Author: Michelle

  • Dear Fat Nutritionist – does yummifying my food make it less nutrilicious?

    (Yes, I just made those words up, and yes, I’m aware that they are completely stupid. Therefore, I will continue using them at every future opportunity, until people beg me in droves to STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST STOP.) Just the other day, I received the following wonderful letter, and nearly broke my…

  • Are fat people unhealthy? (part 2)

    Continued from part 1: …For health practitioners, particularly those enamoured with biochemical indices and relative-risk reduction strategies, the notion of one, simple solution [weight loss] to a myriad of chronic diseases — and possibly to mortality itself — is eminently seductive. Sadly, I also think it’s wrong. Why is it wrong? Because, first of all,…

  • July? What?

    So I’ve, er, lost a bit of time recently. I put my head down for a minute, looked up again, and it was July. Canada Day, to be precise, and also the first day of the month, which gives my husband the opportunity to sneak up behind me and shout, “PINCH, PUNCH, FIRST-OF-THE-MONTH, NO RETURNS!”…

  • Are fat people unhealthy?

    There certainly seems to be a lot of evidence to support the conclusion that we are, or at least to show associations between high body weight and poor health. But I’m wondering, what’s really the most important question here? Whether fat people are unhealthy? Or why fat people might be unhealthy, if they are? I…

  • Outsiders and eccentrics.

    I spent the weekend with a bunch of people who are dissatisfied in various ways with how dietetics is practiced and taught. And I thought, this is a good bunch of people. We talked about healthism, and expectations of dietitians’ bodies, and feminist theory, and critical theory, and disability, racism, exclusion, food systems, agriculture, hunger,…