Diets, the weight loss industry and all that.

[GothAnneGeddes]

My Facebook is currently awash with the South Beach diet. Were my life to flash before my eyes, I'm sure there would be a surprisingly high amount spent listening to other people talk about diets.

It's shit. Self denial, foods being "naughty", eating being "bad", encouraging women to hate their bodies, crap science and it all seems to be more popular then ever and it fuels a billion pound industry.

And I think it's a massive example of the patriarchy at work and generally encouraging women to feel like lesser beings.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/16/orthorexia-mental-health-eating-disorder

New fangled eating disordered based on good/bad myths.

Interesting to note that according to article, they are more likely to be in 30s, middle class and well educated...

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/16/orthorexia-mental-health-eating-disorder

Hello O.P here.

Thank you for all the posts and what has been a very interesting discussion.

Mmarmite - I don't necessarily agree with all of Shapely Prose, but there is some brilliant work on there. Also your post about Headless Fatties, I remember reading a brilliant essay on it here: www.charlottecooper.net/docs/fat/headless_fatties.htm

I do think there is a very big overlap between feminist and class issues here. If you are poor, don't have much time, don't have access to public transport, don't have the energy to carry big bags of vegetables, you're going to find it harder to get healthy food which is often in expensive supermarkets/shops far from poor areas.

There is (as whoever posted about The Road to Wigan Pier pointed out) food as an affordable treat. You might not be able to afford x amount of nice things but you can have a fish supper as a "treat" and something to look forward to.

Finally as Vezzie said, I am extremely uncomfortable with the pressure on women to make themselves smaller in the world.

There are so many ways that women who express their wants and desires are demonised in this world: demanding, bossy, slut/nympho and of course, greedy.

Because good women should nibble on their food, almost apologetically for even needing sustenance and not have a body deemed unacceptable by society and if they dare to do so, then they should hate themselves for it.

Whoever posted that link from elsewhere on Mumsnet, shows the other problem here, that women are being made complicit in all this, to scrutinise and police the bodies of other women.

A friend of mine went to a wedding recently. She was pregnant but nobody know, but actually that's neither here nor there. She was filled with a raging hunger so when she got 2 sausages for the meal, and the people on either side got 3, she politely asked for another one. The waiter said, "It's 3 for men, 2 for girls [sic]".
I almost cried.

A friend of mine went to a wedding recently. She was pregnant but nobody know, but actually that's neither here nor there. She was filled with a raging hunger so when she got 2 sausages for the meal, and the people on either side got 3, she politely asked for another one. The waiter said, "It's 3 for men, 2 for girls [sic]".

Thanks for the link GothAnne. I've seen the idea discussed on fat acceptance sites, but didn't know about the original essay. The author makes a good point that perhaps we should be challenging media outlets about the use of these images.

Vezzie I'm not sure why the funny faces because the women got less sausages - is it because they were called girls?

Women need less calories to maintain their weight - that's not sexist its a fact.If women increased their calorific intake to match mens then they will generally gain weight - in fact this is what happens a lot of the time when couples get married/live together, woman puts on 20 pounds as eating same as the bloke.

The problem is that a waiter shouldn't be controlling what people eat based on their gender. How many sausages a person 'should' eat at lunch depends on hundreds of factors - whether they had any breakfast, how tall they are, whether they prefer to have big lunches and small dinners or vice versa, how much exercise they do, whether they have a physically active job, and so on. Some of the women at that wedding would need a higher calorific intake than some of the men at that wedding. On top of that, it's very patronising for the waiters or the catering company to take on the role of controlling women's calorific intake - women are quite capable of choosing how many sausages they want. It's fair enough to have an upper limit on how many sausages per person, so they don't run out, it's not reasonable to give all women a specifically differently limit from all men.

And yes, the act was made even more patronising by juxtoposing "men" - who need to be big and strong and are encouraged to eat - against "girls" - who should presumably should eat small portions and stay small and child-like.

rookiemater: fewer.

otherwise, what mmarmite said.

Ok I apologise for being snarky and for the wrong use of words, but I still really can't get why the sausage scenario is so wrong.

I appreciate that different people have different calorific intakes based on height and build, but on average women need approximately 500 calories less per day than men. Therefore based on this I wouldn't have thought it was unreasonable for the catering company to calculate a different number of sausages for men and women. Perhaps they should have worked it on 2 per person as sausages are high calorie and low nutrient items, but in our household DH tends to eat more sausages than me, not for any sexist reasons, but purely because he tends to eat a bit more at each meal than I do.

I believe the recommendations for pregnancy are an extra 500 calories per day ( i.e. the same as the recommended average for a man) but only in the last trimester, putting on too much weight in pregnancy can cause gestational diabetes.

Obesity is ever increasing in this country and it causes major health problems.
Pretending that men and women need to eat the same could make that problem worse.

Thanks for the reply rookiemater. (Also I'm not bothered about "less" vs "fewer")

The problem is the catering company enforcing a different number of sausages for men and women. It's fine for your dh to eat more sausages than you, as that is what you have both chosen based on your lifestyles, tastes, genders, heights, ages and activity levels. The waiter should have allowed each individual to choose how many sausages they wanted.

I agree that the average woman needs fewer calories than the average man. But according to the American dietary guidelines, for people of median weight and height, an active young woman would need 400 more calories per day than a sedentary man aged over 51. If the woman was taller than the average woman, and the man shorter than the average man, the difference would be even greater. But despite her needing more calories, the waiter would deny her even an equal number of sausages to him.

I guess you could argue that even so, given all that, it's not unreasonable to have a rule based on averages. If so, then why should the split be made down male-female lines? Why not say under-sixties get 3 sausages, over-sixties get 2 sausages? Or tall people get 3 sausages, short people get 2 sausages? IMO, the catering company chose to make it's rule based on sex at least in part based on stereotyping of genders, and the underlying view in our culture that eating a lot is un-feminine: women should eat small portions and be dainty and slim and feminine whilst men can eat big portions for strength and muscles.

I agree with mmarmite. Should be up to the individual to decide on moderating their sausage consumption.

I agree with crescentmoon's point earlier in the thread, that so much of the cultural/media norms are about thinness for aesthetic reasons, rather than encouraging a strong powerful body for women.

I got exposed to enough feminism in my teens to refuse any engagement with diets and slimming, and have always eaten what I liked. And I have experienced a certain amount of snide commentary to the effect that I am not behaving like a proper woman, that I am doing something wierd and wrong, not just by eating a big meal in public, but by refusing to engage in the feminine ritual of abasing myself pver my wicked greed.
FWIW I have been chubby, I have been quite fat, I have been less fat, and though my fattest spell was due predominantly to misery-eating, I didn't lose wieght by dieting. My circumstances changed and I became a lot more physically active and a bit too busy to spend all my time eating. Right now I'm somewhere around the size 12-14 mark, don't know what I weigh as I don't have scales in the house. I eat reasonably well because I want to feed DS reasonably well: plenty of fruit and veg, brown bread rather than white most of the time, but I will not buy into the bullshit of the diet industry, which is just another religion really (woman-hating bullshit the purpose of which is to separate you from your money and stop you thinking rebellious thoughts, first and foremost).

Hands up who is an average women?

Thats the problem with all of these values - BMI, waist measurement, clothes size, number of calories, number of sausages...

Ok mmarmite thanks for explaining I get it now.

No problem rookiemater - it's good because being challenged actually made me think out why it bothered me so much.

what a vulgar little man

I am appalled at that comment

why was my post deleted, I mearly mentioned other meals