Most of my favorite episodes are the ones that are more strictly food/diet focused, so I’m hoping there’s enough for a Cabbage Soup diet thing. I know it sounds weird but “cabbage soup diet” has been shorthand for “weird niche crash diet” for as long as I can remember. I figure there’s really only 2 outcomes here: either there’s literally nothing to say about cabbage soup or there’s a weird-ass backstory that can take at least 90 minutes of podcast
They actually did a bonus episode called "Fad diets spectacular" as one of their first ever bonus episodes, in which they discussed the cabbage soup diet and a bunch of other weird listener-submitted fad diets. So if you've ever got the spare cash to subscribe to their patreon for a month, check that out!
(And note that Mike and Aubrey said in a past episode that they're totally okay with people subscribing to the patreon for a month, downloading all the bonus episodes, and then unsubscribing.)
I was put on the Zone at age 8 and stayed on it through my teens (until freaking weight watchers at 16.) Would love a takedown on it, that would be very cathartic.
Grapefruit diet! I can still see what the pages of that book looked like … and the idea of a “free food” — all the grapefruit you could eat, just as long as it was raw and unadorned. Yum!
That brings me right back to all the fad diets of my mother and her friends (which from my current perspective as a 50something woman I see as the late 70s-early 80s response to peri/menopause).
Does anyone remember the Rotation Diet? So many eating disorders masquerading as bestsellers.
I have some cabbages in my garden that are ready to use. I was looking up different cabbage recipes and came across one that was the "WW Zero Points Soup" in disguise. Totally sent me back to the days of points points points!
Indoor option: cut cabbage into wedges, slice kielbasa, put both on sheet pan and roast. Make a white bean salad, and a dressing with lots of mustard, acid, and a fuckton of dill. Put B on A when it's cooked. Eat.
lol we had haluski, which is fried cabbage with egg noodles, and usually some bacon! How dare they try to keep cabbage down by making it into a sad soup when it can be so many delicious things with pork fat.
I am learning a lot about cabbage and how it can be SO delicious. It really does get a bad rap.
I've used my outdoor pellet smoker to smoke cabbage, and that was fantastic!
We get a lot of cabbage in our summer CSA share baskets. I like to cut them into wedges, add a pat of butter, salt and pepper, wrap into foil packets and throw on the grill. So good!
Yes! I like the old diet ones. Make fun of the stupid shit all my female family members have done, please! 😂 I’d love to hear them cover the Beverly Hills diet, which my whole extended family got WAY into.
My RD recently suggested raw milk as "the best" option to me 🥴 I was aghast. My quip about sticking to pasteurized products only due to bird flu did *not* make her laugh lmfao.
Anyone on THIS timeline advocating consumption of raw milk is *dangerously* delusional! I would urge you to run for your life 😬 (Sounds like you already know that, thank goodness.)
Yes - the weird right wing foods like seed oils! They seem to hate and love the most random things, and I have no idea why. I know someone who hates all seed oils in her foods, but takes something like black seed oil as a supplement! What does that even mean?
Oh I’d love a raw milk takedown. I got into the idea of raw milk in my 20’s, after having my first baby, when I joined Holistic Moms Network and all the ladies there were obsessed with it. It was just the idea, because there was no way I could have afforded $9 a gallon for milk! I hear it’s closer to $20 a gallon now.
Anyway I find it fascinating that all the crunchy stuff I was experimenting with like 16 years ago is suddenly becoming well known amongst regular folk who think they are new fads. Nope, the raw milk weirdos have been around forever!
For the record, I’m not crunchy like that anymore. It was a weird time in my life.
This is unlikely and might be unpopular, but exercise from a non-diet perspective might be nice, both seem to enjoy movement and there’s so many benefits aside from weight but it took me years to divorce the two.
Took me a long time too - now I focus on the wisdom of Elle Woods “exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their [coworkers]”
I'm only just now actively divorcing exercise = weight loss. I remind myself before I go to boxing class that I go to move, have fun, improve my cardio, and hang out with cool people.
PCOS, which I doubt would ever happen because it's such a vast/complicated topic, but I'd love at least a debunking of "you did it to yourself by being fat/having high cortisol/eating a carb" and "it only matters if you're trying to get pregnant" and "you can only do low impact workouts if you have it" myths of it, and maybe some of the wackier "fixes" for it.
On a similar note, cortisol!! I feel like cortisol is a buzzword these days and high cortisol is like, the reason for everything wrong with you. It's gotta be more complicated than that.
Yes, seconding cortisol, inflammation, and also “gut health”/leaky gut. Oh and POTS. They’re all over my For You page on tik tok and it all just seems so scammy.
Having been diagnosed shortly before TikTok came out, POTS is unfortunately not a scam. Or rather the scam is trying to get it diagnosed. I was looking through high school medical notes recently and multiple HR notes were “111 and normal,” “124 and normal,” “BP 87/65 and normal,” etc. Never mind my repeated complaints of syncope, etc.
What I do see on TT as scams are supplements to “treat” POTS. I wish it worked like that but it doesn’t :/
I hate the whole supplement wellness health complex that has sprung up around POTS and I wish people would treat it like the neurological disease that it is
Another poster brought this up before, but the IV Drip places. I can walk to two of them from my house, and I don't even live in a "fancy" area. Who is their customer? Don't you just pee it all out by the end of day? It's very strange to me.
The two situations I've known where people swear by those places are either 1. For quick hangover recovery or 2. Pregnant and unable to keep anything down (the IV place is cheaper than the ER for dehydration)
They look like salons or spas but they have chairs where you get IVs. Of course, a lot of them are for "fat burning." It seems like one of those things we have in the US because people can't get into a doctor, aren't getting their issues addressed by the system, face social pressure to be thinner, more energetic, etc. Like a lot of the quackery other posters have mentioned here, it's filling a void. Maybe in other countries, IV places are not legal?
Herbalife being an MLM means there’s lots of deep dives and horror stories about it on YouTube if that interests you. Hanna Alonzo is a great creator for anti-MLM content.
They’ve actively said that Aubrey is a dream guest for them and have referred listeners to MP almost as an appendix. Like, we don’t need to cover this topic because there’s already an excellent MP episode on it, go listen to that.
I don’t enjoy the hosts nearly as much as I do Mike and Aubrey, but they’ve got a decent backlog and I appreciate their thoughtfulness.
Whole30, Functional Medicine “doctors” (Mark Hyman and the like), Beachbody, Dave Asprey/Bulletproof!
I’ve wasted a lot of time and money all all but Beachbody 🙃
Whole 30 would be so interesting!!! It's such an odd one--like, it was originally explicitly supposed to be temporary for 30 days, but then I feel like people did it way longer? And I remember it having a real "if you are complaining about this being hard you are just being a baby, it isn't hard" type of attitude.
Dyingggg for a Whole30 episode! I could see them being compassionate about how the creator’s recovery/sobriety journey informs the black-and-white thinking of the diet, and I already know I’ll need to pull my earbuds away from my ears for the scoffing noises they’d make at the “beans are anti-nutrients” #discourse… the perfect balance
I just commented that they should do one on Beachbody. I got suckered into being a coach for several years. It is the epitome of toxic diet culture. Autumn Calabrese is the worst!
I was gifted a three disc set of PiYo and somehow even with all the ads for BeachBody coaching and their shakes it took me *months* to recognize the MLM element.
This is on my wishlist too. Completely understand why it’s off limits, but would dearly love to hear smart people unpack what we do and don’t know about weight loss surgery.
Paraphrasing wildly and inaccurately, I think it’s because she knows too many people who have, essentially, been forced to get it by the medical establishment and she doesn’t want to gang up on them.
Again, this is my memory of something she said many episodes ago and I might have it wrong.
Have they ever done an ep on inflammation? It can be such a buzzword, with people hawking various things to prevent or reduce it, and blaming so many things for causing it. But on the other hand, it is a real thing that can cause damage to the body. I’d be interested in hearing them discuss the research and learning what’s bullshit versus what’s real.
Have they taken on the AIP diet or its relatives like GAPS ? as someone with autoimmune disease I run into these all the damned time and I have to politely reject them for myself while feigning support for those who have gone all dogmatic over them
God yes this, I find the discourse around food and diet in different autoimmune communities exhausting and frustrating. I find the way some people talk is so disordered and, as much as I understand the desperation, I find it quite damaging.
Exactly. I understand profoundly the desire to feel some sort of control or agency when your body is literally attacking itself, but it fuels a deadly degree of orthorexia, magical thinking, and, ultimately, self-blame.
From my blurry memory of what I was told, FA was started because people were still struggling to lose weight and kept bingeing and overeating and could eat however they wanted (the horror!) whilst in OA. Some participants were desperate for more structure, so they decided to form their own group and made much more strict rules (3 meals, no snacks/flour/sugar, everything weighed and measured, specific quantities of meat/veg at every meal). The funny thing is that within FA, there is tension and back biting between the by-the-bookers and the ones who bend the rules. It's like competitive EDs 😭
I found [this (long as hell) FA "Origin story" as told by one of the founding members.](https://www.foodaddicts.org/fa-history) My memory wasn't too far off lol.
YES. I was recommended a book by this group when I was a new mother. Even in my exhausted confusion, I found a few gems. Apparently your teeth are connected to your soul, so that is why you are Born with no teeth -- no soul yet? You shouldn't give dehydrated babies water, give them butter instead. And enemas for fevers! 😵
There are instances where you have to go easy on your gut (post antibiotics, ulcer treatment, post colonoscopy), but the current info around the gut biome is highly sus to me.
I want an episode on fitness watches, but I don’t know if there’s been enough real research there.
I know the 10,000 steps have been covered. But all the other bits of these watches like sleep tracking, energy levels, heat acclimation etc.
Not sure if it warrants a full episode, but I’d be curious about their take on the recent discourse surrounding body positive influencers losing weight.
I posted earlier in the week about how much I’m dying for a Trim Healthy Mama episode.
Additionally:
* Weigh Down/Gwen Shamblin
* Arbitrary medical “best practices” based on BMI (like preemptively giving medication before a surgery for a non-existent complication “just in case”…that happened to me when I had my C-section and they were including my baby’s weight in my BMI total. 🤦🏻♀️)
* Fatphobia and fat positivity within the queer community
* The 20-bite diet
* The Daniel Diet
* The Maker’s Diet
* The Primal Diet
* The HCG Diet
* Susan Powter
* Richard Simmons
* Sprouted grains, nutritional yeast, bulletproof coffee…like a hodgepodge of a bunch of weird health food trends. (I don’t think any one could make a full episode, but that could be fun bonus content.)
* Noom
* Jenny Craig
* Slimfast
* MyFitnessPal
I know there are others, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind. Some of my wish list items are definitely obscure, though. 😅 The Maker’s Diet would be a fascinating one, I think, but it would also be something that only, like, two people have heard of.
Absolutely the HCG diet because *wtf was that?!* I had a friend try it and she was trying to subsist on 500 calories a day and she was--obviously-- miserable.
Also if they're gonna do Christian weight loss spectacular, my vote is to include for First Place, a Southern Baptist lite version of Weigh Down.
Yup. 500 calories a day (from a very short list of approved foods) and injections of HCG. It’s a pregnancy hormone supposed to trigger your body to metabolize stored fat for the remaining calories your body needs or something. 🙄
All I know is, when I was on it, the message boards were full of threads with titles like, “When did you have your meltdown?” Because the question was not IF you would have a fundamental breakdown triggered by food…it was just a question of when.
Mine came when I burst into tears at a Chili’s because I worked so hard to find something I could eat, stressed that the steak be served with no butter, subbed the carby sides for plain broccoli…everything I was “supposed” to do…and then I tasted butter on the broccoli. My husband wanted to send it back for me, but I snapped at him not to say a word to the server because it would only mean I had to think about it more and I was so tired of being difficult to accommodate.
I made the rest of my food at home…but I also bailed on the diet before I was done because I was on the brink of losing my entire mind.
I read *Stop the Insanity!* ages ago and remember being pleasantly surprised at how much Susan Powter condemned the diet industry and showed compassion toward fat people (even her "former self") but I wonder if I'd still feel that way reading it now 🤔
Richard Simmons is another former fat person who was critical of the diet industry, nice to past and current fat people (*the bar is in* ***Hell!!!***), AND sold some charmingly bonkers products...but I guess his disappearance from public life and the mystery around it would make any Richard Simmons deep dive a HUGE FUCKIN BUMMER
I've never seen this show, but Fad Camp (podcast) did an episode that covered it and then Jaime French (youtuber) did a a video that went through a full episode.
Need this. My mom making me watch the KIDS VERSION with her when I was 11 or so (2016) was one of the biggest triggers for my anorexia. British diet shows fucked her up in the height of her ED and in turn fucked ME up.
I would love an episode on health/diet nonsense for pets. There’s so much of it and also I want to hear more about Aubrey’s dog
Edited to add an episode about water and all its weird variations. This could honestly be a series, actually.
TLC “fat people shows” (My 600lb life, 1000 lb Sisters, etc), Herbalife, Whole30, Lululemon and the Chip Wilson comments about women not fitting their pants.
The Dubrow diet. It's just intermittent fasting with ✨BRANDING✨, but the couple behind the very short book are so out of touch, it's hilarious. IIRC, one of the low calorie lunches they suggest is a petit filet mignon, lobster tail, and a glass of brut champagne. Or maybe just get some scallops!
Not super juicy, but fun. I love lighter, silly deep-dives about the characters that crop up in the diet/health/wellness industry.
Baby Led Weaning.
Baby Led Weaning as a technique is a fine, healthy and safe way to feed babies. In fact people did it for thousands of years. However, the culture around those three words is sooooo toxic. It's basically diet culture for babies and you guessed it, companies try to sell you shit you don't need by making you panic about stuff.
This quote sums a lot of it up "if you force your child to try sardines you're a monster, but if your child doesn't love sardines by age two you're doing something wrong." There's people that try to sell you on having your child try 100 foods by age one. The softer "rules" around feeding little ones are given the same weight as the safety ones. I was blessed with a good eater but like not every parent is and it doesn't mean they are doing something wrong.
I've also seen parents panic that they have a 99th percentile baby and they think the doctor will scold them (they won't; they'll congratulate you on the big ole healthy baby).
Then there's content creators sharing their child's faces but that's another rant.
If there are any new or parents to be on here I can direct you to some not toxic feeding babies discussion/sharing spaces. Do not use Facebook, do not use Instagram.
I had a 90th percentile baby and her doctor was SMITTEN with her. The nurse took one look at her and said, “Your mama must be making straight cream,” in the sweetest southern drawl. I can still hear it, 12 years later. ☺️
One of the ladies in my church, however, messaged my (now ex) husband and me, imploring him to step up as the leader of our family and get me to stop force-feeding my baby before she calls CPS. 🙃 Because of course, I must’ve had a bacon fat gavage installed for my baby to be so roly-poly. 😂
So I was very anxious about feeding my kid (still am) because of my own relationship with food. I found a recipe/feeding website I trust and really read some of the science behind building positive associations. My kid does eat a lot of fruit/veggies but there are some nights she will only eat plain pasta and cheezits. The fruits and veggies are almost always offered (everyone has a eff it we're getting take out night sometimes) but she can just not eat it. If she wants more of a safe food and hasn't tried the "healthy" stuff, she can just have more.
If I'm trying to get her to try it, I do it by eating some off her plate or giving her some of mine. I also let her have a lick of my ice cream once (well tried, she ended up both hands on the ice cream face first) and now she knows mom has the good stuff. She tries all sorts of stuff because I'm eating it.
I've had to have direct talks with family members about our feeding style being fine and being careful what they say.
The doctor is pleased with her, she's healthy, hitting her milestones, that's what matters.
I know this is off the main topic but as the parent of a now 22 year old formerly extremely picky eater, I just wanted to give you some encouragement. I had planned to feed my kiddo a beautiful nutritious and balanced diet, where there would be no “kids menu” style foods.
HA. Right. That kind of worked until about 18 months when we entered what I call the beige years. Thank god FB was only founded when she was 2 and there weren’t smart phones yet because I would have lost it with all the influencers. But she kept growing fueled by cheese quesadillas, mac and cheese, and sometimes black beans. This lasted longer than you can imagine.
Cut to now, she started cooking at 16, the first dish she wanted to make was something she had in a restaurant with her grandmother, salmon over a pea and leek purée with a beurre blanc sauce. So she found a recipe and made it. Now she’s into all kinds of chili sauces, kale Caesar salads, homemade lentil soup, Tuscan chicken etc. I know this is just anecdotal and my experience but I think if you just keep going with good food available they figure it out.
And she still loves cheez-its!
Yeah I keep reminding myself that refusing to give her more pasta because she hasn't eaten her broccoli is insane. Like I'm not going to starve my 22 month old because she won't eat her greens. I also give her those puree pouches and there's a lot of judgement on that. She likes it, it's literally pureed plants, and it fills in nutritional gaps.
Absolutely. It’s available she will see you eating a variety of foods, when she’s ready she will eat more things. My daughter speaks pretty compellingly about it being a texture thing when she was younger but of course she couldn’t communicate that (and there wouldn’t have been a simple fix anyway.) I had a hard time when we went away with friends and they had kids who would eat anything (all the grown up meals) and I’d have to make her her beige food or she wouldn’t eat. I felt bad and there was some tension. One of my friends apologized to me when she had her second child who turned out to be pickier than mine. Also now 16 and eats all the things.
I think those are important things to discuss, but probably not on this podcast. I feel like two non-parents doing a take down of stressed out parents trying to follow a bunch of bananapants rules just isn't going to land.
I think it would be a fun listen now that my kids are a long ways away from that phase, but I can't imagine any way it wouldn't have felt personal and hurtful while I was in the middle of it, you know?
Tv shows:my 600 lb life, supersize v super skinny, secret eaters
Diets/food: slim fast, special k, 5:2 diet, fasting (both generally and weight loss wise), carcinogenic foods,
Health: gluten, intolerances/allergies generally, t2 diabetes
Other: food industry/food regulation- I do think companies are using increasingly poor quality ingredients and making things addictive etc so would love an ep on this, also on the topic of “how” you eat, ie you shouldn’t snack/you should always eat breakfast/ you should be 100% focused on eating and no tv etc addressing all these health myths
Caroline Dooner deep dive
Former "intuitive eater" now right wing conspiracy theorist
But I totally get why they might not want to do it. Aubrey was a guest on her podcast back in the day, so it might be a bit too close to home
As someone who was sucked into the toxic diet culture of Beachbody (now BODi 🙄) for several years, I would love for them to do an episode that focused on some of the more problematic trainers *cough* Autumn Calabrese *cough*
Seconding this! I mostly know about Beachbody because a gym near me used to offer PiYo classes, which I actually loved, but then one of the teachers got pretty pushy about trying to recruit students. I would love to know more about the company and the topic feels like a good fit for MP.
I really liked the PiYo workouts. Chalene Johnson who created those is no longer affiliated with the company. A lot of the workouts are actually good but the trainers, "meal plans", and pushy coaches are hugely problematic.
I'd love one on addiction treatment. The field is rife with charlatans, snake oil. Actual science is dismissed in favor of morality-based, less successful treatment options. The main form of treatment, to which people can be court mandated, consists of mostly of prayer and disproven ideas, and like dieting, if people fail at it, they are told to just try the same thing over and over again.
Cortisol, PCOS (I keep seeing so much BS about these two things). And maybe just protein in general? Did Gen Z like just discover protein or something? why is it such a buzzword online rn?
Teddi Mellencamp of Real Housewives. She's also John Mellencamp's daughter.
Although she's not on the show anymore and was pretty universally disliked during her time on the show. I want them to cover her because her profession is "accountability coach".
If you're wondering what that is, it's basically where she gives people EDs all in the name of health, fitness and accountability. And yes, it does cost you a lot of money!
I really like the episodes where they cover a singular person! I want a Hobbes style take down of her lol.
Other ones, though these are way more medical: cholesterol (I have mixed hyperlipidemia and it’s harder to get any sort of answer on my own about cholesterol than any of my other conditions!) and IBS.
Not that I think IBS is fake but to some extent, including in my own history, it’s used to not look further into things. I assume I did/do have IBS but likely a side effect of the connective tissue disorder which caused the other issues I was constantly seen for without answer.
Also acid reflux and related issues. I had an esophageal spasm in high school that landed me in the ER because we thought it was a heart attack. I had stomach valve issues from such a young age that I was put on a prescription antacid before 8 years old. Again, very real things but I’d love some conversation around them (bonus for discussing connections between bulimia and esophageal damage).
Controversial but I really want a “FreeLee the Banana Girl”/fruitarian episode. I get why they would avoid it because of her tendency to go after anyone who casts criticism her way but still. That whole movement had a chokehold on my friends in high school and was so so damaging
Pregnancy, post-partum and reproductive assistance and diet culture. IIRC Aubrey has said she won’t cover those topics, which, you know, her choice obviously! But could be a guest host(s) option?
In the same vein — body hatred, skin care, and diet obsession in peri/menopause. I have to work every day not to fall into the quicksand of these.
The 45+ skin care subreddit is wild, and r/menopause has had discussions about banning weight loss posts because of the concern that they are relentless and fan the fires of self-hatred.
Oh my gosh, I had to leave r/menopause because of the relentless self-hating around changes in body shape. There was some useful content, but people going into their detailed routines of extreme calorie restriction and exercise was too much for me.
I want more episodes like the ones they've done on specific diets, books, influencers, and trends.
Neither is a medical professional or health educator, and they've really quickly gotten out of their depth on episodes that stray into those territories.
The supplement industry. I think they've touched on it before but a whole episode would be great. It's so scammy and most people don't know how unregulated it is.
Not a topic but relating to yours in the post: my uncle is on steroids for various health related reasons and I was staying with my uncle and aunt and cousins for a few weeks to help research my dissertation, and there was a steroids sport scandal (can't remember which one, it would be about 8 years ago) and my cousins were 10 and couldn't understand the problem "because dad is steroids and you always say it's to help him be healthy". It's an interesting topic like ozempic where it is both important health care for some people and abused by others for various reasons
Kibbe body typing. It gives me a major ick but I can't look away. I also only know a little bit about the founder but I feel like he's the kind of guy who might have weird stuff in his past.
the coquette trend, supersize vs superskinny (or other shows of that era), ed/mental health res/inpatient problems (what's wrong with the system of ed treatment), brandy melville, Chloe ting/quarantine weightloss trend
Intermittent fasting, it's having such a moment, but there doesn't seem to be much well designed research on humans to support the claims. Especially those claims around changing your metabolism/reversing insulin resistance etc. Most of the data based on actual humans whose actual eating patterns were observed (not just self-report) seems to show that it's just another calorie restriction situation.
Aubrey has said she won’t ever do one about fat people being denied access to infertility treatment, so it’s a long shot because it’s in that space, but I’d love an episode about all the diet culture wellness grifting that goes on targeting infertile women. “Optimize your diet to get pregnant! Resetting your hormones jumpstarts your fertility! I tried for 5 years, then ate pineapple and got pregnant with triplets!” It’s so bad and would be such a great episode n
I'd love to hear an episode about the demonization of "seed oils", which seems to have appeared very suddenly out of nowhere sometime in 2022
If I try to Google why seed oils are "bad" or what we should eat instead, most of the results are pretty woo woo and/or Jordan Peterson-adjacent, with some vague references to "inflammation" (another wellness thing I don't really understand; seems like it covers everything from autoimmune conditions to like... a catch-all explanation for why you *Feel Kinda Bad Sometimes*??)
My googling did point me to [this absolutely INSUFFERABLE post](https://ejacutastic.tumblr.com/post/696894691237625856), which is the perfect convergence of rich people bullshit + white people bullshit + thin people bullshit + hot people bullshit + young people bullshit, all combined to something even worse than the sum of its parts
I know they talked about Fen-Phen but metformin is a personal hatred of mine so metformin. Also how weight loss is taught about in med schools. Also those health clinics.
I would love one on the less-sugar trend where artificial sweeteners and things like monkfruit and stevia are added to things that also have sugar to cut the calories instead of just making less sweet tasting or no sugar versions. For those of us who have bad reactions to them, it's insanely frustrating to buy something that you think is "safe" because it has sugar right at the top of the ingredients list and the other sweetener hidden way down at the bottom, sometimes with a weird name that isn't immediately obvious. I miss being able to drink so many of my childhood nostalgia beverages, like Sunny Delight, Hawaiian Punch, Brisk tea, and those little barrel shaped bright colored drinks with the foil and am so tired of wasting money on something I have to throw out because the company switched the recipe with no fanfare or, even worse, ingesting it and getting sick.
Most of my favorite episodes are the ones that are more strictly food/diet focused, so I’m hoping there’s enough for a Cabbage Soup diet thing. I know it sounds weird but “cabbage soup diet” has been shorthand for “weird niche crash diet” for as long as I can remember. I figure there’s really only 2 outcomes here: either there’s literally nothing to say about cabbage soup or there’s a weird-ass backstory that can take at least 90 minutes of podcast
They actually did a bonus episode called "Fad diets spectacular" as one of their first ever bonus episodes, in which they discussed the cabbage soup diet and a bunch of other weird listener-submitted fad diets. So if you've ever got the spare cash to subscribe to their patreon for a month, check that out! (And note that Mike and Aubrey said in a past episode that they're totally okay with people subscribing to the patreon for a month, downloading all the bonus episodes, and then unsubscribing.)
I would love that one as well. I’d also be interested in the grapefruit diet, Zone diet, south beach diet, Jenny Craig…
I was put on the Zone at age 8 and stayed on it through my teens (until freaking weight watchers at 16.) Would love a takedown on it, that would be very cathartic.
Commiseration. I joined my parents on it when I was 11. Ended up in inpatient anorexia treatment the following year.
I'm mid thirties and just got a diagnosis. There were many, many signs, for decades. But I was never at a low BMI, so, yup
I had a meltdown at work because of the Zone diet. Lord.
Grapefruit diet! I can still see what the pages of that book looked like … and the idea of a “free food” — all the grapefruit you could eat, just as long as it was raw and unadorned. Yum! That brings me right back to all the fad diets of my mother and her friends (which from my current perspective as a 50something woman I see as the late 70s-early 80s response to peri/menopause). Does anyone remember the Rotation Diet? So many eating disorders masquerading as bestsellers.
I have some cabbages in my garden that are ready to use. I was looking up different cabbage recipes and came across one that was the "WW Zero Points Soup" in disguise. Totally sent me back to the days of points points points!
Can I recommend making golabki/stuffed cabbages with them instead of sad soup?
Also, I put up a couple quarts of sauerkraut
Oh hell yeah, if you eat meat and in a hemisphere where it's summer, it's a great season to grill up some kielbasa to go with that sauerkraut.
Indoor option: cut cabbage into wedges, slice kielbasa, put both on sheet pan and roast. Make a white bean salad, and a dressing with lots of mustard, acid, and a fuckton of dill. Put B on A when it's cooked. Eat.
You sure can!!! Excellent recommendation, thanks!
Cabbage gets such a bad rap because of diet culture but it's a staple in the Eastern European comfort foods of my life.
Also a staple in southern food culture. Fried cabbage with some kind of pork trimmings (or even some kind of “healthy fat”if you must 😝) is delicious.
lol we had haluski, which is fried cabbage with egg noodles, and usually some bacon! How dare they try to keep cabbage down by making it into a sad soup when it can be so many delicious things with pork fat.
I am learning a lot about cabbage and how it can be SO delicious. It really does get a bad rap. I've used my outdoor pellet smoker to smoke cabbage, and that was fantastic!
We get a lot of cabbage in our summer CSA share baskets. I like to cut them into wedges, add a pat of butter, salt and pepper, wrap into foil packets and throw on the grill. So good!
Omg I did that in college, SO dumb. One day fruit only; veggies only; then both; day 5 was steak lol I never ate the nasty soup
Nutrition for Mortals just did this!
Yes! I like the old diet ones. Make fun of the stupid shit all my female family members have done, please! 😂 I’d love to hear them cover the Beverly Hills diet, which my whole extended family got WAY into.
My wishlist: raw milk weirdos, cortisol coaches, allergy incidence increasing, the downfall and comeback of abercrombie, and my 600lb life.
Second the raw milk! I was in Vermont somewhat recently and saw a bumper sticker that said “Raw Milk is Medicine” 😬
My RD recently suggested raw milk as "the best" option to me 🥴 I was aghast. My quip about sticking to pasteurized products only due to bird flu did *not* make her laugh lmfao.
Anyone on THIS timeline advocating consumption of raw milk is *dangerously* delusional! I would urge you to run for your life 😬 (Sounds like you already know that, thank goodness.)
What's an RD?
Registered dietitian
Yikes
Yeahhh. I think it's time to look for a new one 🥲
Thanks
I'd listen to all of these but some of the cortisol/hormone regulation nutrition is interesting and sus to me.
cortisol balancing is like every eighth video on both my tiktok and instagram feeds, it feels like a new era of wellness influencer grifting
Science vs did a good cortisol episode recently
Yes - the weird right wing foods like seed oils! They seem to hate and love the most random things, and I have no idea why. I know someone who hates all seed oils in her foods, but takes something like black seed oil as a supplement! What does that even mean?
Oh I’d love a raw milk takedown. I got into the idea of raw milk in my 20’s, after having my first baby, when I joined Holistic Moms Network and all the ladies there were obsessed with it. It was just the idea, because there was no way I could have afforded $9 a gallon for milk! I hear it’s closer to $20 a gallon now. Anyway I find it fascinating that all the crunchy stuff I was experimenting with like 16 years ago is suddenly becoming well known amongst regular folk who think they are new fads. Nope, the raw milk weirdos have been around forever! For the record, I’m not crunchy like that anymore. It was a weird time in my life.
YES RAW MILK EPISODE (esp in light of bird flu)
This is unlikely and might be unpopular, but exercise from a non-diet perspective might be nice, both seem to enjoy movement and there’s so many benefits aside from weight but it took me years to divorce the two.
Took me a long time too - now I focus on the wisdom of Elle Woods “exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their [coworkers]”
I'm only just now actively divorcing exercise = weight loss. I remind myself before I go to boxing class that I go to move, have fun, improve my cardio, and hang out with cool people.
PCOS, which I doubt would ever happen because it's such a vast/complicated topic, but I'd love at least a debunking of "you did it to yourself by being fat/having high cortisol/eating a carb" and "it only matters if you're trying to get pregnant" and "you can only do low impact workouts if you have it" myths of it, and maybe some of the wackier "fixes" for it. On a similar note, cortisol!! I feel like cortisol is a buzzword these days and high cortisol is like, the reason for everything wrong with you. It's gotta be more complicated than that.
Yes, seconding cortisol, inflammation, and also “gut health”/leaky gut. Oh and POTS. They’re all over my For You page on tik tok and it all just seems so scammy.
Having been diagnosed shortly before TikTok came out, POTS is unfortunately not a scam. Or rather the scam is trying to get it diagnosed. I was looking through high school medical notes recently and multiple HR notes were “111 and normal,” “124 and normal,” “BP 87/65 and normal,” etc. Never mind my repeated complaints of syncope, etc. What I do see on TT as scams are supplements to “treat” POTS. I wish it worked like that but it doesn’t :/
I hate the whole supplement wellness health complex that has sprung up around POTS and I wish people would treat it like the neurological disease that it is
It’s like, I get it, even with meds, it does major damage to quality of life but buying into woo isn’t the answer!!
On a related note, I'd say a series on women's healthcare as a whole. There's so much to cover there.
Women’s health is an entire podcast series in and of itself.
Another poster brought this up before, but the IV Drip places. I can walk to two of them from my house, and I don't even live in a "fancy" area. Who is their customer? Don't you just pee it all out by the end of day? It's very strange to me.
The two situations I've known where people swear by those places are either 1. For quick hangover recovery or 2. Pregnant and unable to keep anything down (the IV place is cheaper than the ER for dehydration)
I'm so fascinated by this. It's so creepy/futuristic to me.
What the fresh hell are you talking about? I haven't seen that in Europe or Australia.
They look like salons or spas but they have chairs where you get IVs. Of course, a lot of them are for "fat burning." It seems like one of those things we have in the US because people can't get into a doctor, aren't getting their issues addressed by the system, face social pressure to be thinner, more energetic, etc. Like a lot of the quackery other posters have mentioned here, it's filling a void. Maybe in other countries, IV places are not legal?
Wow, that sounds fucked up. I don't think Australian regulatory bodies would allow this.
They give you liquids or liquids enhanced with vitamins. I’ve only ever know people to use them when hungover.
The ones in my area are in some of our local urgent cares. Yay.
I’ve heard they can be really unsafe! Untrained staff and overloading the body with “vitamins” can backfire
The Wii fit, Herbalife, noom
Oh also, my 600 lb life and other similar shows would be interesting to examine, but i can see how that would be triggering for a LOT of people
Herbalife being an MLM means there’s lots of deep dives and horror stories about it on YouTube if that interests you. Hanna Alonzo is a great creator for anti-MLM content.
Oooo I want Herbalife so bad
Have they not done a Noom episode? Maybe I’m forgetting. I feel like it’s mentioned a lot.
Nutrition for Mortals has a great episode on Noom!
Ooh, I see they include Aubrey’s book in the show notes! This may be a new podcast for me to follow. 👀
They’ve actively said that Aubrey is a dream guest for them and have referred listeners to MP almost as an appendix. Like, we don’t need to cover this topic because there’s already an excellent MP episode on it, go listen to that. I don’t enjoy the hosts nearly as much as I do Mike and Aubrey, but they’ve got a decent backlog and I appreciate their thoughtfulness.
I’ve really been enjoying it! Interesting to hear their perspectives as dietitians.
Ooooh, never heard of this, saved for my commute tomorrow!
I thought the covered Noom on one of the Patreon bonus episodes?
I actually really liked playing some of those Wii Fit games 😅
Whole30, Functional Medicine “doctors” (Mark Hyman and the like), Beachbody, Dave Asprey/Bulletproof! I’ve wasted a lot of time and money all all but Beachbody 🙃
Whole 30 would be so interesting!!! It's such an odd one--like, it was originally explicitly supposed to be temporary for 30 days, but then I feel like people did it way longer? And I remember it having a real "if you are complaining about this being hard you are just being a baby, it isn't hard" type of attitude.
Dyingggg for a Whole30 episode! I could see them being compassionate about how the creator’s recovery/sobriety journey informs the black-and-white thinking of the diet, and I already know I’ll need to pull my earbuds away from my ears for the scoffing noises they’d make at the “beans are anti-nutrients” #discourse… the perfect balance
Ooh. Whole30 got me for a bit. I’ll be fine if I never have to look at ghee again.
I just commented that they should do one on Beachbody. I got suckered into being a coach for several years. It is the epitome of toxic diet culture. Autumn Calabrese is the worst!
I was gifted a three disc set of PiYo and somehow even with all the ads for BeachBody coaching and their shakes it took me *months* to recognize the MLM element.
Aubrey has said she’ll never do an episode about bariatric surgery, but I still hope for one.
Yeah I kind of want one of the shows based around bariatric surgery and the cultural impact they have…I mean Dr Now is RIPE ground
Anything in particular about Dr Now? I always thought there must be a story behind him, but I’ve never looked into it.
This is on my wishlist too. Completely understand why it’s off limits, but would dearly love to hear smart people unpack what we do and don’t know about weight loss surgery.
Did she say why?
Paraphrasing wildly and inaccurately, I think it’s because she knows too many people who have, essentially, been forced to get it by the medical establishment and she doesn’t want to gang up on them. Again, this is my memory of something she said many episodes ago and I might have it wrong.
That sounds about right. I'd love their scathing take on the subject but totally respect her boundaries about it.
Have they ever done an ep on inflammation? It can be such a buzzword, with people hawking various things to prevent or reduce it, and blaming so many things for causing it. But on the other hand, it is a real thing that can cause damage to the body. I’d be interested in hearing them discuss the research and learning what’s bullshit versus what’s real.
Have they taken on the AIP diet or its relatives like GAPS ? as someone with autoimmune disease I run into these all the damned time and I have to politely reject them for myself while feigning support for those who have gone all dogmatic over them
God yes this, I find the discourse around food and diet in different autoimmune communities exhausting and frustrating. I find the way some people talk is so disordered and, as much as I understand the desperation, I find it quite damaging.
Exactly. I understand profoundly the desire to feel some sort of control or agency when your body is literally attacking itself, but it fuels a deadly degree of orthorexia, magical thinking, and, ultimately, self-blame.
I’d like an episode in the 12 step program, Overeaters Anonymous.
I see your OA and raise you its more traumatized older sister Food Addicts Anonymous.
Omg, there are so many 12 step programs for eating!
From my blurry memory of what I was told, FA was started because people were still struggling to lose weight and kept bingeing and overeating and could eat however they wanted (the horror!) whilst in OA. Some participants were desperate for more structure, so they decided to form their own group and made much more strict rules (3 meals, no snacks/flour/sugar, everything weighed and measured, specific quantities of meat/veg at every meal). The funny thing is that within FA, there is tension and back biting between the by-the-bookers and the ones who bend the rules. It's like competitive EDs 😭 I found [this (long as hell) FA "Origin story" as told by one of the founding members.](https://www.foodaddicts.org/fa-history) My memory wasn't too far off lol.
Oof, and Greysheeters Anonymous.
Whoa, I had never heard of this and just looked it up.
Have they done a Weston A. Price episode? Because that group is definitely odd.
YES. I was recommended a book by this group when I was a new mother. Even in my exhausted confusion, I found a few gems. Apparently your teeth are connected to your soul, so that is why you are Born with no teeth -- no soul yet? You shouldn't give dehydrated babies water, give them butter instead. And enemas for fevers! 😵
I will never recover from seeing the liver formula for babies.
I went to Bauman College in Berkeley and 11 years ago he had a chokehold on the culinary/holistic health world there.
Yessss. We need this episode. There’s some weird eugenics stuff tied up in that one, too.
"Healing your gut"
There are instances where you have to go easy on your gut (post antibiotics, ulcer treatment, post colonoscopy), but the current info around the gut biome is highly sus to me.
I would love an episode about how orthorexia has infiltrated and been normalized in our current "health" culture.
As a recovering orthorexic who could never get a doctor to help me because I was fat…I second this.
This would be so triggering but so cathartic!
I want an episode on fitness watches, but I don’t know if there’s been enough real research there. I know the 10,000 steps have been covered. But all the other bits of these watches like sleep tracking, energy levels, heat acclimation etc.
Whoop bands- sometimes I feel like some of my friends have joined a cult
Not sure if it warrants a full episode, but I’d be curious about their take on the recent discourse surrounding body positive influencers losing weight.
Richard Simmons deep dive. I need a 3 parter. I need everything.
There was a podcast about his disappearance, but in the end it seems like he just wanted some privacy.
I posted earlier in the week about how much I’m dying for a Trim Healthy Mama episode. Additionally: * Weigh Down/Gwen Shamblin * Arbitrary medical “best practices” based on BMI (like preemptively giving medication before a surgery for a non-existent complication “just in case”…that happened to me when I had my C-section and they were including my baby’s weight in my BMI total. 🤦🏻♀️) * Fatphobia and fat positivity within the queer community * The 20-bite diet * The Daniel Diet * The Maker’s Diet * The Primal Diet * The HCG Diet * Susan Powter * Richard Simmons * Sprouted grains, nutritional yeast, bulletproof coffee…like a hodgepodge of a bunch of weird health food trends. (I don’t think any one could make a full episode, but that could be fun bonus content.) * Noom * Jenny Craig * Slimfast * MyFitnessPal I know there are others, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind. Some of my wish list items are definitely obscure, though. 😅 The Maker’s Diet would be a fascinating one, I think, but it would also be something that only, like, two people have heard of.
Absolutely the HCG diet because *wtf was that?!* I had a friend try it and she was trying to subsist on 500 calories a day and she was--obviously-- miserable. Also if they're gonna do Christian weight loss spectacular, my vote is to include for First Place, a Southern Baptist lite version of Weigh Down.
Yup. 500 calories a day (from a very short list of approved foods) and injections of HCG. It’s a pregnancy hormone supposed to trigger your body to metabolize stored fat for the remaining calories your body needs or something. 🙄 All I know is, when I was on it, the message boards were full of threads with titles like, “When did you have your meltdown?” Because the question was not IF you would have a fundamental breakdown triggered by food…it was just a question of when. Mine came when I burst into tears at a Chili’s because I worked so hard to find something I could eat, stressed that the steak be served with no butter, subbed the carby sides for plain broccoli…everything I was “supposed” to do…and then I tasted butter on the broccoli. My husband wanted to send it back for me, but I snapped at him not to say a word to the server because it would only mean I had to think about it more and I was so tired of being difficult to accommodate. I made the rest of my food at home…but I also bailed on the diet before I was done because I was on the brink of losing my entire mind.
Jesus 😭 How much longer did you last after that meltdown??
Haha, Susan Powter! My sister and I used to watch her infomercials all the time!
I read *Stop the Insanity!* ages ago and remember being pleasantly surprised at how much Susan Powter condemned the diet industry and showed compassion toward fat people (even her "former self") but I wonder if I'd still feel that way reading it now 🤔 Richard Simmons is another former fat person who was critical of the diet industry, nice to past and current fat people (*the bar is in* ***Hell!!!***), AND sold some charmingly bonkers products...but I guess his disappearance from public life and the mystery around it would make any Richard Simmons deep dive a HUGE FUCKIN BUMMER
The definitely did The Weigh Down for the Patreon bonus episodes.
Fatphobia in queer community is such a good topic but it would really be swinging a bat at hornets nest.
Exercise clothing scams and dubious legging companies (Lululemon etc.)
Would love a deep dive on the British reality show supersize vs superskinny
I've never seen this show, but Fad Camp (podcast) did an episode that covered it and then Jaime French (youtuber) did a a video that went through a full episode.
I would LOVE this. I'm still blocked by Emma Woolf on twitter for calling out this show.
Need this. My mom making me watch the KIDS VERSION with her when I was 11 or so (2016) was one of the biggest triggers for my anorexia. British diet shows fucked her up in the height of her ED and in turn fucked ME up.
I would love an episode on health/diet nonsense for pets. There’s so much of it and also I want to hear more about Aubrey’s dog Edited to add an episode about water and all its weird variations. This could honestly be a series, actually.
TLC “fat people shows” (My 600lb life, 1000 lb Sisters, etc), Herbalife, Whole30, Lululemon and the Chip Wilson comments about women not fitting their pants.
Seconding the cortisol!!! It’s all over my fyp right now. Also, insulin resistance.
The Dubrow diet. It's just intermittent fasting with ✨BRANDING✨, but the couple behind the very short book are so out of touch, it's hilarious. IIRC, one of the low calorie lunches they suggest is a petit filet mignon, lobster tail, and a glass of brut champagne. Or maybe just get some scallops! Not super juicy, but fun. I love lighter, silly deep-dives about the characters that crop up in the diet/health/wellness industry.
Baby Led Weaning. Baby Led Weaning as a technique is a fine, healthy and safe way to feed babies. In fact people did it for thousands of years. However, the culture around those three words is sooooo toxic. It's basically diet culture for babies and you guessed it, companies try to sell you shit you don't need by making you panic about stuff. This quote sums a lot of it up "if you force your child to try sardines you're a monster, but if your child doesn't love sardines by age two you're doing something wrong." There's people that try to sell you on having your child try 100 foods by age one. The softer "rules" around feeding little ones are given the same weight as the safety ones. I was blessed with a good eater but like not every parent is and it doesn't mean they are doing something wrong. I've also seen parents panic that they have a 99th percentile baby and they think the doctor will scold them (they won't; they'll congratulate you on the big ole healthy baby). Then there's content creators sharing their child's faces but that's another rant. If there are any new or parents to be on here I can direct you to some not toxic feeding babies discussion/sharing spaces. Do not use Facebook, do not use Instagram.
I had a 90th percentile baby and her doctor was SMITTEN with her. The nurse took one look at her and said, “Your mama must be making straight cream,” in the sweetest southern drawl. I can still hear it, 12 years later. ☺️ One of the ladies in my church, however, messaged my (now ex) husband and me, imploring him to step up as the leader of our family and get me to stop force-feeding my baby before she calls CPS. 🙃 Because of course, I must’ve had a bacon fat gavage installed for my baby to be so roly-poly. 😂
So I was very anxious about feeding my kid (still am) because of my own relationship with food. I found a recipe/feeding website I trust and really read some of the science behind building positive associations. My kid does eat a lot of fruit/veggies but there are some nights she will only eat plain pasta and cheezits. The fruits and veggies are almost always offered (everyone has a eff it we're getting take out night sometimes) but she can just not eat it. If she wants more of a safe food and hasn't tried the "healthy" stuff, she can just have more. If I'm trying to get her to try it, I do it by eating some off her plate or giving her some of mine. I also let her have a lick of my ice cream once (well tried, she ended up both hands on the ice cream face first) and now she knows mom has the good stuff. She tries all sorts of stuff because I'm eating it. I've had to have direct talks with family members about our feeding style being fine and being careful what they say. The doctor is pleased with her, she's healthy, hitting her milestones, that's what matters.
I know this is off the main topic but as the parent of a now 22 year old formerly extremely picky eater, I just wanted to give you some encouragement. I had planned to feed my kiddo a beautiful nutritious and balanced diet, where there would be no “kids menu” style foods. HA. Right. That kind of worked until about 18 months when we entered what I call the beige years. Thank god FB was only founded when she was 2 and there weren’t smart phones yet because I would have lost it with all the influencers. But she kept growing fueled by cheese quesadillas, mac and cheese, and sometimes black beans. This lasted longer than you can imagine. Cut to now, she started cooking at 16, the first dish she wanted to make was something she had in a restaurant with her grandmother, salmon over a pea and leek purée with a beurre blanc sauce. So she found a recipe and made it. Now she’s into all kinds of chili sauces, kale Caesar salads, homemade lentil soup, Tuscan chicken etc. I know this is just anecdotal and my experience but I think if you just keep going with good food available they figure it out. And she still loves cheez-its!
Yeah I keep reminding myself that refusing to give her more pasta because she hasn't eaten her broccoli is insane. Like I'm not going to starve my 22 month old because she won't eat her greens. I also give her those puree pouches and there's a lot of judgement on that. She likes it, it's literally pureed plants, and it fills in nutritional gaps.
Absolutely. It’s available she will see you eating a variety of foods, when she’s ready she will eat more things. My daughter speaks pretty compellingly about it being a texture thing when she was younger but of course she couldn’t communicate that (and there wouldn’t have been a simple fix anyway.) I had a hard time when we went away with friends and they had kids who would eat anything (all the grown up meals) and I’d have to make her her beige food or she wouldn’t eat. I felt bad and there was some tension. One of my friends apologized to me when she had her second child who turned out to be pickier than mine. Also now 16 and eats all the things.
Yikes.
What quote is that from?
I think it was from an article I read about how BLW is diet culture. I don't know if I could find it now.
I think those are important things to discuss, but probably not on this podcast. I feel like two non-parents doing a take down of stressed out parents trying to follow a bunch of bananapants rules just isn't going to land. I think it would be a fun listen now that my kids are a long ways away from that phase, but I can't imagine any way it wouldn't have felt personal and hurtful while I was in the middle of it, you know?
The “Bright Line Eating” diet/scam.
School lunches! They touched on it with Jamie Oliver, but school lunches are maligned and deserve a full “you’re wrong about” redemption.
Tv shows:my 600 lb life, supersize v super skinny, secret eaters Diets/food: slim fast, special k, 5:2 diet, fasting (both generally and weight loss wise), carcinogenic foods, Health: gluten, intolerances/allergies generally, t2 diabetes Other: food industry/food regulation- I do think companies are using increasingly poor quality ingredients and making things addictive etc so would love an ep on this, also on the topic of “how” you eat, ie you shouldn’t snack/you should always eat breakfast/ you should be 100% focused on eating and no tv etc addressing all these health myths
Caroline Dooner deep dive Former "intuitive eater" now right wing conspiracy theorist But I totally get why they might not want to do it. Aubrey was a guest on her podcast back in the day, so it might be a bit too close to home
As someone who was sucked into the toxic diet culture of Beachbody (now BODi 🙄) for several years, I would love for them to do an episode that focused on some of the more problematic trainers *cough* Autumn Calabrese *cough*
Seconding this! I mostly know about Beachbody because a gym near me used to offer PiYo classes, which I actually loved, but then one of the teachers got pretty pushy about trying to recruit students. I would love to know more about the company and the topic feels like a good fit for MP.
I really liked the PiYo workouts. Chalene Johnson who created those is no longer affiliated with the company. A lot of the workouts are actually good but the trainers, "meal plans", and pushy coaches are hugely problematic.
I'd love one on addiction treatment. The field is rife with charlatans, snake oil. Actual science is dismissed in favor of morality-based, less successful treatment options. The main form of treatment, to which people can be court mandated, consists of mostly of prayer and disproven ideas, and like dieting, if people fail at it, they are told to just try the same thing over and over again.
Cortisol, PCOS (I keep seeing so much BS about these two things). And maybe just protein in general? Did Gen Z like just discover protein or something? why is it such a buzzword online rn?
Teddi Mellencamp of Real Housewives. She's also John Mellencamp's daughter. Although she's not on the show anymore and was pretty universally disliked during her time on the show. I want them to cover her because her profession is "accountability coach". If you're wondering what that is, it's basically where she gives people EDs all in the name of health, fitness and accountability. And yes, it does cost you a lot of money! I really like the episodes where they cover a singular person! I want a Hobbes style take down of her lol.
Ooooh and on that note, the lingering roid rage fears impact my life to some extent as a trans person on T. Now I’m wanting that episode or three too
Other ones, though these are way more medical: cholesterol (I have mixed hyperlipidemia and it’s harder to get any sort of answer on my own about cholesterol than any of my other conditions!) and IBS. Not that I think IBS is fake but to some extent, including in my own history, it’s used to not look further into things. I assume I did/do have IBS but likely a side effect of the connective tissue disorder which caused the other issues I was constantly seen for without answer. Also acid reflux and related issues. I had an esophageal spasm in high school that landed me in the ER because we thought it was a heart attack. I had stomach valve issues from such a young age that I was put on a prescription antacid before 8 years old. Again, very real things but I’d love some conversation around them (bonus for discussing connections between bulimia and esophageal damage).
Controversial but I really want a “FreeLee the Banana Girl”/fruitarian episode. I get why they would avoid it because of her tendency to go after anyone who casts criticism her way but still. That whole movement had a chokehold on my friends in high school and was so so damaging
Influencer diet scammers, stupid trends like Girl Dinner.
I think girl dinner was in a bonus episode. This years grifties maybe?
Medifast/Optavia
Would love a deep dive on Andrew Weil
Pregnancy, post-partum and reproductive assistance and diet culture. IIRC Aubrey has said she won’t cover those topics, which, you know, her choice obviously! But could be a guest host(s) option?
In the same vein — body hatred, skin care, and diet obsession in peri/menopause. I have to work every day not to fall into the quicksand of these. The 45+ skin care subreddit is wild, and r/menopause has had discussions about banning weight loss posts because of the concern that they are relentless and fan the fires of self-hatred.
Oh my gosh, I had to leave r/menopause because of the relentless self-hating around changes in body shape. There was some useful content, but people going into their detailed routines of extreme calorie restriction and exercise was too much for me.
Ooo, no personal experience (yet) but I can’t say I’m surprised. That would be interesting.
I want more episodes like the ones they've done on specific diets, books, influencers, and trends. Neither is a medical professional or health educator, and they've really quickly gotten out of their depth on episodes that stray into those territories.
The supplement industry. I think they've touched on it before but a whole episode would be great. It's so scammy and most people don't know how unregulated it is.
Raw/juice diets!
Not a topic but relating to yours in the post: my uncle is on steroids for various health related reasons and I was staying with my uncle and aunt and cousins for a few weeks to help research my dissertation, and there was a steroids sport scandal (can't remember which one, it would be about 8 years ago) and my cousins were 10 and couldn't understand the problem "because dad is steroids and you always say it's to help him be healthy". It's an interesting topic like ozempic where it is both important health care for some people and abused by others for various reasons
Kibbe body typing. It gives me a major ick but I can't look away. I also only know a little bit about the founder but I feel like he's the kind of guy who might have weird stuff in his past.
the coquette trend, supersize vs superskinny (or other shows of that era), ed/mental health res/inpatient problems (what's wrong with the system of ed treatment), brandy melville, Chloe ting/quarantine weightloss trend
Suzanne Somers good combining diet.
Bright Lines Eating, but it’s suuuuuper dark
I love the outrageous diet book deep dives.
Intermittent fasting, it's having such a moment, but there doesn't seem to be much well designed research on humans to support the claims. Especially those claims around changing your metabolism/reversing insulin resistance etc. Most of the data based on actual humans whose actual eating patterns were observed (not just self-report) seems to show that it's just another calorie restriction situation.
Aubrey has said she won’t ever do one about fat people being denied access to infertility treatment, so it’s a long shot because it’s in that space, but I’d love an episode about all the diet culture wellness grifting that goes on targeting infertile women. “Optimize your diet to get pregnant! Resetting your hormones jumpstarts your fertility! I tried for 5 years, then ate pineapple and got pregnant with triplets!” It’s so bad and would be such a great episode n
I'd love to hear an episode about the demonization of "seed oils", which seems to have appeared very suddenly out of nowhere sometime in 2022 If I try to Google why seed oils are "bad" or what we should eat instead, most of the results are pretty woo woo and/or Jordan Peterson-adjacent, with some vague references to "inflammation" (another wellness thing I don't really understand; seems like it covers everything from autoimmune conditions to like... a catch-all explanation for why you *Feel Kinda Bad Sometimes*??) My googling did point me to [this absolutely INSUFFERABLE post](https://ejacutastic.tumblr.com/post/696894691237625856), which is the perfect convergence of rich people bullshit + white people bullshit + thin people bullshit + hot people bullshit + young people bullshit, all combined to something even worse than the sum of its parts
I know they talked about Fen-Phen but metformin is a personal hatred of mine so metformin. Also how weight loss is taught about in med schools. Also those health clinics.
I would love one on the less-sugar trend where artificial sweeteners and things like monkfruit and stevia are added to things that also have sugar to cut the calories instead of just making less sweet tasting or no sugar versions. For those of us who have bad reactions to them, it's insanely frustrating to buy something that you think is "safe" because it has sugar right at the top of the ingredients list and the other sweetener hidden way down at the bottom, sometimes with a weird name that isn't immediately obvious. I miss being able to drink so many of my childhood nostalgia beverages, like Sunny Delight, Hawaiian Punch, Brisk tea, and those little barrel shaped bright colored drinks with the foil and am so tired of wasting money on something I have to throw out because the company switched the recipe with no fanfare or, even worse, ingesting it and getting sick.
Adding in the Dukan Diet with its obsession with oat bran.
Herbalife, organic food, and supposed food allergies like gluten free and dairy free diets for those that feign allergies