The Problems of Fat Shaming, Racism, and Colonialism in the Progressive Health Space in 2021

Since 2017 I have been deep into learning about physical health & nutrition. After years of being unable to lose weight (and keep it off), I found intermittent fasting and lost 30 lbs in one year and have yet to gain it back, 2 years later.

During that first year of intermittent fasting, I became obsessed with learning about health & nutrition. I listened to every podcast on intermittent fasting that I could find (which were two) and read as many books as I could get my hands on. I think it’s helpful, when we’re starting something new, to learn as much as we can about it. It helped me stay engaged, learn pitfalls and best practices, and gave me a community around something that was foreign and uninteresting to most people I knew.

I absolutely loved learning about the body and hearing doctors and researchers with opposite opinions make the case for what they thought was the “best” diet for humans. I feel extremely lucky to be living in a time where science-based nutrition books are easy to come by and easy to understand and podcasts even more so. But over time, I’ve come to see three “evils” in the modern health space that need to be addressed if real change is to take place in the health of our communities and if these doctors and researches that I’ve come to love, respect, and rely upon are to ignite and support the increased and widespread health they want to see.

Fat-Shaming

It’s a common sentiment among doctors in the progressive health space that obesity is not healthy. This may seem obvious - it’s in our cultural zeitgeist. The problem is that, regardless of what these doctors think about obesity, whether it can be healthy or whether it’s a symptom of underlying disease, it’s not up to doctors to decide the health of people who are not their patients.

I recently saw one of these doctors post a picture on Instagram of a magazine cover depicting a fat, vibrant woman with the words “This is Healthy” over it. This doctor’s comment was that this was NOT, in fact, healthy. Through one lens, this can seem benign. He doesn’t believe that a person with excess fat on their body can be healthy. But this is a narrow lens to look through. It doesn’t take into consideration all elements of health and it doesn’t give the woman in the photo, someone who did not seek out this doctor’s medical advice or opinion, the opportunity to decide for herself how healthy she feels. And what is the purpose of a healthy body if not to support our experience of wellbeing in life? It should never be up to a doctor, nutritionist, or health other expert to determine someone’s health who isn’t asking.

This problem is further layered by something that I never really knew until recently, after listening to the Maintenance Phase podcast with Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon (Your Fat Friend), which is that fat shaming is not just about thin people being mean to fat people. It's about fat people not getting jobs, being kicked off of public and private transportation, experiencing wage discrimination, and so much more. It's not just bullying that's the problem; it's discrimination. It's snap judgments that people in power are making about fat people that determine those people's quality of life and ability to live peacefully, comfortably, and abundantly.

Some of the doctors in the progressive health space have been overweight or obese themselves, or have suffered from terrible health problems. And I understand how this would make them feel that they have license to casually talk about obesity as a problem and rebel against the pro-fat body positivity movement. But because it’s a social justice issue, they do not get this pass. In addition, most of these doctors are men, and they don’t understand the unique discrimination that befalls overweight and obese women.

These doctors might object, saying that their rejection of obesity as healthy is done out of a desire to help, to bring truth to the discussion, and to give people the resources they need to be healthy. They don’t want people to start believing that obesity is, in fact, healthy, should they develop other health problems and ultimately become sick or even die. But this is nonsense. People who are sick or who do not feel optimally healthy know that they don’t. They feel it in their bodies. And they are free to seek out alternative lifestyles and knowledgeable doctors if they want to.

Racism

Something that is hard not to notice when diving deep into the mainstream progressive health space is how white it is. The reasons for this are, I’m sure, complex and nuanced and match the reasons any space becomes racially homogenous. These reasons could include but are not limited to access to education & funding, failure of white people with platforms to reach outside of their known, mostly white community, failure of white leaders to see or acknowledge the systemic racism in their field. I’m not an expert on this, and my knowledge of why spaces become so white washed is extremely limited. But I have, at least, learned to see when it’s happening, and it’s happening big time in the progressive health community.

A lot of the doctors and researchers in this community do have awareness of the injustice in our food system and the inaccessibility to good quality, fresh food that many people of color experience, but it isn’t at the forefront of the conversation. Because quality of food is such a huge factor in health, most of these doctors and researchers with big platforms hugely emphasize and promote eating higher quality food without much acknowledgement that for many people, this is impossible due to lack of finances or lack of local access to this type of food.

But even this doesn’t get to my main disturbance, which is that the overwhelming majority of leaders in this space are white. Where are the Black leaders and the Indigenous leaders in this particular progressive health space? Why are the incredibly popular white health experts with huge platforms not making more of an effort to have Black & Brown leaders on their podcasts? This is particularly disturbing to me because of the next problem.

Colonialism

Colonialism in the progressive health space might be the worst problem of all, or it might be the root of all the problems. What do I mean when I say that colonialism is taking place in this space? I mean that white doctors and researchers are learning and marketing principles and practices of health that were practiced by indigenous people not too long ago that were erased by white, European colonial settlers in favor of the systems and paradigms we have today. These doctors and health experts are not acknowledging this fact or making any sort of public attempt to include indigenous people as leaders in this space, let alone point to them as leaders.

Many of these white doctors are calling for a rewilding or a remembering, a return to indigenous practices that regenerate the soil and create delicious, nutritious food rather than the current, degenerative farming practices we have today that introduce toxins into the environment and cause a total degeneration of soil and nutrition in the food grown. To promote indigenous practices & viewpoints on health without including Indigenous Americans or Black Americans is ironic at best, and just more colonialism at face value.

While we all have indigenous roots if we go back far enough and we are all deserving of our innate health and wellness that comes from being an organism born from this earth, we can’t ignore the inherent and systemic racial power dynamics and injustices at play in our current world. White people are simply more likely to have money, power, and wide-reaching platforms than Black or Indigenous people, and they’re also more likely to have the resources to engage with and partake in the advice offered by these white doctors and health experts. And yet these experts act as though there’s a level playing ground and are either ignoring or are oblivious to their own colonialist takeover of indigenous practices and prinicples that make them tons of money and offer them fame.

If these doctors in the progressive health space are to create real change for ALL people, they MUST include Black voices. They MUST include Indigenous voices. They MUST acknowledge why our ineffective, pharmaceutical-run health system is a problem. It’s not JUST a grab for profit, which sounds greedy but not cruel. The capitalist system that has driven our country’s food and climate crisis is cruel. It’s embedded with racism. It’s built upon colonialism. It’s the erasure of people. And if we are to have a lasting, meaningful change, we can’t just dress it up in greener clothing. We must have systemic change. We must have deep awareness of the way the ills of our past inform and perpetuate the ills of our present. We must, as these health experts advocate, get to the root of the problem.

A Very Limited List of Resources To Get Started:

A Growing Culture
Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua Farms
Aubrey Gordon