First up, I want to apologise for last week’s email, as I came across absolutely tapped.
Fortunately, I am on the other side of it now, and that, my friends, is what you get for subscribing to receive weekly emails about mental health written by an internet addict.
I am now back once again, like the renegade master I am, writing about how the internet is messing us all up, but I love it anyway.
Now that we can all breathe a sigh of relief because January is over, it’s time to congratulate ourselves for surviving a pretty terrible month. Going from a dopamine-ridden December whereby anything goes and there are absolutely no consequences, to January’s sudden bombardment of marketing messages which boil down to ‘you’re not good enough’ never seems to get easier.
This year, I prepared myself for the barrage of January BS by creating my New Year, Same Me series, in which I have covered some pretty cool topics, including diet culture, chronic illness and toxic positivity. I’m going to keep going with this subject, as I feel like there is so much more to say. I also have a couple of really interesting interviews lined up, so stay tuned for those.
This week, I want to talk about one of the greatest loves of my life. No, not Potter my rescue greyhound. Food.
Longstanding subscribers might remember this piece I wrote in 2022 about eating the last portion of frozen pasta sauce my mam made before she died. In the newsletter, I talk about how food is more than just fuel for the body; it’s a love language.
Cooking for someone is a gift; food feeds our bodies and souls.
And yet, many of us who grew up in the ‘90s and early ‘00s will know all too well how this thing, which is necessary for human survival, has become demonised in our minds.
I’d like to say I have a pretty good relationship with food, and have never had an explicit eating disorder. However, I still combat intrusive thoughts and find myself setting restrictions on what I can/can’t consume. For example, if I fancy a slice of cake, I might immediately think back to whether I have exercised today. It takes years of self-therapy to get to a point where food isn’t earned; it’s deserved. And even if you are there, you might still notice the odd little jab from that little voice in your head.
For decades, we have been told that certain foods hold higher moral value than others; hence, “I’m being good.” For my parents’ generation (born late ‘50s, early ‘60s), it was carbs - specifically bread - that became the root of all evil.
Breaking bread
This is mostly the fault of the Atkins diet, a low-carb food plan launched in the ‘70s but gained wild popularity in the early ‘00s. The diet basically encouraged high protein and fat consumption and demonised carbs. There’s no exaggerating how popular the Atkins diet was - in fact, studies show that, at one time, 10% of Americans were following the plan. The diet itself is still quite prevalent in the weight loss space, despite being linked to a plethora of health conditions, such as gout and kidney stones.
Atkins is very much a diet followed by our parents’ generation, while its cooler sibling keto reigns supreme among weight loss hopefuls my age. I’m not going to go into the details of the differences because I am not an expert. But, what I do know is that both Keto and Atkins seek to demonise certain food groups and, ultimately, use shame and misinformation to drive weight loss.
I wrote last year about how the diet industry uses manipulative language, gamification and other coercive behaviour to keep people hooked and paying for their sessions.
As someone who grew up on the family computer, I didn’t have streaming services or YouTube for entertainment. A typical evening in my house would be eating a delicious meal cooked by my Mam in front of whatever show was on at the time. I vividly remember 10 Years Younger, a Channel 4 makeover show that encouraged its subjects to not only change their clothes and makeup but also get full plastic surgery, including liposuction.
Any excuse to share this absolute banger…
There was also Gillian McKeith, fake doctor and fainting extraordinaire, who would run around the street telling people white bread and semi-skimmed milk would make them obese and do something to their poo (I can’t remember specifically what, I just know she was obsessed with poo).
You might also remember Super Fat vs. Super Skinny, a show where two contestants would swap diets for a period of time, and everyone would be made to feel terrible as a result.
What Not To Wear was another classic in which makeover queens Trinny and Susanna would basically go around telling everyone to live by some arbitrary fashion rules that, quite honestly, stuck in my head for far too many years after the show ended. Horizontal stripes make you look fat. Don’t wear black with colour. Small handbags only. The list goes on.
These shows were for entertainment purposes. Take a moment to let that sink in. We, as a nation, were entertained by watching people on our televisions being told they are fat, ageing and ugly.
My mam was watching this as a working parent of three children, and I was absorbing all of this information as a pre-teen sitting in front of my fireplace.
What damage has this done?
I think the lasting impact of the 90s/00s diet culture is significant. We often see millennials, like myself, talking about how they eventually outgrew their negative associations and learned to love food again.
However, for my parents’ generation, it’s not as simple. They were the same age I am now when they saw this. Magazines, TV shows, billboards, music videos… it was everywhere. Food was bad, skinny was good. We all know the famous Kate Moss quote.
Even now, I have conversations with the lovely older ladies in my life, and they will make offhanded comments like “I don’t eat bread” or “I can’t have that; I already had X.” It’s exhausting, but it’s also worth remembering: it’s not their fault.
And while many of us have done a lot of work to move away from this mentality, it’s still an internal war we are waging every day. To be exposed to something from such a young age is to be pre-conditioned to a mindset that we may always have to contend with, especially at certain times of the year.
By attaching a moral value to food, we are only robbing ourselves of the joy nourishment can bring. Eating a meal cooked by someone you love is one of life’s greatest joys. While I do most of the cooking in our house, Craig regularly makes pizza in our Ooni outdoor oven. This is one of my favourite days of the week - not just because I don’t have to plan a meal but also because it’s clear he is so excited about the whole process of creating a meal for me. He has taken the time to learn about dough, nailed the technique for crispy but chewy crusts and always gets the perfect char.
But in the eyes of many, this act of love is seen as bad… because it’s bread?
When I put it like that, you can see how silly it sounds.
In recent years, technology has latched onto our lasting insecurities and given us tools like MyFitnessPal, which micromanages our calories and macro intake and is notorious for giving inaccurate (and quite frankly dangerous) calorific targets.
FitTech has taken another step towards a dystopian future in the last couple of years with the rise of ‘personalised nutrition plans’ based on blood glucose monitoring. That’s right, these businesses have co-opted technology designed for people with diabetes to manage their blood sugars and insulin levels and turned it into an expensive app that gamifies micronutrition and claims it’s all just “science.”
One of the recent viral videos from one of the companies offering this continuous blood glucose monitoring Lingo shows the difference between cow's milk and oat milk. Cows milk shows a consistent line of blood glucose, while oat milk causes a sudden spike.
As with everything on the internet, you must consider the context here. Firstly, Lingo focuses entirely on blood glucose levels and has somehow marketed this as a means of “retraining your metabolism”. The brand uses clever language, smart design and cherry-picked data to essentially teach you how to eat less.
How, in 2024, are we still asking ourselves: “Are you truly hungry?”
I am, by no means, saying it’s wrong to want to lose weight. Your health journey is your own, and you may find success with a tool like Lingo, or its chief competitor Zoe, was learning more about what you put into your body and how it can help you to achieve your goals.
However, what isn’t mentioned here, and never is with these products, is… what’s their end goal? Do they want you to monitor your blood glucose levels forever? I can’t help but be concerned about the long-term effects of such nutritional micromanagement and how potential failure could set users back.
Let’s go back to the oat milk vs. cows’ milk debate for a second. The plant milk might cause a blood glucose spike, but the cows’ milk contains more cholesterol. From an environmental standpoint, cows' milk requires 628 litres of water per litre, while oat milk needs only 48. Even in this short paragraph, you can see how one of the two can always win an argument, depending on the data you employ and the story you tell with it.
Just like with bread in the early ‘00s, we are seeing more and more that the food we consume is more than just fuel for our bodies; it is a moral decision. Should we eat what’s better for our blood health? Or our heart health? Or what causes minimal harm to animals? Or reduce our environmental impact? The above comparison between the two milks shows that making these choices is not easy.
The power of mealtimes
Human beings have always eaten together. A meal is more than just an opportunity to fuel our bodies for the day; it’s a social experience. Regular family dinners are associated with lower risks of depression, anxiety and eating disorders - provided you’re not watching early 00s makeover shows at the same time.
How do you feel about food? Is eating a chore? Do you seek company at mealtimes or prefer to eat alone? I’d love to hear from people of all generations, especially about how the late 90s/early 00s impacted your perception of certain food groups, and whether that has had a lasting impact on your relationship with food.
Chuck a comment below!
Another busy week at work for us, but I did manage to get the toddler along to feed the ducks at our local pond. She definitely didn’t understand what I was trying to achieve here; I am almost certain she thought I dragged her along to the local puddle to eat some stale bread and come home. Either way, it’s been so much more fun since she started walking, and I look forward to our adventures touching grass together as the weather improves.
Here are some of the other things I’ve enjoyed this week…
📚 I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - A dystopian tale of a group of women who are kept in an underground cage for decades with no knowledge or understanding of the outside world. This is a beautifully written book that had me in tears by the end. I suspect it will be among my top reads of 2024.
🎥 All Of Us Strangers - Continuing with the theme of dark and depressive media, I went to see Andrew Haigh’s latest film at the cinema this week. Starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, this is a very moving story of love, loss and grief. I think it’s best to go in blind to this one, but I will give a major trigger warning for parental death.
Quick update on the future of the newsletter!
March marks FOUR YEARS since I started writing Conversations By The Sea on Substack. I have published pretty consistently throughout a pandemic, a pregnancy, having a newborn and running a business. I’ve never made a penny directly from the newsletter. However, I have always been curious about Substack’s paid subscriber feature.
So, from March, I will be launching a paid subscription - for just £4 a month, you will get:
Access to the full back catalogue (currently free to browse, but I will be locking this next month).
My monthly Touching Grass email with book, podcast, TV and film recommendations (free preview of last month’s here)
With even just a small amount of income, I will be able to dedicate more time to growing the newsletter and writing more personal essays and interviews for your reading pleasure.
Free subscribers will still get the newsletter every week on a Thursday morning, and they will have a full week to read it before I lock it for paid users.
I won’t be taking payments until March, but if you want to pledge your support for when I do, then you can click the button below.
I can’t thank you all enough for reading whatever I write each week, and your comments are so massively appreciated (even if it takes me a week to reply to them).
That’s all from me this week,
See you next week for an exciting interview and my first-ever giveaway! Subscribe to get it directly to your inbox every Thursday morning.
Ellen x