other possible explanations seriously and adopt weight-inclusive health policies—which don’t carry potential harms like weight cycling, weight stigma, and disordered eating—instead of simply telling higher-weight people to lose weight for their health.
Now that I’ve read the Post piece, there are a few other things I wish the writers had taken into consideration: