New York Times Promotes Pro-Fat Book In The Name Of 'Health'

The New York Times started out the new year with a reading list to “Help Heal Your Relationship With Food.” Here Are 5 Better Options.

The New York Times started out the new year with a reading list to “Help Heal Your Relationship With Food.” Recommendations include books on intuitive reading, ultra-processed food, and one on “The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.”

The sixth book on the list is one I recently just finished called, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat” by writer and podcaster Aubrey Gordon. For the more than 200 pages published in November 2020, at the height of coronavirus lockdowns, Gordon hammers “healthism,” “diet culture,” and “fatphobia” as the viral pandemic that swept the nation disproportionately killed those who were overweight and obese.

In the book, Gordon gave what have become the routine criticisms from pro-fat influencers complaining about discrimination against fat people as the latest front on the left-wing culture war. She often deploys the terms associated with the righteous crusade for “fat liberation” characterizing fat people as “marginalized,” “oppressed,” and “discriminated.” “Thinness” has become a “system of supremacy” wherein “concern trolling” is abused by advocates of healthy living.

“The truth is that concern and choice are cover for a convenient and tempting set of stories to establish a hierarchy of people by establishing a hierarchy of bodies,” Gordon wrote. Her rebuttal is to place obesity on the victim hierarchy of social justice.

If readers are looking for books to “heal,” their relationship with food, this one isn’t it. Gordon didn’t write a book about nutrition. She wrote a book about being fat in an era where obesity will be the norm by the end of the decade. Gordon’s reporting on her own diet regimen reveals A) why she hasn’t lost the weight, and B) why Gordon and the millions of other obese and overweight Americans are rightfully frustrated by failing to do so. She writes about an almost “religious” adherence to the low-fat diet and the calorie-counting program promoted by public health authorities for decades as avenues for weight loss.

“More and more foods, I was told, were off-limits,” Gordon wrote. “It wasn’t just that I shouldn’t eat them; it was that they were sinful, bad, temping. Foods containing fat were the primary culprits, demons sent to tempt and torment us.”

“Fiber, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, protein — they were all sacrificed at the altar of calories in, calories out,” she added.

We now know that calories and the low-fat diet model celebrated for decades was a colossal government failure. Had I been Gordon trying to lose weight on the low-fat diet, I would want to write a book to hammer “diet culture” too.

“Little did I know that those endless diets would later be shown to cause permanent damage to my metabolism,” Gordon wrote.

The only time Gordon found some success was on the Atkins diet, a low-carb weight-loss regimen once written off as a “fad” by the medical establishment. “I lost a moderate amount of weight before gaining it, and then some, all back,” Gordon said, without extrapolating further. This is where I’m accused of “concern trolling” for even questioning Gordon’s adherence to the program.

Morally righteous accusations of fatphobia are really just an avenue to shut down healthy and honest conversations about weight. When more than 2 in 3 Americans are either overweight or obese, messages of radical fat acceptance can be just as tempting as the dessert tray at the local buffet. Anyone who wants to repair their relationship with food would be better served reading any one of the five books below:

1. Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

   • If anyone told you dietary fat, specifically saturated fat, was making you fat, read this book. Author Nina Teicholz spent nearly a decade examining the science behind health authorities’ recommendations for a low-fat, meat-restricted diet. Her findings will “liberate” anyone who’s cut meat off the menu over concerns to their health.

2. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

   • Gary Taubes is arguably one of the most influential nutrition journalists credited for redirecting concerns from dietary fat to sugar and other forms of carbohydrates as the primary driver of obesity. Any readers looking for answers related to fat regulation will find them in this book. To put it simply: cut the carbs.

3. Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease

   • Americans aren’t “healthy at every size.” Americans today aren’t healthy at any size. Dr. Benjamin Bikman’s book on insulin resistance shows why Americans ought to be concerned about a complex array of hidden issues related to the elevated insulin spikes that come with high consumption of carbohydrates. Obesity is merely just a symptom of a broader underlying problem.

4. Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

   • Dr. Robert Lustig’s book on ultra-processed food should motivate anyone to think twice before diving through the middle aisle of the modern-day supermarket. No healthy relationship with food can come from living on Fruit Loops for breakfast and Stouffer’s for dinner. Dr. Lustig describes how the industrialization of the modern diet has led to an epidemic of obesity and chronic disease today.

5. Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health — and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More

   • Harvard Clinical Psychologist Christopher Palmer recently published a desperately needed framework to rethink our mental health crisis as a lifestyle crisis. This book will make anyone realize what should have already been obvious: how we feel depends on how we eat.

Links:

Washington Examiner: Government must stop subsidizing unhealthy foods

Wall Street Journal: Obesity Drugs Lead to Muscle Loss — Pharma Companies Want to Fix That

Wall Street Journal: Drugmakers Raise Prices of Ozempic, Mounjaro and Hundreds of Other Drugs

Washington Post: Psychedelics gave terminal patients relief from their intense anxiety

Washington Post: Seniors are embracing marijuana, which offers relief — and risk

Washington Examiner: Pediatric gender doctors admit puberty blockers can be irreversible

Daily Caller: EXCLUSIVE: Top Gender Doctor Bemoans How ‘White’ The Sex Change Industry Is In Unearthed Video

Daily Caller: ‘1% Change Of Living’: 22-Year-Old Receives Double Lung Transplant Following Heavy Vaping

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