Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

Kids turn one and our expectations change. Suddenly, we want them to eat for nutrition and “food is fuel.”

You're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast (and newsletter) about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health.

As you are listening to this podcast today, I am also writing the last pages of my next book. It is called Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. It will be out next April. I'm recording this with still about 6,000 words ahead of me. I'm hoping by the time you're hearing this, it's like a thousand or five hundred words left. Or even none left! That would be great!

It's such a weird experience. I love writing books. I love being immersed in the research and the storytelling and the issues that I'm thinking about constantly. But I'm definitely also in the can-no-longer-see-the-forest-for-the-trees stage of this first draft. So, that is how I am feeling. Hopefully, by the time you're listening to this, it will be feeling much closer to relieved and celebratory!

Because I am swamped with getting this manuscript finished, I am giving you a couple of weeks of rerun episodes so I can stay firmly locked into book world and do a little less bouncing between book, newsletter, podcast, the way I have been for the last many months. So this week's rerun is a conversation that Amy Palanjian and I had on our old podcast Comfort Food, about emotional eating. This episode first aired on February 27, 2020. And I think it's one where we were actually a little ahead of our time because once Covid happened, the conversation around comfort eating changed. There was so much demonization of comfort eating and stress eating that we did see this really powerful backlash of folks saying, “No wait, actually we're going through a global trauma, making sourdough and enjoying it is a great way to cope with your anxiety.” A lot of that is what Amy and I are talking about in this episode.

We are longtime fans of comfort eating—that's why we named the podcast Comfort Food!—and of emotional eating as a benign coping strategy. It's something I continue to talk about: The importance of reclaiming these coping strategies for yourself, of removing the guilt and shame because that's what causes them to feel so harmful. A lot of what we talked about may not feel entirely new to you, if you've been following Burnt Toast for a while, but I do think we hit a lot of the key points really well. If you are struggling with feeling okay about feeding yourself in any way, it should be a really useful lesson.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! It’s free and a great way to help more folks find the show.

And don’t forget! Today is your last day to fill out the reader survey and be entered in the Burnt Toast Book Giveaway!

It’s also your last chance to enter the giveaway by becoming a paid subscriber (or renewing an existing subscription if yours was set to expire this month). AND it’s the last day to take 20 percent off that subscription price!

PS. If you’ve already done the survey or gotten/renewed a subscription and aren’t sure you entered the giveaway, please fill out this form.

And keep sending in your questions for Virginia’s Office Hours! If you have a question about navigating diet culture and anti-fat bias that you’d like to talk through with me, or if you just want to rant about a shitty diet with me, you can submit your question/topic here. I’ll pick one person to join me on the bonus episode so we can hash it out together.

Virginia

Hello and welcome to episode 64 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.

Amy

...

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We have another Comfort Food rerun for you this week. Hopefully, by the time you’re listening to this, I have turned in my book manuscript, and I am taking this week to chill out. It’s the first week of July and we’ve got family visiting. My whole goal for this first week is to just spend a ton of time in my pool and my garden, and let my post book brain melt. There’s a stage in book writing where you just feel like you have used all the words. There is nothing left and you have nothing to say. But don’t worry, it’s temporary! It always comes back.

And I will be back in your feeds next week with a brand new podcast episode, so make sure you’re subscribed to get that in your podcast player.

In the meantime, we are revisiting the Comfort Food archives again. This is episode 53 which aired on December 5, 2019. Our guest on this episode was Jennifer Berry, who is a feeding therapist and founder of Thrive by Spectrum Pediatrics. I’m a huge fan of Jeni’s. I first met her when I was reporting a story for the New York Times Magazine in 2015. I mean, we go way back. I spent a lot of time reporting on the approach that Jeni and her colleagues take towards child-led weaning off feeding tubes and child-led feeding therapy in general—or responsive feeding therapy, as it’s now known. Jeni is just a really trusted source on all questions related to family feeding, all the dynamics, how to think about the different skills, the emotional development piece of it, and the nutrition piece of it.

This conversation is about why nutrition is much less important to successful family meals than we think. I know that may feel uncomfortable for a lot of us. We hear all the time that our big responsibility as parents is to feed our kids a healthy diet and more fruits and vegetables and all of that. But that so often gets in the way of feeling good about how you’re feeding your family. So we talk about how to set aside your nutrition anxieties at the family dinner table and how that might improve some of the struggles you’re having there.

But Jeni is a trained therapist with a strong research background. I’m a health journalist. So we also talk a lot about the way that nutrition science gets done, and how flawed and misleading both the studies themselves can be and the media coverage of nutrition science. We talk about how to interpret what you’re seeing in the media and by media, I mean mainstream media outlets and I also mean social media. When you see people throwing out statistics throwing out these really broad claims about different foods, or making claims about “healthy” eating in general. So I think this is another super useful episode!

Keep sending in your questions for Virginia’s Office Hours! If you have a question about navigating diet culture and anti-fat bias that you’d like to talk through with me, or if you just want to rant about a shitty diet with me, you can submit your question/topic here. I’ll pick one person to join me on the bonus episode so we can hash it out together.

And don’t forget: Next Wednesday, July 13 is our first Burnt Toast Book Club! We’re reading The School of Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and wow is that book even more of a gut punch now than when I picked it. CW for child endangerment, prison abuse, foster system abuse, mother shaming (to put it mildly) and psychological torture... but also know that this book is compulsively readable, heart-breaking, and thought-provoking in all the best ways. I’ll post the book club thread at 12pm Eastern on Wednesday, and be on there live for the hour. (But if you can’t join us at that time, feel free to join the discussion later—that’s the beauty of a thread chat!)

Episode 50 Transcript

Virginia

Hello and welcome to episode 53 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.

Amy

This week we’re talking about what to do and everything you know about nutrition is starting to make you a little crazy. Because sometimes what you ...

This week, Corinne joins Virginia for another Ask Us Anything episode! We have a lot of thoughts about pants. So buckle up for that. We also talk about snacks. Pants and snacks, and I know, you're already in.

If you'd like to support Burnt Toast, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And considering becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.

You can also now officially preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Want to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.

For previous Corinne episodes, start here and then go here and here.

Corinne's amazing jumpsuit

Should you get rid of your scale?

Jeans Science

Universal Standard black leggings

Universal Standard ponte pant

Universal Standard ...

Today Virginia is chatting with Martinus Evans, the author of the brand new book Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. He runs Slow AF Run Club, a running community for folks to run in the bodies they have, and is @300poundsandrunning on Instagram.

Remember, if you order Martinus's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. This week only, take 20% off your subscription!

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Martinus on the cover of Runner’s World

Martinus naked in Men’s Health

Pioneers Run Crew

Lauren Leavell

Black Girl Sunscreen

Hoka shoes

Slow AF Run Club Merch (sizes XS to 6X!)

the season of book launch

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or