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The New Zealand based Child Poverty Action group has discovered the wonders of facebook, and so a lot of my friendshave been liking them recently. I was all prepared to join in, until I saw they were promoting this post with a cheerful “What are our kids eating? And what is our government doing (or not doing) to encourage them to choose an orange over an oreo?”

First it reminded me of the endless ridiculous games of substitutions that you see in women’s magazines and “healthy food” (Next time you feel like eating chocolate try a tin of tuna instead). Which made me think of Sarah Haskins, swapping a six pack of beer for a fifth of whiskey:

So I was happy for a while. But when I recovered from my distraction I was still grumpy. Why should children be choosing Oreos over oranges – why can’t they have both, and lots of other food as well? Why is an anti-poverty group calling on the government to promote a diet mentality among kids?

The post they linked to was called “Not Fit To Eat”* was talking about a $2.50 pack sold in a South Auckland dairy, that contained Oreos, two packets of chip like things, and an orange drink. I agree that that is not an adequate lunch, but each of the individual components, and the pack of the whole, is totally fit to eat.

What I found most ridiculous about the response to this pack, was the emphasis on how cheap it was – as if that was a bad thing (someone made their horror at this food being cheap explicit in the facebook thread). I do not understand how anyone concerned with poverty could ever have a problem with any food being cheap. I have so often heard people tutt-tutting about the fact that a litre of coke is cheaper than a litre of milk – as if it is the cheapness of the coke that is the problem.

The person who had found this pack asked the dairy owner “aren’t you ashamed to be selling this?” Why is it more shameful to be selling this for $2.50 than anything else? Dairies make their money through high margins – if their is shame in their trade – surely it is selling food for more, rather than selling food for less.

You know there was a time when calories weren’t as relatively cheap as they are now. Cheap calories can give people the ability to stay alive, and they’re fabulous. I understand being angry at the expense of other nutrients, such as milk, vegetables, fruit, meat and whittakers dark almond chocoalte, but why is this so often discussed as if the cheapness of other fooods is the problem?

This seems to be my week to be grumpy about how people on the left talk about food and bodies.((Who am I kidding, every week for at least the last five years has been my week to be grumpy about the way some people on the left talks about food and bodies.)) But I think it’s really important. It is totally possible to talk about food and poverty, without buying into a worldview that fetishises food and buys into an ideology that sees food in terms of morality. I really should write a grand theory post about why this is bad one of these days – but the really short reason is that one of the purposes of this ideology is to blame individuals for the effects of poverty. This is not something we can co-opt – it is something which will co-opt us.

And because no post like this would be complete without it, here is a link to the fat nutritionist’s If only poor people understood nutrition.

Look at it this way. Let’s say you have a choice between:

a) standing up before a room full of children and encouraging them to exercise more, or

b) standing up before a room full of children and encouraging them to exercise more, and then throwing a handful of knives into the audience.

Why would you select b), unless you wanted to hurt someone?

Read the whole post here.

You know what I like best about this animated short-short by Stephanie McMillan? I mean, other than that it gave me a chuckle?

It didn’t include a fat joke!

I didn’t know that doing that subject without a fat joke was even allowed!

This New Zealand ad for Xenical has convinced me. I’m much, much better off being fat than being skinny.

Description below¹

Incidentally, I can tie my own shoes. And while the woman at the end of the ad says she can’t — unless she has a disability other than being fat, she can, too.

(Via Jezebel)

1. For the YouTube impaired, a thin woman wanders through a landscape of Felliniesque horrors — trench warfare, bleeding knives, walking around naked in the winter — talking about how she’d like to live life unafraid, but — surprise — she’s a fat woman who’d just like to tie her own shoes.

Which version do you think is best? And any other comments are welcome. Except for weight-loss advocacy or WLS advocacy — take that somewhere else, please.

(I’m especially interested in comments and suggestions from other fat-positive and anti-WLS folks.)

VERSION A:

VERSION B:

VERSION C:

Thanks!

(Previously: How Fat People Will Be Helped By The Affordable Care Act.)

There are of course a zillion things in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)¹ which will apply to all Americans, including fat people; but in this post I’m concentrating on aspects that will disproportionately effect fat people.

The biggest potential harm to fat people under the ACA lies in “Wellness” programs. (This was brought up by Maia in a comment on her thread.) This provision was written into the Senate version of the bill (which then became the final bill) principally by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). It’s supported by groups like the Chamber of Commerce, and opposed by unions and the AARP.

Under current law employers are allowed to create “wellness programs,” in which they give employees “incentives” for healthy behavior with discounts on their health insurance costs (or with lower deductibles or the like). Of course, there’s little practical difference between rewarding healthy employees, and penalizing allegedly less healthy employees. Current law says that “wellness plan” incentives/penalties cannot be more than 20% of the cost of the insurance plan.

However, beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act raises that maximum to 30% of the cost of the insurance plan. So if the value of your employer-provided insurance is $4,824, then under current law employers can penalize fat employees by up to $965; but once the ACA goes into effect in 2014, the maximum goes up to $1,447.

Here’s the really frightening part of the law: “The Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury may increase the reward available under this subparagraph to up to 50 percent of the cost of coverage if the Secretaries determine that such an increase is appropriate.”² Here’s a table from allhealth.org (pdf), showing how much extra people might have to pay per year under current law (20%), under the ACA beginning in 2014 (30%), and if the maximum is raised to 50%.

So is it going to be just a straight 30% extra charge for fat people who get their insurance through their employer? Most of the time, no, it won’t be. Since most employers with Wellness Programs don’t seem to be going all the way to the current 20% cap, it seems likely that they won’t go all the way to the 30% cap, either.

More importantly, under the law, employers are required to provide a reasonable alternative. Here is an example, from the Department of Labor, of how “Wellness Programs” are supposed to operate:

Example 4. (i) Facts. A group health plan will waive the $250 annual deductible (which is less than 20 percent of the annual cost of employee-only coverage under the plan) for the following year for participants who have a body mass index between 19 and 26, determined shortly before the beginning of the year.

However, any participant for whom it is unreasonably difficult due to a medical condition to attain this standard (and any participant for whom it is medically inadvisable to attempt to achieve this standard) during the plan year is given the same discount if the participant walks for 20 minutes three days a week. Any participant for whom it is unreasonably difficult due to a medical condition to attain either standard (and any participant for whom it is medically inadvisable to attempt to achieve either standard) during the year is given the same discount if the individual satisfies an alternative standard that is reasonable in the burden it imposes and is reasonable taking into consideration the individual’s medical situation.

All plan materials describing the terms of the wellness program include the following statement: “If it is unreasonably difficult due to a medical condition for you to achieve a body mass index between 19 and 26 (or if it is medically inadvisable for you to attempt to achieve this body mass index) this year, your deductible will be waived if you walk for 20 minutes three days a week. If you cannot follow the walking program, call us at the number above and we will work with you to develop another way to have your deductible waived.”

Due to a medical condition, Individual E is unable to achieve a BMI of between 19 and 26 and is also unable to follow the walking program. E proposes a program based on the recommendations of E’s physician. The plan agrees to make the discount available to E if E follows the physician’s recommendations.

The Washington Post has an article describing how already-existing corporate Wellness Programs have been run. The article indicates that some employers are using Wellness Programs as a means of shifting costs onto fat people (as well as smokers and people with high cholesterol).

Valeo, an auto parts supplier, four years ago raised the deductible on an employee health plan to $2,200 from $200 for individual coverage and to $4,400 from $400 for family coverage. Then it gave employees the opportunity to reduce the deductible to its starting point by not smoking and by meeting goals for blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index, said Robert Wade, Valeo’s director of human resources for North America.

“If they don’t comply, they end up being penalized, if you will, but we refer to it as a Healthy Rewards program,” Wade said.

Workers who choose not to submit to yearly medical assessments have been offered a different health plan that carries higher premiums, Wade said.

The New England Journal of Medicine points out that at least one major “wellness” firm is marketing wellness programs as a way that companies can save money by encouraging employees to drop employer-provided insurance:

Direct and indirect increases would disproportionately hurt lower-paid workers, who are generally less healthy than their higher-paid counterparts and thus in greater need of health care, less likely to meet the targets, and least likely to be able to afford higher costs. Some employees might decide to opt out of employer-based health insurance — and indeed, one wellness consulting firm, Benicomp, implies in its prospectus that such a result might be desirable, pointing out that employees who do not comply might be “motivated to consider other coverage options” and highlighting the savings that would result for employers.

There are limits on what employers can do. Under new provisions of the ACA, employers whose employee’s premiums cost more than 9.5% of their household income will be penalized. And those employees are eligible for federal subsidies, or to join the Health Exchanges. However, as the Valeo case shows, fat employees who cannot meet “wellness” requirements could potentially be penalized with unaffordable copayments and deductibles.³

Valeo’s program was created when the maximum size of penalties was 20% of the cost of health insurance. By raising that maximum to 30% — or possibly to 50% — the Affordable Care Act will greatly increase the incentive for more employers to institute Valeo-style Wellness Programs. Looking at the track record of Wellness Programs so far, it does seem like many employers who use Wellness Programs aren’t using them abusively. But some are, and under the ACA it seems plausible that the number of employers using abusive Wellness Programs abusively will increase.

So the big question is, what happens to people who are priced out of their employer health care by “Wellness Programs”? Can they get on to the Health Exchanges instead? Or are they just screwed? I don’t know. I’ve been emailing everyone I can think of, trying to get an answer to that question, but so the only response has been from Senator Jeff Merkley’s office, which wrote:

All employees will be eligible to get tax breaks on a sliding scale (up to 400% of the federal poverty level or approximately $88,000 for a family of four) to help them afford coverage. This assistance is particularly beneficial for those on the lower end of the income scale.

If the insurance provided by an employer would cost workers more than 9.5 percent of their household income, that insurance is considered unaffordable and workers have a new option: purchase affordable coverage on the new health insurance exchanges, and receive a tax credit to make it easier to get the coverage they need.

In regards to your concerns about employees who want to participate in wellness programs but are faced with health issues, employers must offer “alternative standards” for individuals who find it difficult or inadvisable to meet those wellness standards. The goal is to ensure that there are safeguards to prevent discrimination and accommodate special needs. I can’t give you specifics on these standards because they have not yet been defined and HHS will be determining these standards and possible exemptions in the future.

So are the wellness provisions bad for fat people? I’ll go out on a cowardly limb and say we’ll have to wait and see.

Finally, I should note that even being on the Health Exchanges won’t necessarily mean an escape from Wellness Programs. The ACA also contains a pilot program, in which up to ten states may experiment with adding Wellness Programs to the Health Exchanges. I’m less worried about government-run wellness programs being abused — governments lack the profit motive, and so have less incentive to be abusive — but this still bears watching.

1. Also known as “Health Care Reform.”
2. You can read the relevant part of the Affordable Care Act by going here and then searching for the text string “(j) Programs”.
3. There are possibly some limits on this within the ACA; insurance plans must have at least a minimum actuarial value to qualify, or else employers could be subject to penalties. What exactly that means — and how this interacts with the ACA’s provisions allowing for wellness programs — is beyond my ability to figure out.

(This is the first of a two-part post. Tomorrow’s post will focus on how fat people might be harmed by the ACA.)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) — the new health care legislation recently signed into law by President Obama¹ — will be good and bad for fat Americans.

There are of course a zillion things in the ACA which will apply to all Americans, including fat people; but in this post I’m concentrating on aspects that will disproportionately effect fat people.

Fat people who would like to buy health insurance on the individual insurance market, but have been turned down by insurance companies for being fat, will within six months be able to buy an insurance plan through a new “high risk pool,” which will be run either by the state or (for residents of states that have declined to set up their own high risk pool) by the Federal government. To qualify for this plan, you can’t have had insurance for the six months before signing up.

This high-risk pool — which is subsidized, so that premiums are no higher than an average premium — will only exist until 2014, when it will be replaced by government-run health exchanges. Subsidies will be available for lower-income people beginning in 2014.

The bottom line: By the end of this year, fat people who are currently turned down for insurance, will have access to health insurance that can’t turn them down.

Many states already have a state-run high-risk insurance pool for people who cannot be covered by the individual market. In Oregon, for example, I use OMIP (Oregon Medical Insurance Pool) because the individual insurance market won’t cover someone my size. OMIP costs more than regular insurance. Because I already have insurance, I won’t qualify to join the new high-risk pool created by the ACA later this year, which is a shame, since that will almost certainly be a lot cheaper than OMIP.

Oregon will end the OMIP program in 2014, when both it and the new ACA-created high risk pools will be replaced by the new health exchanges. The result for me (and for other fat people already using state-run high-risk pools) should be significantly lower health insurance costs after 2014.

By 2014, the practice of “rescission” — canceling the insurance policies of people who get sick — will be illegal, unless the insurance companies can show outright fraud. This is important for fat people, because “height and weight” — that is, being fat — is one of the four most common excuses insurance companies currently use for rescission.

So those are the big advantages of the ACA for fat people — easier to get insurance, easier to afford it, harder to get kicked off.

Tune in tomorrow for how the ACA could hurt fat people.

1. Also known as “Health Care Reform.”

(This is a guest post, reprinted with the kind permission of Living ~400 Lbs.)

Researchers found that kids who have higher BMIs tend to do a little worse on treadmill tests than thinner kids…if they’re from “lower- or middle-income neighborhoods.”   The difference goes away if they’re from the more affluent neighborhoods.

Lead researcher Dr. Tajinder P. Singh, of Children’s Hospital Boston, speculates that

[K]ids from affluent neighborhoods have healthier lifestyles — better diets, more opportunities for exercise — so that even if they are overweight, they may be in good health.

Singh also points out that BMI just measures height and weight, and so it could be the more affluent kids have more muscle mass.  I recall that muscle mass can depend on genetics, but it’s also greatly influenced by exercise.   Ah!

So, logically speaking, does Singh then suggest that perhaps lower-to middle-income children could benefit from more opportunities to exercise?

Singh said they suggest that lower-to middle-income children stand to gain the most from losing excess weight.

Not exercise.

Even though they’re doing treadmill fitness tests, which are … exercise.

Measuring response to … exercise.

A response that improves with … exercise.

Gee.  If  ALL the kids from poorer neighborhoods had averaged lesser cardio fitness, would he have suggested they should move to the better neighborhood?

Health At Every Size — HAES for short — “is an approach to health that focuses on intuitive eating and pleasurable physical activity rather than dieting and weight loss.” It’s also a source of controversy.

At her blog Red Vinyl Shoes, Tasha Fierce writes:

It seems like whenever a fat person is included in a discussion in the media about the health risks of being fat they have to show their “I really do have healthy habits” card. I’m waiting for a fat person to sit there and be like, yeah, I have shitty eating habits, so what. Because really, it’s none of anyone’s business why I’m fat or what steps I take to “counteract” the fat with healthy choices. [...]

I don’t think that everyone who does HAES is out to shame those who don’t. Most aren’t. But I feel like embracing HAES is something that some fat activists expect you to do if you’re to be part of the FA movement. At least I’ve dealt with a few like that. Mainly because they feel it makes fat people look bad if we’re saying we eat Twinkies every day and lay around watching TV. That’s what/who I’m talking about.

Tasha’s post overflows with being right. HAES is valuable and fills a real need. But it can also make fat people who don’t practice HAES feel cast aside. We shouldn’t cast aside HAES as a valuable tool for those who want it; but we also need to be careful not to slip into moralistic “exercise and eat right or you’re a bad person” pressure.

On Pandagon, my friend Amanda uses Tasha’s post as a springboard to a broader-based attack on HAES, and I think the results are unfortunate.

But where they lose people is when they start edging into denialist territory, denying or minimizing the link between obesity and health issues like diabetes and heart disease. It’s true that thin people can develop these diseases through bad nutritional habits—I’ve known a couple who have!—but that just means the situation is complex, not that there’s no link.

In this paragraph — and throughout the post — Amanda doesn’t link to or quote a single HAES advocate; HAES advocates are represented only by Amanda’s dubious paraphrasing.¹

I don’t think you could fairly say that people like Linda Bacon, Paul Campos, Kate Harding, and myself ² say “that there’s no link” — although others have caricatured my views that way. A fairer summary of the HAES view on fat and health is that the strength and certainty of the link is vastly exaggerated and oversimplified; that people can be fat and healthy; and that for fat people who want to improve their health, weight-loss diets almost never work, but HAES does.

Probably there are HAES advocates who say there is absolutely no link, full stop — I think I’ve seen people argue that in comments. But it’s cherry-picking to ignore the most sophisticated arguments in favor of the least nuanced.

As for “minimizing the link” — minimized compared to what? Compared to NPR claiming “being even a bit overweight can potentially kill you”? Or the Surgeon General declaring “obesity is a greater threat than terrorism”?³ Compared to the mainstream, hell yes I’m a minimizer. I hope Amanda is, too.

In comments, Amanda summarized her point:

My point is that the flaws in HAES really do prevent the good stuff fat acceptance brings to the table from being accepted. Getting tarred as obesity denialists isn’t going to be very helpful at all to fat acceptance.

By claiming that HAES is the reason “the good stuff fat acceptance brings” isn’t accepted, Amanda ignores the effects of anti-fat ideology. No fat-positive perspective would be a welcome part of Michelle Obama’s initiative, not because all HAES are the strawfatties Amanda critiques, but because fat positive views are radically opposed to the dominant ideology of our culture. And just by being fat positive - by refusing a state of shame and self-hatred - we’re inevitably seen as denialists.

Back to Amanda’s post:

The flip side of the “skinny person who got diabetes from inhaling sweets 24/7” is the uncomfortable reality the drastic and controversial measures like bariatric surgery often ”cure diabetes, sometimes instantly.”

It’s true that in many patients, bariatric surgery “cures” diabetes immediately. I wonder if Amanda’s really thought through the implications of that? “Immediately” means that diabetes often goes away before the weight is lost. The reasons bariatric surgery cures diabetes aren’t fully understood — but that bariatric surgery heals diabetes before weight loss occurs undermines the simple “fat causes diabetes, weight loss cures diabetes” story.

[HAES is] used in service of tearing at public health initiatives like Michelle Obama’s initiative to fight childhood obesity. The initiative was developed because of a scientific reality that fat acceptance has championed (rightfully so)—diets don’t turn fat people into thin people. Faced with this reality, public health advocates are putting all their attention on prevention, which should be considered a public good, but since it runs into more dubious claims of HAES about how obesity is genetic and not a matter of diet and exercise, there’s been pushback.

There’s no doubt that genetics and environmental factors (which include diet and exercise) interact in a way that makes some people obese.⁴ So in that sense, if a HAES advocate has said diet and exercise have nothing to do with obesity, they’re mistaken.

On the other hand, fat advocates often bring up genetics to counter the “obesity is caused by sitting eating hohos all day” view, and in this case we’re substantively correct. Diet and exercise are part of the equation — but nonetheless, two people can have similar diets and exercise habits, but still have vastly different weights because of their different genetics.

But what about the critiques of Michelle Obama’s initiative? There have been bad arguments made — including my own (which was intended as a rant, not a serious argument).

But the better FA critiques of Michelle Obama’s initiative I’ve read (such as Lesley Kinzel, Kate Harding and Paul Campos) aren’t simple, and — contrary to what Amanda suggests — they’re not based in denying science.

There’s nothing wrong with most of the things Ms. Obama wants to do (getting kids better exercise, eating more veggies, ending food desserts deserts, etc). But it’s wrong to frame that as an anti-childhood-obesity initiative, when 1) No one has demonstrated a real-world program that has successfully prevented kids from being fat over the long run,⁵ 2) there’s good reason to worry that a needless focus on fat kids will encourage bullying and scapegoating of, and self-hatred in, fat kids, and 3) the program is actually targeting children in general, not just fat kids.

Michelle Obama says that her program will cut the number of fat kids by 75%.⁶ There is absolutely nothing in current science to suggest that goal is remotely possible; by setting up an unachievable goal, Obama guarantees that her program will be yet another failure. And that’s frustrating, because her initiative could be a success if it only had an achievable goal — health. Not thinness. Health.

Why can’t we have the same basic program, but say it’s about getting all kids healthier?

Well. because that would be denialism. And we can’t have that. No, never! We must continue in failure after anti-fat failure, because to do otherwise is giving up. To do otherwise is giving in to the fat scourge that Michelle Obama says she has a “cure” for. And if I point out that there is no science at all to support Obama’s claim that we can reduce obesity by 75% — that makes me the anti-science one. Obama is thin and is saying everything that conventional people already believe about fat, so the lack of evidence supporting her plan doesn’t make her a denialist. Thin people aren’t made right by evidence; thin people are made right by being anti-fat.

And yes, us denialists — us HAES advocates — would like to see a program that helps fat kids to be healthier — including moving around and eating in a healthy fashion, yes, but also including learning to love themselves and their bodies. That’s HAES in a nutshell. Unlike Obama’s plan to “cure” 75% of obesity, HAES has some chance of working. But it requires that we not hate fat and we talk about ways that even those of us with despised bodies can be healthy. That is why it is “denialism”; that is why not a single advocate for the mental well-being of fat children is involved in helping Michelle Obama plan the war on childhood obesity; and that is why, regardless of evidence, HAES has not been given a chance by the ruling ideology.

What’s wrong with wanting to focus on making fat kids healthy, instead of thin? It’s denialism, that’s what. Michelle Obama is going to reduce childhood obesity by 75%, and never mind the evidence! How can we deny how beneficial it would be to cut childhood obesity 75% just because there’s no evidence of any such thing being possible?

Well, because we’re denialists, that’s how.

Amanda, all I can say is: Join us. Join us in denialism. Sure, it means going against the mainstream — but it’s also right. That must be worth something.

1. In contrast, an ex-fat person is quoted approvingly and at length. This made me very uncomfortable. Maybe it’s a coincidence that an ex-fat person is the only person extensively quoted by Amanda in a long post about fat issues; but there’s definitely a belief out there that thin and ex-fat people have more credibility to talk about fat issues than fat people do.
2. I’m being far too kind to myself by putting myself in this company!
3. To be fair, one could argue that terrorism is actually an extremely minor threat for Americans, and by comparison obesity is a greater threat. However, since Richard Carmona was Surgeon General under George W. Bush, it seems unlikely that’s how he intended his statement to be understood.
4. References: Farooqi IS, O’Rahilly S. Genetic factors in human obesity. Obesity Reviews 2007; 8(Suppl 1):37–40. // Bouchard C. The biological predisposition to obesity: beyond the thrifty genotype scenario. Int J Obes 2007; 31:1337-9. // Bouchard C. Defining the genetic architecture of the predisposition to obesity: a challenging but not insurmountable task. Am J Clin Nutr 2010; 91:5-6. // Heber D. An integrative view of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr 2010; 91:280S-283S.
5. Similar programs the government has run in the past have failed to reduce obesity in kids. Caballero et al, “Pathways: a school-based, randomized controlled trial for the prevention of obesity in American Indian schoolchildren”, Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, Nov 2003; 78: 1030 - 1038; and Nader et al, “Three-Year Maintenance of Improved Diet and Physical Activity: The CATCH Cohort,” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, Jul 1999; 153: 695 - 704.
6. “The goal, as set out in a report from the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, is to reduce childhood obesity from 20% to 5% by 2030.”

So I’m reposting some of the blog posts I wrote years ago over at The Hand Mirror. This week I have felt the irritation at International No Diet Day rise slowly (mostly fueled by the facebook group), and I wanted to write a post about why it annoyed me so much. Then I realised that I’ve already written that post so I decided to repost it instead (i’ve edited quite a bit, to finish the sentances and elaborate on the ideas).

In my experience No Diet Day’s are most commonly observed at Universities, and usually by eating cake, chocolate and ice-cream at a dessert evening or some such event. Sometimes, when you have an anti-feminist women’s rights officer, they’re observed by giving away diet coke and fruit (because International No Diet Day becomes Love Your Body day and what better way to love your body than fruit, diet coke and yoga - I really wish I was making this up, but I’m not).

My superficial criticism of No Diet Day is how easy co-opted and perverted it is. An article from ABC in Australia:

In the 936 office Drive Producer, the lovely Lynn, got up especially early to spend most of her morning baking, in order to provide her colleagues with the most delectable Pavlova and cake.

Annie Warburton and the team from Mornings spoke with Stephen Dimsey, State Manger of Life Be In It Tasmania, to get some sensible tips for those who enjoy their food but want to stay in shape.

Then later on Stephen says: “What we’re saying is that whatever body shape you are, make sure you’re a healthy body shape,” Talk about making the kind of sense that’s not; I don’t think I could translate that into English if you paid me.

But I have just as much problem with the dessert based versions International No Diet Day, which are organised on campus by people who are actually feminist.

I don’t think dessert is the opposite of dieting. I think to suggest that it is is to perpetuate a shallow, unhelpful understanding of the role of food in our society. Food and control are so tightly linked that the only other alternative to controlling your food intake is losing control of your food intake. You can’t just ‘not diet’ for a day - because the gremlins in your head about food and your body will still be there - interrogating every food choice, everything you do. To suggest anything can be achieved in a day is too hide how deeply people are affected.

The opposite of dieting is actually making food about food. I know that’s an uphill battle. I know the vast majority of women students are nowhere near there. But I don’t think having one day a year where you’re ‘allowed’ to eat chocolate is a step in that direction.

In the end kicking those grelins to death is an uphill battle. Whatever the state your personal set are in I don’t think it makes any difference whether you eat dessert or don’t eat dessert on a particular day. And I think the suggestion that you should or shouldn’t deal in any particular way actually makes it harder.

What is ultimately frustrating is that my experience of dessert evenings is that after a certain point people will start talking about how gross they feel and how someone should take the food away so they’ll stop eating it - it’s not an anti-diet dessert evening without people completely reinforcing ideas about food and control and food and power.

If I had a time machine, and could go back in time to when International No Diet Day was invented (my mind says 1989, but I’m too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia), I would make a suggestion that rather than make it ‘no diet day’ - how about ‘no diet-talk day?” I don’t know if it would actually help (and not being so easily commodified it would be less popular). But at least it presents the response to eating disorder culture and body hatred as something that involves many steps, rather than something you can just turn off.