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Terf vibes's avatar

Thanks for this and good luck with your FiLiA talk tonight! I'd love to be there.

Your book and mine on women's diet and weight battles as 'the fatter sex' programmed, with a slower metabolism, to store 50% more body fat than our brothers are, have a lot of cross-over material. I look forward to reading yours.

You asked if we know of any other women pushing against Big Food back in the 70s and I immediately thought of Susie Orbach, who was one of the first eating-disorder counsellors and of course the first to see that women have specific and indeed feminist issues around food and fat. In my book I quote the following she wrote on the feeding challenges for mothers from her first edition of 'Fat is a Feminist Issue' (1978):

"[As mothers] women experience particular pressure over food and eating… To the tune of billions of dollars a year, the food industry counsels [a mother] on how, when and what she should feed her charges… [such] that the housewife is presented with a list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ so contradictory that it is a wonder that anything gets produced in the kitchen at all. It is not surprising that a woman quickly learns not to trust her own impulses, either in feeding her family or in listening to her own needs when she feeds herself."

I agree women need to get back to cooking (many of us never stopped), ideally with family help with the more tedious bits, in order to avoid the various traps set by Big Food, like the 'sugar free' fruit juices sweetened by fruit juice concentrate that we now know is essentially sugar, with the skins - where all the nutrients and fibre are - removed in the processing.

I totally agree veganism has become a Big Food con, largely based on UPFs wrongly sold as healthy and planet friendly, and I have seen first hand its terrible effects on young women, from ruined hair to, early onset osteoporosis and unnatural breast growth attributed to soya beans mimicking oestrogen in the body. Definitely more research and writing needed there.

It's a bloody big battle to be sure. Bigger than trans, in many ways. I'll drop the link to my book here, if you don't mind. Hopefully we can have a longer chat about the battle at some later time: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0473697769?ref_=mr_referred_us_au_nz

Cheers, SJ :-)

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Lisa Sherratt's avatar

The first thing that struck me is that in just four stages we go from "food" to something that barely resembles the thing it derives from in either the way it looks or what it provides our bodies!

I was raised very much in a "you are what you eat" and preparing food takes from 2-4 hours of my day depending on what I'm cooking/preparing for - I do this because my health and that of my family is important to me and was ingrained in me from a young age to eat "real food". I can see how my life would be easier with packaged foods but having lived on variations of processed food when I was at university or on work trips or similar I know I quickly feel "sluggish" and tired and like I need a massive salad to get myself moving.

The illusion that upf is "easier" is one the patriarchy has easily convinced women of... Removing the skills passed from mother to child (usually girls but also boys) of "how" to cook even the simplest things, so many women I know just don't have the confidence to cook let alone teach their children! "Home economics" as a subject is no longer taught at school - the GCSE food technology classes I had in the late 90's involved more "designing" packaging for food products than actual cooking and I was marked on the presentation of my drawings (and I am crap at art!) rather than my ability to create an edible healthy meal! The only subject I got a C in despite being so confident the teacher never came near me in practical lessons simply because I couldn't draw food 🤦🏻‍♀️ but I could cook a full weeks worth of meals for my family if I wanted age 16 because my parents taught me!

I'm so lucky to have had my upbringing and avoiding these foods.

Rant over! This made me super emotional!

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