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I’m a culinary dullard. Seriously, I can’t even boil an egg properly. But my husband and I are total Top Chef addicts. Last night’s episode combined challenge with altruism: Serve up a healthy, gourmet boxed lunch to Chicago’s finest police recruits.

I come from a family steeped in emergency services culture: My mother worked as an EMT and later, a 911 dispatcher. When I was a teenager, I rode with my local police department as part of a police Explorer program and continued to ride throughout my college years (my first major was criminal justice). Because of the nature of the job — no lunch breaks, high stress, sporadic work hours — most cops I knew ate fast food while on the job.

So, the challenge to serve cops up a healthy meal is certainly admirable. But what talk on healthy eating wouldn’t be complete without also a healthy dose of fear-mongering? “As you know, the nation is facing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes…,” began host Padma. The camera then panned over a table choking under an array of clumsily-constructed burgers and ketchup-drenched French fries, which Padma explained to be the fare normally consumed by the recruits.

The insinuation was not lost on viewers: Fast food contributes to obesity and diabetes.

There are studies that purport fast food to be a contributing factor in obesity and diabetes, while other studies find no such evidence to support the claims - this is yet another example of that niggling thing they call the “obesity paradox.” But one thing is clear here and that is the inherent class assumptions and contradictions: A 500-calorie fast food burger contributes to obesity and diabetes, and yet a 500-calorie mushroom risotto stewing in a sauce of fatty cream and whole butter does not?

Barry Glassner brings up the issue of class in his The Gospel of Food. He quotes a “prominent researcher” at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who asked to remain anonymous:

“There’s a lot of subtle and not so subtle bias. From going to all these talks about the obesity epidemic, you would think that McDonald’s and other places where the ‘wrong’ sort of lower-class people eat are calorie-dripping hellholes, and expensive classy restaurants serve only fat-free vegetables and no desserts.”

“No one ever uses Starbucks as an example, but a Frappucino is as oversized and calorie-laden as anything McDonalds can dream up. But the person giving the talk probably goes to Starbucks him- or herself and wouldn’t be caught dead at McDonald’s.”

But here’s the real kicker: The dozens of police recruits who purportedly eat all that fast food? Are thin. And diabetic chef Sam Talbot, himself a former Top Chef contender (and show heartthrob), who served as guest judge of the challenge? Also thin.

Did anyone else catch the show? What are your thoughts?

Stand-up comedian, actor and writer Tom Naughton insists all we know about fat to be a load of bologna. In parody of and response to Morgan Spurlock’s mockumentary Supersize Me, Naughton’s Fat Head insists the so-called obesity epidemic has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC.

How does he set to disprove obesity stereotypes? He plays into them by setting out to show how one can lose weight while eating a fast food diet. You can watch the trailer below and other clips on his website.

I’m straddling the fence on this one. On one hand, it’s hilariously funny and represents a departure from the usual fat fear-mongering while also disproving tired stereotypes. But on the other, it’s still promoting weight-loss and a particular means of weight-loss, namely a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet. In his effort to dispel stereotypes of fatty and fast foods while demonstrating how one can lose weight and improve health by cutting carbs and sugar, Naughton is still reinforcing the good/bad food ideology. Still, I don’t think we ought throw the baby out with the bathwater. Given the dominant socio-political clime of the day, is it better to work with people than against people, while still appropriating channels and spaces for our own means? What do you think?

“Voluptuous women needed… for student photography project (no worries, no nudity). If you’re in your 20’s, got real booty, boobs or hips, please help me out!”

So read an advertisement posted by communication graduate student Kristin ‘Lou’ Herout last fall throughout buildings on her Northern Illinois University campus.

The 23-year-old graduate student and professional photographer replicated advertisements from Cosmopolitan, Elle and other women’s fashion magazines using not industry standard size-zero models, but rather “curvy” and “realistic” women to accompany a scholarly paper on the subject. “Basically, I just want people to see what it would be like if plus-size models were represented similarly to slim models,” said Herout.

The Dekalb, Ill. native boasts her own photography company startup, K Lou Photography, and teaches courses as a teacher’s assistant at NIU on audio and production. She’s also a photographer for one of Chicago’s premiere wedding photography companies, Essence Photography and Video. I caught up with Herout as she prepares to move to San Francisco this summer to complete her master’s degree in photography at the Academy of Art University to talk about her provocative project.

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I’ve always liked Christina Ricci as an actress, and after reading a Blackbook interview with her, I like her as a woman, too. Says Christina:

“I think people are learning to actually aspire to be objectified. It’s like the highest form of flattery for teenage girls. The culture we live in right now seems to reward behavior that we used to frown upon. We used to teach our daughters not to be like this…

“We don’t really know what’s going to happen to this generation of children. I just know that things seem wrong to me. I mean, I just feel like sexism is alive and well, and misogyny. And we all like to pretend that it’s not. That makes me feel a little crazy.”

The husband and I walked last night around a popular outdoor air shopping/entertainment plaza. A kiosk sold t-shirts with phrases like “I’m a virgin - but this is an old t-shirt” and “Who says size doesn’t matter?” in girl sizes. My 14-year-old cousin - the one who idolizes Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera but blanks on Susan B. Anthony and Betty Friedan - looks and dresses older than I do and I’m teetering precariously close to 30. I once mentored a 13-year-old, average-weight biracial girl from my city’s projects who was extremely smart in math and science, and yet constantly downplayed her academic skills while lamenting how fat she was (because other kids told her so).

From body-baring bikinis for girls as young as 6, sexual dolls designed for girls ages 4 - 8, tweens posing in suggestive and provocative ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models, what kind of messages are young girls receiving today on how they ought feel and act? As a report released last year by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls reveals, those messages can be devastating.

Instead of collectively wringing our hands while bemoaning the sad state society has devolved to, I’m more interested in what we can do to fix the problems. The challenge seems daunting: how can one person or even a group of people tackle a mega-billion dollar media and entertainment industry? How can we work to change national opinions and culturally ingrained beliefs? I think the answer starts one girl at a time.

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Sixty-five percent of American women between the ages of 25 and 45 report having disordered eating behaviors, according to the results of a new survey by SELF Magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An additional 10 percent of women report symptoms consistent with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, meaning that a total of 75 percent of all American women endorse some unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food or their bodies.

The online survey garnered responses from 4,023 women who answered detailed questions about their eating habits. Results and analysis appear in the magazine’s May 2008 issue on newsstands through May 19. Click here to read the article online.

While I don’t doubt the high levels of unhealthy relationships with food amongst a national cross-section of women, I do have to point out that Self isn’t exactly a paragon of body size acceptance. Every edition touts some kind of diet and weight loss plan, along with some half-naked airbrushed woman on its glossy cover.

Consider a sampling of recent headlines: “New fixes for stubborn fat!,” “A Diet to Shed Pounds Fast!,” “The 10-Calorie Secret,” “Drop Weight, Look Great and Never Go to the Gym,” “Shortcut to your Best Body,” “A Super Simple Slim-Down!,” “The One-Month Total Body Makeover,” “Peel off the Pounds!,” “Lose Weight Every Day!,” “The Beauty Diet,” and so on.

The magazine even boasts an online section dedicated solely to dieting, with “healthy eating” thrown in almost as an afterthought. Members here can join the Self Diet Club complete with “powerful tools can track your progress, analyze your diet and even tell you exactly what to eat (and what to skip) to slim down.” Because eating according to software dictates is much better than intuitive eating, right? Readers can also read about how to jump start their diet to drop a size in 30 days, take the Self challenge to achieve a “dream body,” learn fitness moves designed to burn more calories, and get such helpful reminders like how calorie-laden beverages can make you fat.

In the article “Scale Stuck?” Self urges women to consider 10 reasons why they’re not losing weight and genetics isn’t one of them. Such sage recommendations include recommendations to grocery shop online, count calories and don’t celebrate workouts with M & Ms. Other stellar recommendations are to deliver messages in person instead of email so you can lose nearly a pound a month!, as well as the same kinds of advice distributed on pro-ana boards, like encouraging women to wear tight jeans on weekends so you don’t overeat and to give away clothes the moment you drop a size to “ensure you won’t drift into them again.”

While Self does include constructive articles on how to beat stress, healthy recipes and basic nutrition, health issues like breast cancer, and green fashion and living trends, its overall emphasis is that women need to change. Specifically, that women need become thinner and more beautiful and ergo better people. I have to wonder if there exists an audience of women who don’t accept themselves as they are and Self simply fills that need, or does magazines like Self help to create and perpetuate such audiences?

With its predominant emphasis on dieting, weight loss and unrealistic beauty standards, it comes as no wonder so many of Self’s readers have unhealthy relationships with food, weight and body image. Perhaps the magazine ought to see its study more as an indictment of itself and less as a reflection of a national trend.

EDIT: Claire of 5 Resolutions advised me the survey was a national survey, and not solely of Self readers. My comments about the magazine still stand.

I’ve got lots of blog post ideas and not enough time to write them. Here’s a few quick hits of related topics in the news.

A new study reveals the obvious: one’s social environment affects eating disorder development. A study of high school students showed a small, but significant clustering effect in eating disorder behaviors and symptoms. Researchers found that a pair of students from the same county was 4 percent to 10 percent more likely to share an eating-disordered behavior when compared to pairs in which each person came from a different county. While the study wasn’t designed to look at why these behaviors might be clustering in certain areas, the researchers suggest that peer pressure, information sharing or students modeling their behavior on one another are possible mechanisms.

“These findings confirm the strong social influences on female adolescents in the U.S. to be thin, sometimes using unhealthy behaviors to achieve this goal,” the researchers write in the current issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders. (h/t Mariellen)

An editorial in the Edmonton Sun nostalgically recalls the supermodels of the 1990s - Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell - compared to the skin-and-bones heroin chic cultural aesthetic of today. I think there is a tendency to overly romanticize these models as the pinnacle of a healthy body image when people in the 1990s were criticizing much the same things of models then, but there’s no denying that standards have changed to become higher, harsher. Writer Patrycja Romanowska opines:

There was one thing that the 1990s supermodels didn’t inspire us to do - starve.

We were not super skinny, nor were we fat. We grew breasts and hips, thinking that this was what teenage girls were supposed to do and didn’t obsess about weight.

How did bones and organs sticking out of skin ever become hot? Whatever happened to filling out a bra? To Marilyn Monroe? To Venus de Milo? …Let the Cindys and the Marilyns, the Venuses and Claudias come back and redefine feminity.

And let the rest of us eat our cake in peace.

Sage advice, indeed.

My husband let me know about British Ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s confession of suffering from bulimia, but Kate beat me to the punch with this excellent summation over at Broadsheet of the social implications of Prescott’s revelation. Eating disorders are still perceived to be an intrinsically female phenomenon, and there still exists stereotypes of who does and who doesn’t develop an eating disorder. Kate rightly busts these stereotypes and calls for a questioning of these assumptions. Alas, the Broadsheet commenters reflect the confusion and misunderstanding that still exists about eating disorders today.

Lots of news from the British presses today: The Telegraph reports that some fashion magazines are digitally manipulating images of emaciated models to be more full-figured, not less. Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured. This, of course, represents a dramatic departure from those magazines who photoshop even the thinnest of models into more of an airbrushed perfection. The move comes as fashion magazines try to deflect or preemptively avoid criticisms of contributing to eating disorders amongst young girls and women.

While this certainly represents a turning of the tide for the better, I can’t help but think that if fashion magazines now want to feature women representing the vision of good health, why not use such women in the first place and not super-skinny models who require airbrushing?

And lastly, some sad news to share. Internationally-acclaimed British professor Rosemary Pope has died from complications of anorexia. Pope, a highly educated, 49-year-old health educator who suffered from anorexia since childhood, reportedly subsisted on Weight Watchers sweets and coffee. She was described by colleagues as a “shining light.”

Comments or questions on any of the above? Discuss your thoughts below.

Hoorah to Miss Plus Size Elite Jenna Vaught! The blonde bombshell dropped a bombshell of her own on reining anti-obesity zealot MeMe Roth on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (h/t to Joy Nash).

Vaught appeared with the same guests I appeared with back in January, Roth and Dr. Jennifer Ashton. I thought it was very telling when Juliet asked the good doctor: “Can obese people be healthy?” Ashton responded with “For someone who is morbidly obese, I don’t care if they’re exercising and eating carrots and not smoking, by definition they have set themselves up for risk factors down the road…”

Once again, it’s an artful dodging of the question and a gross exaggeration of fatness. I would agree that someone who is morbidly obese - read a BMI of 40 or more - may be at risk for weight-related health problems, but that was not the question posed. Juliet pointedly asked if obese people can be healthy - obese is usually signified by a BMI of 30 to 39.9 - not if morbidly obese people can be healthy.

Roth, with her usual blind fanaticism, insisted that “plus size is no reason to celebrate” and compared obesity to yellow teeth stains from smoking cigarettes. But the real highlight of the show comes at the segment’s end. Vaught, a training physician-to-be, took Roth to task by pointing out Roth’s complete lack of medical expertise:

I don’t see why I shouldn’t celebrate my life. I am a single mother. I have come from nothing. I am a future physician.

Guess what? This morning, I’ve already run four miles. And I eat 1,800 calories a day. So dont judge me because I still carry a little extra baggage. As far as I know, I’m the only - along with this doctor here - future physician. So stick with your social judgments.

Watch the video here

As for Vaught, she’s a Weight Watcherer, but it also sounds like she subscribes to the Health at Every Size Approach. She also plans to launch a plus-size fitness series sometime during spring. Taken from her website:

As Miss Plus America Elite and a future physician, I know the crisis our country is having today concerning the obesity epidemic. Many people have asked me about my stance on obesity and weight. Although I believe that every person should find joy and happiness within themselves, at any stage in life. I also believe in fitness and healthy eating at any stage in life. For me, it is not so much your weight or jean size.

Let me say from personal experience, it’s very difficult keeping your cool in such a situation and especially with someone who is quite vocal in her opposition to your very existence. Vaught acted and reacted quite regally in the face of such hatred - just as a queen ought to.

Readers here are probably familiar with the awful and scary Faith Hill photoshopping controversy that circulated the blogosphere recently. And of course, many of us have seen Dove’s Evolution video, which chronicles the transformation of an ordinarily pretty woman to billboard supermodel in under 60 seconds.

But you’d think a celebrity like Keira Knightly, who already fits a cultural mold unattainable for 98 percent of American woman, would need no additional digital manipulation to airbrush her into even more of an unrealistic perfection. Apparently not, according to This is London’s Evening Standard news.

The news organization reports that editors from top-selling “glossies” are to hold a summit to discuss a voluntary code on digital manipulation. The concern comes as the British Fashion Council demands magazines act after last fall’s Model Health Inquiry gave a “stinging” critique of the industry’s unhealthy size-zero culture. The move also comes at a time when eating disorder specialists issue cautions that cultural obsessions with extreme slimness are pushing more and more people into dangerous diet-binge cycles and even eating disorders.

Professor Janet Treasure, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said such disordered behavior may permanently alter the way people’s brains react to “rewards,” making them susceptible to other addictions, such as drugs and alcohol.

And finally! Someone with a degree makes the connection between the promotion of a thin ideal and the so-called obesity epidemic. Whenever I’m interviewed by reporters about issues related to obesity, I’m inevitably asked for my thoughts on why America is fatter. I always respond by asking, “What came first? The so-called obesity epidemic or dieting?” Treasure also makes this chicken-and-egg connection in the British Journal of Psychiatry, where she also urges the British government to tackle society’s obsessive eating habits.

“Although it may take time to change the ‘thin ideal’ we should remember what has been achieved with cigarette smoking. People are just beginning to listen to the wealth of scientific evidence about the harm that fashion industry images cause.”

Treasure isn’t the only one speaking out. The anti-obesity scourge has attracted the concern of the American Medical Association and most recently, this Canberra Times editorial for the potential harm such zealousness may have on young, impressionable children. As editors there opined:

Education about healthy eating and exercise is an important tool for any young mind, but how much of it now veers to scare tactic? And how much of it takes into account the rising levels of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia?

Regular blog readers may remember a September posting on a publication of the Women’s Forum Australia titled “Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women’s Magazines.” The report found that thin, sexualized and digitally enhanced images of women are linked to poor body image, depression, anxiety and eating disorders amongst girls and women and contributes to self-harming behaviors and poor academic performances. For young teenage girls, such images inspires desires to lose weight and the initiation of dieting, regardless of current body weight. Finally, the five year study found that reading dieting advice in magazines was associated with eating disordered behaviors in teenage girls.

As for the British magazine summit, eating disorders activist Susan Greenwood isn’t holding her breath. The chief executive of the eating disorder charity Beat warned that the industry - much like the Council of Fashion Designers of America - has a history of paying lip service to the issue. As she noted:

“There was a summit at Downing Street back in 2000 on digital manipulation and body image issues with fashion magazine editors and what’s changed since then? Nothing.”

Change is glacial, for sure, but for our sake and the sake of future generations, I prefer Treasure’s more positive outlook.

While looking for an old paper yesterday, I stumbled across some notes I made while researching women’s magazines in the 1950s for articles and advertisements related to women, food and body image. I thought I’d share a few snippets here from the notes I made. Many of these would be hilariously funny if they weren’t the same kinds of things we still see in magazines and the media today.

Ladies Home Journal Jan. 1957
“The Diet That Turned Me into a Model”
As told to Dawn Crowell Norman

“Every time I see a young girl who is overweight, I want to tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘Let me tell you about my own life as a fatty – let me help! …Roy, my husband, would never have looked twice at the old 175-pound Linda… When I am occasionally tempted to eat more than I should, it’s Roy who puts his foot down! ‘Don’t forget,’ he teases, ‘you were once a fatty!’”

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Ladies Home Journal May, 1957
“Is College Education Wasted on Women?”
Dr.Nevitt Sanford

“Psychology and psychiatry have contributed their share to the notion that the best way for a girl to show that she is healthy, wholesome, mature, well-adjusted and the like is to get married and have children.”

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Good Housekeeping Aug., 1958
“How to Bring Up Perfect Little Ladies with the help of Wash and Wear”
Janet Livingstone

“Being a lady is a life’s work, and the sooner your daughter begins mastering the tricks of the trade, the better. Once she has discovered the sorcery of a smile and the magic of ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ she’s ready to go on to the next lesson: the gentle art of looking like a million bucks.

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Good Housekeeping Aug, 1958
“The Date Line: Facts and Fancies for the Girl in School”
Jan Landon

“’Calorie wisors’ are new defense weapons developed by some N. Carolina boys to protect their wallets at drive-in restaurants… the boys attach a mirror to the back of the car’s right-hand sun visor; put next to it a list of calorie values of typical items on the menu - hamburger with ten french fries, 450; banana split, 530; Coke, 75; etc. - and slyly suggest girls check their makeup before ordering!”

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In his Husband and Wife Diet Cookbook (1955), Dr. P.W. Punnett suggests one way for women to shed pounds is to simply stop “constantly nibbling candy and nuts and cake and cookies between meals and in addition to their regular meals.” Whereas, he continued, a woman most often gains weight simply because she eats “twice as much as she really needs” – primarily, “foods like pie, cake, ice cream, candy, nuts, mayonnaise, and sweet desserts” – overweight husbands ought not to “be ashamed if the pounds have sneaked up on you.” He attributed men’s weight gain to extra-fatty meats, gravies, alcohol and inactivity due to work-related advancements.

A roundup of related topics in the news…

Fat activist Jeanne Toombs has passed away due to complications of pneumonia. Am active board member of NAAFA, Toombs also spearheaded efforts to assist in the passing of the bill that would add height and weight to the protected classes in Massachusetts. Expressions of sympathy may be sent to her sister Nancy at ntb180 (at) comcast.net.

Via Shapely Prose: The magazine that’s working on reproducing Kate Harding’s BMI project is still actively looking for more women of color and women in their 40s and 50s to submit photos. If you fall into one or both of those categories, and either the overweight or obese BMI category, and are in good health (by your own definition), they would love to hear from you. Submission info is here.

Daniel Engbar, an associate editor at Slate magazine, wants people to shut up about the cost of obesity. Check out his editorial on the subject in the Dallas News. Calling current obesity scapegoating efforts “misleading” and “misguided,” Engbar argues it is the stigma of being fat - and not being fat in itself - that actually contributes to illnesses attributed to obesity and poor health. He rightfully calls for presidential candidates to pledge support for a federal ban on weight-based discrimination.

Speaking of weight-based discrimination… Anna Kirklund’s new book Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood has been released. Kirklund, an assistant professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan, places the focus of fat rights squarely where it ought to be: civil rights. I’m definitely adding this one to my already growing summer reading list.

I’m featured in the newly released issue 6 of Pulse Zine, along with articles on coping with sizeism and sexism, the gender of group fitness, sexual abuse, a DIY on creating a zine and many more feminist-inspired topics. I received a copy of the previous edition before I agreed to the interview and I found it chockfull of feminist artwork, articles, affirmations and body-positive articles. For ordering information, see here.

Author Leslie Goldman of the blog The Weighting Game appeared on The Today Show last week for a segment on spring break and eating disorders. The story centers on Ashley Fillips, who fought and beat an eating disorder and is now an eating disorders activist. The segment focuses on spring break and eating disorders, but it’s important to note, by Ashely’s own admission, she struggled with disordered thinking and eating at a very young age. I don’t think the segment entirely simplifies eating disorders to spring break syndrome, but it does skate over other factors inherent to eating disorder development. Leslie shared some admissions from women she received during research for her book, Locker Room Diaries, including a woman who admitted that she and her friends were all doing cocaine so that they could fit into their bikinis for spring break. Click here for a video clip of the segment.

Diabulimia makes the news again, this time with an excellent feature in the Boston Globe. The term refers to people with Type 1 diabetes who skip or skimp on insulin doses in a dangerous attempt to lose weight. It’s been estimated that up to one-third of women with the disease engage in these behaviors. The article shares results from a recent Joslin Diabetes Center study of 234 women with type 1 diabetes. They found 10 deaths among women who had restricted insulin, compared to 16 among the larger group who had not. Those who restricted their insulin died on average 13 years younger - at 45, compared to 58.

Many patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy also experience a number of symptoms of eating disorders, according to findings from a Dutch study reported in the journal Sleep. Aside from the main features of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy, one of the more prominent symptoms of narcolepsy is an increase in body weight, along with some reports of symptoms of eating disorders in these patients. For more information on the study and its results, read here.

Comments? Critiques? Post your comments below.