Food Again. This Time, It’s Personal?

Summary

Feminist Survival Project: Episode Summary

Title: Food Again. This Time, It’s Personal?
Hosts: Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
Release Date: May 22, 2025

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Introduction to Food Restrictions

In this episode, Emily and Amelia delve into the personal and multifaceted reasons why individuals impose restrictions on their food choices. The conversation begins with Amelia announcing her upcoming live sessions on their YouTube channel, setting the stage for a candid discussion about food restrictions.

Key Points:

• Personal Restrictions: The Nagoski sisters explore how personal health issues like allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances (e.g., lactose intolerance, histamine sensitivity) necessitate certain dietary restrictions.
• Temporary vs. Permanent: They discuss how some restrictions are temporary, such as those arising from traveling or specific health conditions, while others may be permanent due to genetic factors or chronic illnesses.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (01:27): “This time it's about restrictions, which is pretty personal.”
• Emily (03:18): “If you're going to eat a thing that doesn't treat your body well, but it really treats your mind and your taste buds well, make sure you enjoy the shit out of it.”

Navigating Health-Related Dietary Choices

The sisters share personal anecdotes about managing food intolerances and sensitivities, highlighting the complexity of balancing physical health with mental satisfaction.

Key Points:

• Lactose Intolerance: Emily shares her experience of becoming lactose intolerant after overexposure while working as a barista.
• Histamine Sensitivity: Amelia discusses her histamine sensitivity, which complicates her dining choices, especially when combined with stress factors.
• Stress and Immune Function: They emphasize how stress can exacerbate food sensitivities and the skepticism they face from others when explaining these issues.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (04:14): “Stress definitely has an impact on your immune system.”
• Emily (05:46): “If we could just make a pact… agree not to comment on other people's food choices.”

Personal Preferences and Social Judgments

Emily and Amelia address the judgments people face when their food preferences diverge from societal norms, such as disliking foods commonly appreciated by others.

Key Points:

• Taste Preferences: They discuss how personal taste can lead to social judgments, with Emily expressing her inability to tolerate certain textures and flavors like mushrooms and oysters.
• Role of Context: Amelia highlights that taste preferences can change over time and in different contexts, making food choices even more personal.
• Community Support: The importance of surrounding oneself with a supportive community that respects individual food choices without judgment.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (07:40): “You just don't like it.”
• Emily (08:51): “Mushrooms are like a staple because they are this vegetal umami. Like, they're very fucking classy.”

Commercial Diet Plans: Advantages and Limitations

The conversation shifts to commercially named diet plans like Whole30, Weight Watchers, and Atkins, analyzing their benefits and shortcomings.

Key Points:

• Temporary Structure: These diets can provide a starting framework for individuals to discover what works for their bodies, though they are often designed as short-term solutions.
• Personal Adaptation: Both sisters stress the necessity of adapting or abandoning these plans based on personal experiences and bodily responses.
• Psychological Impact: The restrictive nature of these diets can lead to feelings of deprivation and eventual rebound eating behaviors if they don't align with one’s lifestyle.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (11:57): “This is a valuable starting place to discover what works.”
• Emily (16:17): “The only one who can tell you what to eat is your body.”

Intermittent Fasting: Benefits and Personal Experiences

Emily and Amelia share their approaches to intermittent fasting, emphasizing listening to one's body over rigid adherence to scientific claims.

Key Points:

• Autophagy and Detoxification: Amelia discusses using intermittent fasting to support her body's natural detox pathways, though she acknowledges the scientific debates surrounding its efficacy.
• Flexibility: They advocate for a flexible approach to fasting, allowing individuals to adjust based on their body's signals and needs.
• Health Monitoring: Regular consultations with medical professionals are recommended to safely practice extended fasting periods.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (17:32): “Listen to your body.”
• Emily (23:16): “It's so bad.”

Lifestyle Diets: Veganism and Vegetarianism

The sisters explore lifestyle-based dietary restrictions, such as veganism and vegetarianism, discussing their ethical, environmental, and personal health motivations.

Key Points:

• Ethical Choices: Decisions to adopt vegan or vegetarian diets often stem from concerns about animal welfare and environmental sustainability.
• Long-Term Viability: Unlike commercial diets, lifestyle diets can be maintained indefinitely, reflecting deeply held values rather than temporary dietary trends.
• Nutritional Considerations: They acknowledge the nutritional benefits of meat for some individuals while recognizing that others may thrive without it.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (28:07): “People making these choices often kind of an implicit judgment.”
• Emily (32:01): “There's no such thing as a perfect or great choice.”

Economic Factors in Food Choices

Money plays a significant role in determining dietary restrictions, influencing whether individuals can afford ethical or specialized foods.

Key Points:

• Cost of Ethical Foods: Organic and ethically sourced foods are often more expensive, making them less accessible for many.
• Budgeting Strategies: The sisters share personal stories about making cost-effective food choices, balancing quality with affordability.
• Impact of Subsidies: Government subsidies can distort food prices, making industrially farmed produce cheaper but less nutritious.

Notable Quotes:

• Emily (33:10): “We’re paying how much it actually costs as opposed to not paying because the government is subsidizing something.”
• Amelia (34:07): “I bought the fancy mayonnaise. It felt so special.”

Environmental Considerations

Environmental impact is a critical factor influencing food choices, with discussions on organic vs. industrial farming and the complexities involved in making sustainable choices.

Key Points:

• Organic vs. Industrial Farming: Organic farming avoids pesticides and non-nutrient soil supplementation, but industrial farming can sometimes produce more nutrient-dense produce.
• Pollution and Packaging: The environmental footprint of food includes farming practices, processing, packaging, and transportation. Choices like packaging material (carton vs. plastic) further complicate decisions.
• Sustainable Practices: They emphasize doing the best one can with available resources, recognizing that perfect sustainability is unattainable.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (46:44): “It’s more expensive to buy more ethical foods.”
• Emily (48:07): “Another question about the environmental impact is like, the pollution from both doing the farming and doing the harvesting…”

Ethical Considerations: Worker Safety and Animal Welfare

The sisters highlight the ethical dimensions of food production, including labor conditions and animal welfare.

Key Points:

• Worker Safety: Concerns about slave labor and poor working conditions in the food industry, particularly in the production of items like chocolate, necessitate careful brand selection.
• Animal Welfare: Ethical dilemmas around consuming animal products are discussed, with examples illustrating personal boundaries and societal expectations.
• Transparency in Supply Chains: They stress the importance of supporting brands that maintain transparent and ethical supply chains.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (51:31): “Is there slave labor involved in the production of my food?”
• Emily (51:52): “They are not going to talk to you about the potential slave labor…”

Practical Strategies for Public Eating Situations

Towards the end of the episode, Emily and Amelia provide strategies for handling unwanted judgments about food choices when dining in public.

Key Points:

• Green Dot Program: They discuss distraction, delegation, and direct intervention as methods to handle intrusive comments about food.
• Prepared Responses: Emphasize the importance of having pre-planned responses to maintain composure and redirect conversations.
• Community Agreement: Encourage listeners to collectively agree not to judge others' food choices, fostering a respectful dining environment.

Notable Quotes:

• Emily (57:50): “Distraction is where you simply change the subject.”
• Amelia (58:39): “Yeah, that's a good sentence. I feel like we're all just making the best choices we can…”

Conclusion: Embracing Flexibility and Self-Forgiveness

The episode concludes with a reaffirmation of the core message: listen to your body, make the best possible choices within your means, and practice self-forgiveness for imperfect decisions.

Key Points:

• Flexible Decision-Making: Adapt dietary choices as circumstances and personal needs evolve.
• Non-Judgmental Attitude: Avoid judging yourself or others for food choices, recognizing the diverse factors influencing these decisions.
• Community Support: Foster a supportive community that respects individual dietary journeys without imposing judgments.

Notable Quotes:

• Amelia (56:57): “Listen to your body, do the best you can with the resources you have available, and forgive yourself for the fact that you can't be perfect.”
• Emily (62:39): “Let's just not do that.”

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Takeaway:
Emily and Amelia Nagoski offer a nuanced exploration of food restrictions, emphasizing individuality, flexibility, and compassion. They advocate for listening to one’s body, making informed and compassionate choices, and creating supportive environments free from judgment.

Transcript

[Amelia]

Hi, this is Amelia. I'm going to be doing lives again Fridays at 4 in May and June at our YouTube channel, YouTube.coministsurvivalproject I'll be answering questions, singing songs, and talking about Murderbot. I hope you can join us. This is her.

[Emily]

Before we start talking about our absolute actual topic, I'm not procrastinating. You're procrastinating. I just want to put it out there that I, the Emily one, am looking for book recommendations. I require books. I am looking only for things with unambiguous, optimistic endings. Emotionally satisfying optimistic endings. We're talking romance novels and cozy mysteries. Okay. If you have examples of those that you love, please email us at. I don't know what the email address is, but I'm sure Rich will put that information in the episode information box. Okay. Okay. All right.

[Amelia]

This is food episode three.

[Emily]

This time it's personal, I guess.

[Amelia]

No, this time it's about restrictions, which is pretty personal. This is pretty personal restrictions. Why we choose not to eat certain foods or reasons to impose restrictions on ourselves. Restrictions. This is where lots of us start when we're making food decisions. We start with, what should I not eat? What can I not eat? Does that make sense?

[Emily]

People do start there.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And, like, maybe you have an allergy or a sensitivity or an intolerance because of genes or disease, and these kinds of restrictions could be permanent or they could be temporary. And some of those restrictions, like, include lactose.

[Emily]

Please see our previous food episodes.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you are lactose intolerant.

[Emily]

I am.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I am not. And you didn't used to be.

[Emily]

I became lactose intolerant when I worked as a barista.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because overexposure to lactose can cause lactose intolerance.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I am not lactose intolerant. I never worked as a barista, and I have histamine sensitivity where I, you.

[Emily]

Know, and I don't.

[Amelia]

Both of these things restrict food choices that we can make, but this is where it gets complicated. There are also, like, pills you can take that prevent lactate. Exactly. That prevent the thing that's bothering you from bothering you as much. So you can still, like, eat those things, but, like, you have to decide when it's worth it and, like, be prepared to take the pill. Does that make sense? Yes. So, like, the idea of having a food restriction based on an allergy or sensitivity or intolerance. Oh, my. Is also complicated and nuanced.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And a thing that I say that I was saying to students all the Time is, if you're going to eat a thing that, you know, doesn't treat your body well, but it really treats your mind and your taste buds well, make sure you enjoy the shit out of it.

[Amelia]

Get the benefit from it.

[Emily]

Make a choice that it's gonna be worth the consequences, you know will happen.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And enjoy it for all it's worth. Cause you know you're gonna be paying a price. Yeah, that's me. And gluten. Sometimes it's worth it. Just go ahead and not eat the gluten free option. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Because your intolerance for gluten is not celiac disease, where it's gonna put you in an emergency room.

[Emily]

Yeah, it is. And it is comparatively new that I feel intense. I'm not gonna describe them. Consequences.

[Amelia]

Yeah, it's actually.

[Emily]

It actually dates from the election, so it's absolutely like a stress immune functioning response.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way my histamine sensitivity has come up and the last time I had hives was I ate shellfish high histamine while drinking martinis. High histamine. On the day that Trump was inaugurated for the first time, I had oysters and martinis.

[Emily]

That sounds like you were on vacation, too.

[Amelia]

I was on vacation. I was intentionally avoiding the.

[Emily]

If you're eating shellfish and drinking martinis, you're on vacation.

[Amelia]

I was on vacation and we ate at a bar, at an oyster bar on the way to the hotel. And we arrived at the hotel and I had hives.

[Emily]

That's luxurious, though. You stop at an oyster bar on the way to the hotel.

[Amelia]

It was great.

[Emily]

And then you've got hives for the duration of your vacation.

[Amelia]

We went there specifically to go on vacation on Inauguration Day, so I wouldn't be thinking about Inauguration Day. Guess what was on the TV at the bar.

[Emily]

Oh, God.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So I had hives when I got to the hotel. And, you know, like. So stress definitely has an impact on your immune system.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Which is what controls your, you know, access to histamines and, you know, the enzymes that break up histamines. Yeah. And one of the things that also makes these kinds of restrictions complicated while you're living in the world is bullshit from skeptics.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah.

[Amelia]

I mean, because we just said that, like, stress can make food sensitivities and intolerances worse.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Then people are like, well, that just means that it's all in your imagination. You know, you just think and you. You freak yourself out, so you think you can't eat those things, which is not how that works. That's not what that means, and it's not true. But boy, when you avoid a food in public because of a restriction you've chosen or a restriction that you are abiding by so that you can be careful rather than just, you know, because it's going to kill you right here, right now, the people are skeptical and annoying about it. That's really. It sucks.

[Emily]

Yeah. If we could just like. Let's make a pact, everyone who's listening to this, though you may eat in public with other people who feel entitled to comment on your food choices, we, all of us as a community, agree not to comment on other people's food choices.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And if you eat in public with someone else who listens to the feminist survival project Zombie Apocalypse Edition, you know that you are going to be eating with other people who are not going to comment on your food choices because they understand, like we do, that people vary and they change across their lifespan. And as we're going to talk about in this episode, there are myriad reasons why people make the choices that they.

[Amelia]

Do, which is what we're going to talk about today, period. And they're all valid.

[Emily]

I think. I think the kids say, that's on, period. Okay.

[Amelia]

Do they say that? I've never heard that.

[Emily]

I think it's a. I don't. I don't know.

[Amelia]

It's a skibidi toilet situation.

[Emily]

Ah, it could be.

[Amelia]

Okay, well, so that goes for the next reason why people might restrict their food choices, which is preference taste.

[Emily]

Yeah, they just don't like things.

[Amelia]

They just don't like it.

[Emily]

And they get.

[Amelia]

You get a lot of judgment from people when they're like, you don't like. Buh. I mean, it's like you have a child's palate that you don't like the sophisticated food that I like.

[Emily]

Mushrooms.

[Amelia]

Oysters. I love oysters. I also love mushrooms. I love the texture. I. I love the taste. I love everything about it.

[Emily]

Both those things you named are things I cannot tolerate in my mouth. Yeah, oysters, ditto.

[Amelia]

Yeah, man.

[Emily]

No, just a. Just a blanket no from me.

[Amelia]

And you're. You're fully allowed to not like oysters or mushrooms. And you don't have to. You don't have to.

[Emily]

Yes. We have mentioned before that it will be a deep shame and a waste of the chef's time for me to participate in seriously fine dining like Michelin star dining, because I have so many things that I just don't want in my mouth that are 100% associated with fine fucking dining. Mushrooms Are like a staple because they, like, are this vegetal umami. Like, they're very fucking classy. Yeah, fine.

[Amelia]

It's also to remember, though, that taste and personal preference change with time and are different in different contexts. So this is another complex, nuanced.

[Emily]

A specific weird thing about me is that if I spend a lot of time around someone who has a food preference, I adopt that. Like, my mushroom thing started from when I was dating somebody who hated mushrooms.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I just, like, my body absorbed it as if it were me. And I like, the next time I tried to eat mushrooms, I hated it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, my taste changed. Yeah. Tastes changed. Tomatoes. Raw tomatoes.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Nope, cannot do it anymore.

[Amelia]

And there are certain, like, contexts where a tomato is gross to me, but other contexts where tomatoes. Amazing. So it's a. It's specific.

[Emily]

I do love a confit tomato. Okay. Cooked tomato is fine. It's raw tomato.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Well, so that's like how specific it is. And like, when you eat in public, you're gonna get like judgment and criticism for, like, about that.

[Emily]

That's.

[Amelia]

And we shouldn't, like. Let's just stop doing that.

[Emily]

Yeah, let's just stop.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So so far we've got food intolerances or sensitivities or allergy.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Or personal fucking preference. Yeah. You're allowed not to like the things you don't like. And it doesn't mean anything about you as a person.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And the next kind of restriction that people choose is like a named commercial diet plan. Like Whole 30, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, Atkins Intermittent fasting.

[Emily]

You know, they just declared bankruptcy. Weight Watchers.

[Amelia]

Good.

[Emily]

They're not closing. They're adapting to the new world of semaglutides.

[Amelia]

What's a semaglutide?

[Emily]

They're the diabetes, heavy air quotes, medications that are used primarily for weight loss.

[Amelia]

Oh, Ozempic.

[Emily]

Yeah, Ozempic wegovy.

[Amelia]

So these kinds of commercial named diet plans, anything that fits in this category are the. The kinds of external restrictions imposed on you by someone who's telling you here are the restrictions that you should impose on your eating. They are usually gimmicks to sell subscriptions or books or ultra processed foods. They are not. I'm gonna say they're not wholly without value, but they. There is. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say there was no one in the world for whom Whole30 is the exact right diet to eat all the time. Right. Anybody who tries Whole30 and like, wants to keep doing, like the Whole30 plan. They're gonna discover that they need to make exceptions. They need to create some wiggle room, and they're not gonna stick to those rules all the time. Does that make sense?

[Emily]

Yeah. The point of whole 30 is that it's 30 days for you to explore what it feels like to eat this way, and you figure out what you want to reincorporate and what you want to, like, make. Gone forever.

[Amelia]

Yeah. We, you and I have been eating, basically, Atkins keto for eight years.

[Emily]

That it's not true for me. So Atkins keto is about being in ketosis, eating such a low quantity and such a slow digestibility of carbohydrate that you go into ketosis, which is. If you want to read about it, you can go right ahead.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

And I eat right down to the edge of ketosis. It turns out ketosis is terrible for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I almost passed out.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

One on a street in New York City because my blood pressure was so low, and I was walking in the August heat. I almost.

[Amelia]

With salt. When you're in ketosis.

[Emily]

Yeah. I literally was taking salt pills and not enough of it. Because you passed out. I almost passed out On a New York City street. I almost passed out. I had black at the edges of my vision while driving.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That's bad.

[Emily]

That was bad. Bad. So it turns out that I don't. But I eat right to the edge.

[Amelia]

Okay. So here's what I'm saying, is that this is a valuable starting place to discover what works, to discover what part of this plan you would want to keep and what exceptions you would want to make. Like, I don't call, like, we have, like, a kind of a shortcut name called being on the pony.

[Emily]

We call it pony. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Because when you. When you fall off, you have to get back on the pony.

[Emily]

Get back on the pony.

[Amelia]

Not being on a diet. I gotta be on the pony. And pony, for me, is eating a low enough amount of sugar that I don't crave sugar anymore.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Because when I eat sugar, I crave it. I'm, like, pre diabetic. My blood sugar is high. We have diabetes in our family. So, like, I started this as, like, a way of discovering how not to crave sugar anymore. And I don't at all follow keto or Atkins plans.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

But I've been doing this long enough that I know what foods trigger that sugar craving, and I eat those foods several times a month.

[Emily]

Can we talk about the origin story.

[Amelia]

Of this for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

So there was a Window of time when you were staying at our house a few nights a week.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

In order to shorten your commute. And you were, like, prowling the house.

[Amelia]

You were. You were doing Atkins. And I was like, you don't have any sugar in your house. And I was. I was prowling around like a caged.

[Emily]

Tiger, literally just like, opening the fridge and the freezer and the cabinets, just.

[Amelia]

Like, where's the sugar? You don't have any sugar at all. And I was like, I have a problem.

[Emily]

Yeah. And I was like, does it seem to you, like, maybe you have a problem?

[Amelia]

Because you had been telling me about Atkins. And I was like, that sounds like bullshit shit to me.

[Emily]

Of course it did. Because it's the exact opposite of what we grew up in the 80s. Learning about food, which is, like, high carb, low fat. That's the way you're supposed to eat.

[Amelia]

And also, Atkins was a fad diet that nobody sticks to. Right, Right. So. And it is a fad diet that nobody sticks to.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

Unless you discover how to implement the sum of it and discover what works. And it turns out Atkins, 9 out of 10 days is good for me anyway. What I'm saying is that, like, the books that you read about how to Atkins or how to Keto, they're there to sell you books.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

They are not there to actually tell you what to eat, because you need to listen to your body. And if you can use our book or a YouTube video as a starting point to discover, okay, this is what Atkins says.

[Emily]

Even a nutritionist or a dietitian cannot tell you. Cannot. They can give you guidelines to start with, but the only one who can tell you what to eat is your body.

[Amelia]

Right. And you're gonna discover that no preset plan named, titled commercial Plan, that is there to sell you books and shakes or whatever, none of those are going to be exactly right. You got to figure it out. You know, maybe as a starting place, but your body's going to tell you what you need to change from there.

[Emily]

And if you feel deprived or if you are hungry.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Not only are you not going to keep eating that way, you are going to rebound hard in the opposite direction. Because that is what restriction does.

[Amelia]

That's what restriction does.

[Emily]

Unless that restriction causes you to feel better.

[Amelia]

So. Good. Yeah.

[Emily]

Not hungry.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Hungry means your body is hungry.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Hungry means you want to eat.

[Emily]

And, like, when it comes to you versus your body, your body wins every time. So if you don't feel hungry and you don't feel deprived, of something.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's something you can. And you feel better than you felt when you were eating something else.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's something you can consistently do.

[Amelia]

Let's talk about another one of these restrictions, which is intermittent fasting.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

This is, like, all the rage. I use intermittent fasting and some extended fasting in order to go into autophagy, which is a state where your cells are, like, cleaning themselves out at a faster rate. I fast for 24 to 48 hours at least once a month, which is not a thing I recommend anyone else do. I do not. I mean, I don't recommend any specific dietary changes to anybody unless they feel right to you. Yeah.

[Emily]

And like, again, people vary in what works for them. We are identical twins. Right. It's in the same household.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Lower carb consumption feels much better for Amelia than it does for me.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

If. If I'm in ketosis, not only do I feel terrible and I'm at risk of passing out in public, possibly while driving a car, also my breath stinks, which my dental hygienist told me that was fun. Oh, yeah. But, like, how kind of her.

[Amelia]

Yeah. To tell you. Yeah.

[Emily]

And.

[Amelia]

And it should be a professional who tells you rather than a random stranger.

[Emily]

So great.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So great.

[Amelia]

But also, going back to.

[Emily]

So people vary.

[Amelia]

Like, am I in ketosis? I have used, like, those strips that you pee on to see if you're in ketosis. And the thing is that the amount of carbs I eat does not necessarily put me in ketosis. It just doesn't trigger the sugar cravings. That's my only goal is not to have that, like, blood sugar cycle spike, plummet. Spike, plummet.

[Emily]

So you're not actually doing keto. You're just.

[Amelia]

I am not doing keto. I'm just doing low carb enough that I don't do the blood sugar roller coaster.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And again, we are both sort of in a pre diabetic situation. Yes. Our genetic heritage indicates that this is a thing we can expect in our lives.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And you have had success in, like, getting your blood sugar down to normal? Like, you're fasting blood sugar normal.

[Emily]

My A1C was normal this year.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Is no longer pre diabetic. I have not had that experience. Not yet.

[Emily]

My most recent fasting blood sugar was 107, though.

[Amelia]

Oh.

[Emily]

Yeah. Which my psychiatrist pointed out, and I was like, yeah. I've been. I've been on that train for, like, at least a decade. But my A1C was normal A couple of months ago, so Like, I'm better than I was.

[Amelia]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emily]

107'S pretty good for me.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And I started intermittent fasting for. For long Covid to increase the amount of natural detoxification that my body does on its own.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Not detox in the Gwyneth Paltrow sense, but detox in the. Like, my body produces chemicals, and because of chemistry, there's leftovers, and it has to get rid of those leftovers. And my body's not great at doing that.

[Emily]

Yeah. It's a thing your body does naturally. Like, you have a trash system in your body.

[Amelia]

Natural detox pathways.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

And I support my natural detox pathways with intermittent fasting by giving my digestive system a break. This has been really good for my digestion. I do not set a time necessarily of, like, this is when I will fast till I have in mind the idea that there's going to be a period of time when I don't eat. And I can do that as long as it's comfortable. And when I'm like, wow, I really want to eat, I eat.

[Emily]

You listen to your body?

[Amelia]

I do. I listen. It has been very good at teaching me to listen to my body and, like, the ways that my body wants food in different quantities and different flavors varies depending on my menstrual cycle.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Like, the time of the month. I mean, I knew I had, like, there's like one day a month where I become a bottomless pit of just, like, I have to eat everything in front of me.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Not even things in front of me. I need to, like, find a way to keep putting food in my mouth all day. Like, that's just a day that my body says I just. I just want to eat all the things. And so I eat all the things. I try to eat all as much of the healthy things. Like, things with nutrients and fiber. Like, I aim for that. But, like, that day, there is no point in trying to resist that call. That call is my hormones deciding, coming.

[Emily]

From inside the house.

[Amelia]

It's the call. It's coming from inside the house. Exactly. So I'm like, okay, we're gonna do that. And then there are other days where I just don't want to eat at all. And instead of being like, I have to eat or it's not good for me if I don't eat. I just. My body doesn't want food, so I just don't eat.

[Emily]

Like, what I love is that learning about intermittent fasting, instead of creating a rule structure for you to follow, created a permission structure yeah, that like, you're allowed to not eat if your body doesn't want to eat. Even if it's like of the whole day.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Even if it's. The longest fast I've ever done was 43 hours. And at the end of that 43 hours, it's not even that I was hungry, but my mouth was super bored. And it was like, my mouth something. My body wasn't like, I'm hungry. My mouth was like, can I please just have something? So I ate. And, you know, I figured, why. There's no point in resisting. I've gone 43 hours. Like, I'm way in autophagy. I've had the opportunity to, you know, support my natural detox pathways. And 43 hours is a pretty long time. So I'm just gonna eat right now. So all the books that tell you, here's how to intermittent fast. It's. It's all. But it's all external, arbitrary standards that, like, maybe there's research that shows that this is the thing. Although I'm gonna be real with you, the science on intermittent fasting is garbage.

[Emily]

It's so bad.

[Amelia]

Almost all of it is about short.

[Emily]

Term weight loss or rats and men.

[Amelia]

Even the evidence for like, that fasting puts you in autophagy is not great. All I know is I feel better when I fast sometimes.

[Emily]

And it is literally. It's not. It's not even every week that you're doing something as long as 40 hours.

[Amelia]

Not even close. It's once a month. Ish. I was doing it like on day 10 of my cycle. I would fast on day 10 and sometimes it wouldn't work and I'd go 12 hours and be like, no, I gotta eat. And sometimes it goes longer than 24. And then I would aim for 36. And I gradually worked up to it with like a year of just doing like 12 to 18 hours of fasting. And then eventually it got to 24 and 36, and now I've gone 43 hours. Like it's a really. What I'm doing. According to my medical professional who was overseeing these choices with me directly, meeting regularly with me to talk about this, because I'm not doing this without a doctor's supervision, is that I am increasing my metabolic flexibility.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So I haven't done as much of that as you. I. So. Because when we were little tiny kids, we experienced some food insecurity.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

One of the things that I have had to overcome and have only made a little bit of progress on is like hunger Will keep me awake.

[Amelia]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emily]

And a lot of your fasting is happening just like at night while you're asleep and you can't eat. Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And at first, I, like, I could not fall asleep at all without having food in my stomach. Literally, just like a slice of cheese, just some food in my stomach to let my body know we're not hungry, we're not gonna go hungry. There is no instability. And that's gotten a little bit better.

[Amelia]

Yeah. But there are times when I still have it sometimes.

[Emily]

Sleep has been a major problem for me this year. Especially though, ever since perimenopause, like, it's just been like, yeah, perimenopause fucked up my sleep. Covid it up even more. And the Trump regime has fucked it up extra. So it's like, very bad right now. And there are times when the. The thing that knocks me out is a fucking sandwich.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Because all of these external, arbitrary food restrictions are not it. They might be a starting place, but you gotta listen to your body.

[Emily]

But they are not the thing. I gotta listen to my body. And if my body. And I'm fucking starving for sleep. Right. Like, I have days where all I can think about is how tired I am and how much I want to go to sleep. And if I'm lying in bed and my body's like, sandwich, just go get a snack. Snack. Just eat a sandwich. Eat a bowl of soup.

[Amelia]

Do it.

[Emily]

I'm like, I will do anything to fall asleep. And if what you're telling me is to fall asleep, I need to eat something. I'm going to go ahead and do that.

[Amelia]

Yeah, exactly. Listening to your body. Right. Unfortunately, these, like, named commercial diet plans market themselves as solutions. The answer. You're going to live this way the rest of your life. You're gonna. You're gonna die healthy if you follow this eating plan.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And that's just not it. Who's. I think it's Rob Lowe does commercials for Atkins stuff.

[Emily]

Does he?

[Amelia]

Yeah, it's the dude who played Sam on West Wing. Is that Rob? That's Rob Lowe. Yeah, he. And he. He's like, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle. And, like, he's been doing it for decades or whatever. And, like, I. I couldn't live that way. I mean, I. I know the value that my body puts on having less sugar in it. Absolutely. But, like, sometimes when I go to Disney World, I'm gonna have a damn funnel cake. When I'm on vacation, I want to eat at a fancy restaurant. And eat whatever the chef tells me is the most delicious thing he makes. Yeah, you know, so.

[Emily]

But also two things. One, it's Rob Lowe's job to have a particular body shape, and two, he has the money to afford the expensive. Like the cheapest money per calorie in the world is refined carbohydrate.

[Amelia]

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So unfortunately, these things market themselves as a lifestyle forever, but that's just a lie. And if you want to use these things as a starting place to, like, learn and discover. Absolutely. But like, that's. That is. Is really what they are. But don't expect to do any of it for longer than 30 days, for sure. So that's named diets with names. The next restriction that people put on their food choices is lifestyle diets, like vegan or vegetarian. And there are lots of reasons why you might have this restriction. There might be ethical choices, it might be environmental ideals, or there's a joke.

[Emily]

What.

[Amelia]

What movie is it in? There's a lady who's like, I'm a fruitarian. I only eat fruits and vegetables that have actually fallen from the tree.

[Emily]

I remember it, but I don't remember where it's from.

[Amelia]

Yeah, fruitarian. It's a joke, but it's like a joke based on a real thing of, like, people making these choices and kind of an implicit judgment, because this is a funny character who's ridiculous, you know, joking about how excessive people feel like other people's choices are. And you can absolutely live forever as a vegan or a vegetarian. I think that these restrictions are. I mean, you can also sell cookbooks and, you know, other books, but like, this is, this is far less about selling, you know, shakes, you know, shelf stable, milk based, non dairy or whatever, like breakfast shakes or meal placement shakes.

[Emily]

The marketing comes after people have made the choice.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Because people are not making this choice to lose weight, as is so often when people follow a brand name diet.

[Amelia]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Emily]

It's. They're making like a moral choice or ethical or environmental, like some reason. Trixie Mattel, the drag queen, has been a vegetarian since she was nine.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And these are actually.

[Emily]

You can literally live your whole life never eating meat.

[Amelia]

I put these in the category called lifestyle diets because these are actually plans for eating that you could actually eat your whole life and have it be realistic. My stepdaughter has been a vegetarian since she was a teenager. And when she comes for Thanksgiving, everything I make is vegetarian except the turkey, so that she can eat anything. But we also have turkey. But like my Stepson is also.

[Emily]

How do you make vegetarian gravy?

[Amelia]

You use a vegetarian stock or I use better than bouillon because it has a lot of MSG in it so it tastes meaty. Yeah. So you like fry some onions, roast some vegetables, put them in a pan, and then make the roux and then add the. Better than bouillon and water.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And then you can just use that liquid that comes off as like a thickened gravy with like maybe some wine or whatever. Or you can.

[Emily]

Do you also make turkey gravy, though?

[Amelia]

I also make. Of course I make turkey. And I make much more turkey gravy than veggie gravy because it's more delicious and more of the people eat it. Everybody has the turkey gravy except Sarah. Sarah. And I've been teaching her to make the veggie gravy, like, so that she knows how to make veggie gravy for herself. And that can be the thing she makes for Thanksgiving anyway. Or you can take the whole thing and put it in a blender and use the bulk of the vegetables to create more thickness. Yeah, I prefer not doing that. But she prefers having the thickness of the vegetables all rounded up. So yeah, you can make veggie.

[Emily]

I feel like that would make it so sweet.

[Amelia]

It's. No, because it's mostly onion. I mean, it makes it starchier, but not really sweeter. Okay. Because I mean, the flavor is still. Is already in there from.

[Emily]

But like carrots and onions are pretty darn sweet.

[Amelia]

I don't use. I don't use carrots.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

Onions, maybe garlic.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

Maybe celery that has been cooked with the Turk.

[Emily]

And again, people are making that choice. Sometimes it's for nutritional reasons. Often it's for ethical, like animal rights reasons. Yeah, it can be for. There's a lot of environmental reasons.

[Amelia]

Yes. To eat. Not meat. Meat is bad for the environment.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

It's far more impactful than a vegetable.

[Emily]

And there's people like me who we just make like the happiest meat choices we can make. Like the local eggs that come with a note from the chickens.

[Amelia]

Right. The eggs that come from telling us.

[Emily]

About their favorite hobbies.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then let's talk about the ethical choices that maybe you don't follow. Like a particular lifestyle diet, like veganism or vegetarianism. Like maybe you eat meat because you've decided that for your well being. It's true that meat has different kinds of nutrition that you cannot get from a vegetable.

[Emily]

Yeah. Meat makes my body really happy.

[Amelia]

And people who really need that particular kind of health support need to eat meat to feel their best. I mean, humans evolved as omnivores and eating everything. And some. The variety of humans exist that some of them can't. Can't get by as well without eating meat. So then you gotta make a bunch of choices. Now, a number one reason you might make a choice about the food you choose is money.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's expensive to eat more ethical foods. Yeah.

[Emily]

It's like we're experiencing how much food actually does cost when we buy local, grass fed, happy free range, all the adjectives.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Certified humane.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So actually let's break these down.

[Emily]

We're paying how much it actually costs as opposed to not paying because the government is subsidizing something.

[Amelia]

Exactly. Yeah. So one of the choices. So after money, like, maybe you just are buying the most affordable, lowest cost per unit price if that's your thing. Because you gotta I shop that way for. Honestly, until we made the book deal with Burnout.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

We got the first advance payment.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And I bought the fancy mayonnaise. And I think I texted you, I'm not buying the least expensive mayonnaise. I'm buying the good mayonnaise. And it felt so special.

[Emily]

Yeah. Man. When you've been poor or broke your whole life and suddenly you're like financially stable and have the opportunity. And the thing is, at that kind of scale, you're paying twice as much for mayonnaise. Yeah.

[Amelia]

I mean, it's a couple of dollars.

[Emily]

I had this experience with mustard.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Of like buying the generic low unit price. And. Yeah. It only costs $4 to get the nice mustard as opposed to $1.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You are paying quadruple. Like the percentage that you're paying extra is nuts. I remember getting so angry with rich about mustard. I wrote about it in my writing group.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I wrote an essay about my fears around money and the cost of this mustard and how I recognized it wasn't actually a big deal, but like my whole body reacted to the cost of this mustard.

[Amelia]

I dated a boy back in the 90s who. We were in the grocery store and he. We needed grape jelly and he got. He reached up for the Welch's and I was like, no, no, no, the generic's right there. And look, it's like a third of the price. And he's like, I like this kind. And I was like, they taste the same. And we had a fight in the grocery store because I was like, how could you even consider buying? Because he grew up Both his parents were doctors, were medical professionals. I mean, dead doctorates were MDs in Alabama. So, like, he had money his whole life. Not 1% money, but, like, he had Welch's money.

[Emily]

Welch's money.

[Amelia]

I couldn't even conceive of Welch's money. And I thought, even if I had Welch's money, I would not buy Welch's. Cause no, the way you keep Welch's.

[Emily]

Money is by not buying Welch's.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

But here's what I just did. Literally yesterday, I. I Malin put pretzels on the grocery list. And I know he likes the Dots pretzels with, like, the little flavorful coating powder on them, but the cheap grocery store brand plain pretzels were $2.50 and the dots pretzels were $6.30. And I texted him, the regular pretzels are $2.50. The. The ones you like are $6.30. Which ones should I buy? And I assumed he was going to be like, oh, yeah, just get the plain ones. Obviously, he went, well, I know we both like the flavored ones. And I was shocked. And I went, I. And I was like, do we like them two and a half times better? And he's like, well, whatever. I'm sure we'll eat whatever you get. And the thing is, we have in the past not eaten pretzels for so long that they sat in the pantry and went stale. And I was like, I guess I'm buying the Dots. I guess I'm buying the $6.30 bag of pretzels. That's the choice I'm making.

[Emily]

You got Dots money?

[Amelia]

I got Dots money.

[Emily]

You got four extra dollars for pretzels.

[Amelia]

To make sure that we actually eat.

[Emily]

The pretzels we buy one day. We should have mom on to talk about what it was like to grocery shop when we were little kids, because she would go in with, like, precise down to the penny budget.

[Amelia]

Yeah. As I have done in the past.

[Emily]

Yes, indeed.

[Amelia]

But now I've got Dots money anyway.

[Emily]

And I think there's a lot of value in knowing how to shop down to the penny to a budget. Especially when you're feeding.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Lots of kids and adults, and you need to be making choices.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Pasta and cheese.

[Emily]

We drank powdered milk. We drank powdered milk until middle school.

[Amelia]

Until middle school. Yeah.

[Emily]

And that's a choice you make when you got a budget down to the penny. I now use powdered milk. Full fat. Cause we didn't even drink full fat powdered milk.

[Amelia]

We drank skim, skim Powdered milk.

[Emily]

Powdered milk. I now use full fat powdered milk in my baths.

[Amelia]

And you know what? Like the price per. I have calculated this price. The price of powdered milk per ounce compared to regular milk is about the same.

[Emily]

It's about the same.

[Amelia]

It's about the same.

[Emily]

That might be different now than it was before. I think dairy subsidies are different now than they were then.

[Amelia]

Yeah, no, I think so too. But like today, the cost of powdered milk and regular milk are about the same.

[Emily]

Yeah. And when we drank milk, we drank skim milk.

[Amelia]

So powdered milk is more highly processed, but it is shelf stable and lasts longer, so you're less likely to go bad and then waste it. So, you know, you got to weigh a bunch of things. Speaking of the things that you weigh.

[Emily]

Yeah. And pretty much every night somebody would spill a whole glass of powdered milk right on the tablecloth. So we were wasting it anyway. Mom always joked that, like it was our passive aggressive protest. Does she do that joke?

[Amelia]

Yeah, I mean, it was gross.

[Emily]

No, it did not taste good. Yeah, I had little, like chunks in it too. I remember, like mixing the. With a whisk the powder into the water. We need to not talk about powdered milk so much.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's among the choices you make is the cost of a thing and weighing whether it's going to go to waste versus if you're going to spend more money to the thing that, you know, you're definitely going to act buying.

[Emily]

A smaller container even though the unit price is higher, but we're going to use the whole thing before it goes bad.

[Amelia]

That is very hard for me. Yeah. To this day, it's very hard for me. More kinds of choices that you're going to make might be about the welfare of animals. You might think that it's just fine to kill an animal and eat it, or you might not. And I'm gonna say that that's a choice that varies across people. I have a friend who is willing to eat any kind of meat where she would personally be willing to kill the animal. So she'll eat fish for sure. But really that's it. Because she doesn't think that she would kill a chicken. I think I for sure would kill a chicken. I think I for sure would kill a sheep. Even a cute little baby lamb. Those things are fucking dumb. I think that I. If I was on a desert island and starving and there was a sheep there, delicious. I would kill that lamb. I think that I genuinely could do that. I'm kind Of.

[Emily]

Okay, so that's a way of thinking about it that I hadn't. That like, if you're stranded on a desert island and it's you or the sheep.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Would you be willing to kill the sheep?

[Amelia]

Yes. I really do think that I would kill that sheep.

[Emily]

Yeah. So I have a friend who's a boomer.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Who lived on a self sustaining, self sufficient farm for a number of years. And his partner really wanted to show that she was participating in the whole thing. And I'm retelling someone else's story from a long time ago. So this isn't going to be totally accurate. But she was like, I'm going to go kill the chicken.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

She plucked the chicken and gutted the chicken and you know, cut the chicken into parts and all that stuff, but had never killed the chicken herself. So she went out.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

She caught the chicken and she chopped off the chicken's head and it ran around the yar. And she went into the house and said, you are killing the chicken from now on.

[Amelia]

Yeah, she could.

[Emily]

But it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Didn't feel Good. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. 100%.

[Emily]

And that. So like they were not starving. And it wasn't like, kill this chicken now or die.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

But it was like, we're raising these chickens to eat.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And.

[Amelia]

And some people raise chickens as pets, which is a whole different story.

[Emily]

This same friend, in fact, had a chicken as a pet at the time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That the story was being told to me about a situation 30 years earlier.

[Amelia]

Yeah. We also have known someone who.

[Emily]

Their.

[Amelia]

Their standard was that they wouldn't eat anything with a face.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Which. Okay. That's where you're going to draw the line. We've all got to draw it somewhere. Right. And I think that it's only people who haven't really thought about it that will eat anything no matter what. I think that. And most people haven't thought about. I think that a lot of people just have never thought about. They go to the grocery store, they buy the thing wrapped in the styrofoam and the plastic and that's food. But some people have spend more time thinking about it. And some people are bothered by more death than other people are.

[Emily]

Yeah. Sometimes having the bones is like too real.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Exactly. And you need to feel like this is more removed from.

[Emily]

I know people who are very much looking forward to factory grown proteins.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I kind of am too.

[Emily]

Lab grown proteins. Yeah.

[Amelia]

I love textured vegetable protein. It's like tofu that's been even more highly processed. So it has A more meaty texture. I love it. It's not great for you. It's highly processed. But yeah, any. I am also looking to lab grown meats.

[Emily]

That would be great. I have a lot of skepticism that they're going to be able to get the same nutritional value that you get from a whole animal.

[Amelia]

I agree. But anyway, so for me, fundamentally I understand that food is consuming other life to sustain our own lives.

[Emily]

100% of food was once alive.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Like we're just. What life are we willing to trade for our own lives?

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

And I like to think about Grogu in the Mandalorian Little baby Yoda. There are, there are jokes about him, like, eating a live frog and all.

[Emily]

The kids go, ew.

[Amelia]

And he spits it out. But like, he looks at these little frogs as food. Not cute, fun frogs, but like yummy frogs. There's even an episode where the Mandalorian is transporting like a like, lizard based humanoid alien person. And she is carrying a bunch of eggs in a clear backpack with like, water, and the eggs are floating in it. And Grogu's reaching into there like it's like, it's a jar of pickled eggs and like popping them in his mouth. And it's this lady's babies that she's taking to her husband so he can like spawn them or whatever. And Grogu's like eating them. And it's like a hilarious joke, but it's this lady's baby.

[Emily]

It's an endangered species. The reason the stakes are high is because they're like trying to save their species. Yeah, yeah.

[Amelia]

She's like, at the end of her, she's one of the few left of her kind. And Grogu's eating these eggs and the Mandalorian's like, no, no, kid, that's not food. But like the end of the episode, he's popping one of those things in his mouth and it's funny and gross. But like, I love the, like, I enjoy the ethical question of, like, is it. Where in this fantasy world does a creature draw the line at what's acceptable to eat when it's a baby and it, like, it may or may not know any better Anyway, I thought that was a funny example of like, where do we draw the line?

[Emily]

Funny example.

[Amelia]

What life do we trade for our own lives?

[Emily]

So some of the restrictions that we impose on our food choices are related to ethics and protecting the environment. And the environment's.

[Amelia]

Well, we're going to talk about environment.

[Emily]

Let's talk about the environment then.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So some of the questions that we ask ourselves about the environmental impact of the food that we choose to eat or not eat is the question of is it farmed organically according to the organic label that is imposed, that you have to meet a government standard and pay for the certification process, or do we go ahead and eat food that is raised industrially? And like food that is raised organically, the soil is not supplemented with nutrients, but it's growing in soil that has been depleted of nutrients. So industrialized farming often results in produce that is actually a higher nutrient content because it's artificially supplemented from soil that has been depleted. So, like, that's an environmental choice that you're making. If food's gonna be used like pesticides, that's bad for the environment, but it might be more nutritious. So organic versus industrial.

[Emily]

And also, do you want to consume the pesticides? You're really only consuming the pesticides if you eat the skin of the produce.

[Amelia]

Like berries, grapes.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Or like leafy greens, where you eat the whole thing, Right? Yeah. Or brassicas, I guess, because those are different from leafy greens.

[Emily]

From leafy greens, yeah.

[Amelia]

Another question about the environmental impact is like, the pollution from both doing the farming and doing the harvesting and the processing and also shipping it to you, the consumer. So, like.

[Emily]

Right, more environmental.

[Amelia]

You were talking before about, like, how it might be less environmentally impactful to buy an apple that's been shipped from California than one that's been grown at a farm down the street, depending on a lot of variety of factors.

[Emily]

So many variables.

[Amelia]

Yeah, right. There's also the question of packaging, to.

[Emily]

Which the answer is just do your best. Do your best. Yeah. Do the best you can.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So like, I in general prefer to buy milk in a half gallon carton that is a cardboard carton, because I feel like that's less plastic pollution, which is very bad. But like, then again, when I buy a half gallon, sometimes we don't finish a half gallon and it goes bad. Now I've wasted it. So is it actually more environmentally friendly if I just buy a plastic cord? Because I can't get a quart in a carton. In a cardboard.

[Emily]

You can't get a quart in a carton, huh?

[Amelia]

I haven't been able to find a quart in a carton at the grocery stores.

[Emily]

I can get a quart of fucking heavy cream in a carton.

[Amelia]

Yeah, you can get a quart of heavy cream in a carton, but can you get a cream?

[Emily]

Maybe you should just be drinking Heavy.

[Amelia]

Cream, believe me, because I do the keto Atkins, you know, low sugar thing. I have. I consume my fair share of heavy cream and a half. And a half in place of milk. But like, sometimes you just need milk. And also Malin drinks milk. So, like, I'm not the only person in the household for whom I'm buying dairy products. So getting a thing. So the packaging is a question. Is it available? Which is less wasteful, depending on if I can consume the quantity. That's, you know. And also it's less expensive to buy larger quantities per unit.

[Emily]

We are frankly more likely to waste food if we cannot see through the container of how much there is.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. And that's the difference of. I mean, you don't, I think, do dairy in your house. Right.

[Emily]

Except for heavy cream.

[Amelia]

Except for heavy cream. Yeah. So. And that doesn't come in a clear container.

[Emily]

Every cheese. All cheeses, cheese.

[Amelia]

Because cheese is worth it.

[Emily]

Cheese is delicious. And I am not. It doesn't activate my lactose intolerance.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So there's the organic industrialized practices, pollution, packaging, transportation. All these are environmental impacts of different ways of producing food that you need to balance and just make the best choice you can. That was all I could think of for environmentally. You got anything else?

[Emily]

Just that the less environmentally impactful choices are almost always more expensive. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Which is why it started with money.

[Emily]

Yeah. You got to start with money. And then you go to ethics and the environment.

[Amelia]

And then.

[Emily]

Which is related to whether or not you choose to consume animal products. Because cattle is an incredibly destructive.

[Amelia]

So bad for the environment.

[Emily]

Also, monocultures are incredibly bad for the environment. But they're so efficient. They're so efficient. It is so cheaper just to grow vast acres of one species. Species of plant.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And it's so depleting to the soil.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And the last ethical.

[Emily]

And it is an invitation for pests. And so that's why pesticide is necessary when you're growing food in a monoculture.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So the last ethical choice is the question of worker safety. Like, is there slave labor involved in the production of my food? Which almost all chocolate is produced using slave labor.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Yeah. You have to get some very specific brands.

[Emily]

Tony Maloney. Basically.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Who's.

[Emily]

They do their fucking best. They cannot guarantee that they slave labor free.

[Amelia]

But they really try and they. And they document and make transparent what their supply chain is like, which Nestle actively hides their supply chain. Because they don't want to know. Yeah. And they don't want you to know.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So Slave labor, but also working conditions.

[Emily]

They want their bag of Halloween candy to be the most affordable and attractive bag of Halloween candy. They're not going to talk to you about the potential slave labor, the likely slave labor.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. So working conditions, even if laborers are paid, you know, how many hours they've required to work, what are their living conditions like? Because a lot of migrant workers live, live on the farm. And are they actually living in air conditioning out in this hot, sunny place? Yeah. And then there's the working conditions also of like the store you choose to buy from. Right. I, I shop at Stop and Shop, which is the, you know, New England whatever brand of whatever it is, because they have a union. I used to shop at Big Y, but then Big Y did like anti. They tried to unionize at Big Y and they did like anti union stuff. And I was like, oh, never mind, Big Y, you'll never see me again. So stop and shop. In Massachusetts and a lot of other states, there's a law that says that you can hire disabled people at a reduced wage at a sub minimum wage with the idea that like, especially developmentally disabled people who may need like a lot of support or they may need, you know, special work circumstances in order to be able to like, have a purpose in their life and contribute to the community and feel like they're doing something. This is a law that exists in Massachusetts that you're allowed to hire. You need like a special license and a special like thing. But I think it's wrong and bad and exploitative. I think if you're gonna hire a worker, you should pay them minimum wage at least, probably more. I think you should pay them a living wage actually. So like there's the, the co op farm here nearest me on the Cape is called Capabilities Farm. Cape Abilities.

[Emily]

Oh, no, get it.

[Amelia]

And they, they make a big deal on their website about how they provide jobs for disabled people for the development of disabled people. And like this is all the happy disabled people who work here. And I was like, oh, are you paying them sub minimum wage? Because like they do, they're a co op who sell locally grown food. They special in like Cape Cod produced honey and alcohols and fish that's caught locally. Like, that's what they sell is like really great local. They have the eggs with the note from the chickens, right? Yeah, that's what they sell there. Yay. Great. But they, I could find nowhere on their website that said whether or not they pay a living wage to their disabled employees.

[Emily]

Well, undocumented migrant workers are Almost never paid minimum wage either.

[Amelia]

Exactly. But I mean, there are ways that this is the law.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

They're not violating any laws or paying anybody under the table. This is fully legal. I'm not sure that that's what capabilities does. I have not called them to ask specifically, but it's. I know that it's legal to do this in Massachusetts. And this is like a fundamental part of their business structure.

[Emily]

Yeah. And again, the amount you pay for food is shaped by how much the labor is paid.

[Amelia]

Yeah. The most expensive part of food production.

[Emily]

Food gets real expensive fast. When the people who grow and pick your food are paid a living wage.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It's the most expensive part of food production.

[Emily]

This is the only time, it is the first time in human history that this sort of question has arisen. It is only in the post World War II era that our food system has become so industrialized, we have become so separated from the place our food grows and the people who pick our food. It is brand new and no one can be expected to know how to make even informed choices. There's no such thing as like a perfect or great choice. It's just like even being aware of how many issues may be folded into the food item you pick up off a grocery store shelf.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So that's, that's my full list of ways and reasons that people restrict their food choices.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's so complicated.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So the, the, again, our, our actual take home message is the same as our other food episodes, which is listen to your body, do the best you can with the resources you have available, and forgive yourself for the fact that you can't be perfect.

[Emily]

Yeah. Nobody. Nobody can.

[Amelia]

Nobody can.

[Emily]

There's literally no such thing as a perfect food choice. And we are forming the agreement as a group that we, although we may eat with people who feel like they're comfortable making comments about our food choices, we are not going to be the ones who do that to other people.

[Amelia]

We're not going to be the ones who do that to other people.

[Emily]

Can we come up with like an excellent strategy or at least a useful strategy for people when they are eating in public with people who comment about their food.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, what do you say? It's much easier for me to talk about, like, as a bystander witnessing someone commenting on another person's food, it is much easier to have something to say because we go to the green dot. Distract. Delegate direct strategies.

[Amelia]

I will say that in the past when I have brought up food things that you're like, yeah, let's not talk about that. You just don't respond. And I find that unhelpful. So I'd much prefer a direct response of just like, yeah, let's not talk about that. Or, you know, we're all just doing the best we can. I like to approach people's choices with non. Judgment.

[Emily]

Yeah. So we have very different, like, physiological responses to these sorts of conversations and confrontations. You always regret it when you don't say something, and you never regret it when you do. Yeah, I always regret it when I do say something, and I never regret it, really, when I don't. I may intellectually, regardless, believe that I ought to have said something, but my body does not feel bad about saying nothing.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And if that's what people need to do is just, like, let it slide, like, yeah, then listen to your body. Do what. What feels safe to you.

[Emily]

But so quick summary of bystander interventions. According to the Green Dot program, distraction is where you simply change the subject. You start talking about something totally unrelated in order to, like, switch attention away from this. And that's. That's distraction, and that's a completely acceptable. People may feel like, no, that's not the ideal thing to do. This isn't about doing the ideal thing. It's about moving tension away, attention away from this topic and onto literally anything else. And maybe the person who, like, started talking about somebody else's food choice will recognize that that's what you've done, but they might just feel like you wanted to talk about something else. That's distraction. Delegation is where you ask for help. Essentially, you turn to someone and either, like, with your eyes or with your words, ask for someone to intervene when you feel like you cannot intervene. So distraction is my first choice generally in this kind of situation. But maybe I could make better use of delegation, where I know that I would regret it if I directly address this situation. But you would not feel bad if you directly address the situation.

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

So I might look to you and be like, feelings. Do you want to. Do you want to take this? Because I'm not going to.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So that's. That's delegation, asking for someone to, you know, you say to someone else who is eating with you in public, amelia, you were talking to me the other day about commenting on people's food choices.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It turns out it's really inappropriate. People are all doing the best they can with the drinks they have available, and you don't know what the situation is. People need to be just. Just shut the fuck up and leave her alone.

[Emily]

Yeah. So that's what we call a direct intervention where you directly intervene with the person who is engaging in the potentially harmful behavior.

[Amelia]

Hey, jerk. Commenting on other people's food choices is rude. Do not do it.

[Emily]

Don't do that.

[Amelia]

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't be judgmental. We're all doing the best we can with the resources we have available. Dumbass.

[Emily]

In my house, I don't know my.

[Amelia]

World, name calling is probably not the best idea. But I feel comfortable saying, wah. Don't comment on people's food choices.

[Emily]

The goal is to like de. Escalate the situation. It is rarely helpful to escalate the situation.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's because the person is already going to be defensive even with the most gentle direct intervention. And the great thing about distraction and delegation is that they are non escalating.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that's true.

[Emily]

If you are in like an emotional state where you're going to escalate the conversation. Unless you're like, my goal is to make this person just leave this restaurant and go away forever.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And hate me. Like, unless that's your goal. You want to approach the direct intervention in a non escalating kind of way. I might. If I were going to say something, which I wouldn't because I would regret it no matter how gentle I tried to be.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I would say something like, in my family and household, we have it as a rule that we don't comment on other people's food choices.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Or just propose, hey, let's have a rule where we don't comment on other people's food choices. Let's hear right now. Let's all just agree that we're not going to judge other people's food choices. I wasn't judging. I was just saying. Yeah. Let's just not do that.

[Emily]

Let's just. Yeah. We could be talking about so many other things.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That has no risk of hurting anybody's feelings or making anybody feel self conscious.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And even if nobody does feel hurt feelings or self conscious.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Food choices is one of the most boring things we could possibly talk about.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Well, we just spend like an hour talking about it. So.

[Emily]

Do you have anything more interesting to talk about?

[Amelia]

Yeah, I feel like that's a little passive aggressive. Do you have anything more interesting to talk about? Is like, you must be boring, asshole. If you think that the appropriate conversation is why someone chose what they chose.

[Emily]

Right. But it does make them go to like, no, I have more interest. I have interesting things to say. Or they Might be like, well, no, I'm interested in it because of XYZ and like, if XYZ is like, animal rights or the environment or the economy, transition to that topic without having to be about food or. And people's individual choices. Because, like, again, like, I. I feel like a disarming, diffusing thing to say is, yeah, everybody's making the best choices they can with the resources they have available to them in the moment.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that's a good thing. That. That's a good sentence. I feel like we're all just making the best choices we can so people.

[Emily]

Have lots of options. And, like, if you want to burn a bridge. Yeah, we're not here to tell you not to burn a bridge. Burn a bridge. If you will be able to look back on that moment, be like, I am so glad I burned that bridge.

[Amelia]

I do also want to recognize that having a prepared script of what to say in a situation is a super d. Autistic thing to do.

[Emily]

No, Lots of people in a confrontation really benefit from having language like, what are some options of. Cause they can't think of the thing to say because they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but they do want to address the issue.

[Amelia]

But the skill we have developed as autistic people of preparing scripts is a useful skill to have that other people might not have learned to do.

[Emily]

But anybody with social anxiety does this.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

It's very common. If you're the kind of person who's like, not witty, like, you can't think of jokes off the top of your head, but you're the kind of person who thinks of it later on. Man, I wish I had said, yeah, plan what you would wish you had said in advance. Yeah, so plan to have the conversation. So really what we're adding to this is in addition to make the best choices you can, and you're absolutely allowed to try restrictions on your food to find out what works for you and recognize that because we're all making the best choices we can with the resources we have available. As your resources change, either your financial circumstances improve, as ours did over the course of our lives, or they worsen as they're going to for, sadly, a bunch of people, probably over the course of the next six months, if not year, just be responsive to the change in circumstances, develop the skill, skill of making choices flexibly, and you don't have to judge yourself in the same way that you don't have to judge anybody else. We are all doing our best. Yeah. If you wish everybody would be vegetarian because it's better for the earth and for the animals, you can have that wish.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I'm telling you, I make the most ethical meat choices that I can. And my body feels so much better when I consume animals.

[Amelia]

I think that when people have the instinct to judge someone for what they eat, it's because they have these false beliefs that there's one kind of way of eating that applies to everyone. They think, well, everyone can be a vegetarian and anyone could be vegan. Anyone can avoid meat. Well, that's just not true. Anyone can avoid carbs. No, that's just not true. Anyone can avoid processed foods. No, that's just not true.

[Emily]

It's never true.

[Amelia]

It's never true that everyone could do what you do or what you think is best. So don't. Don't tell them that they should.

[Emily]

Don't act like it's never true that what's best for you and whatever's best for you. Do that.

[Amelia]

Do that.

[Emily]

But it's never true that what's best for you is also what's true for anyone else.

[Amelia]

Nobody else.

[Emily]

We're literally identical twins.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Raised in the same household.

[Amelia]

What's best choices not best for you? No, I can't eat spinach. You love spinach. I mean, I have to take a pill to eat spinach. You have to take a pill to eat dairy.

[Emily]

Yeah. And I'd rather not.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I wish there were a pill I could take to eat gluten.

[Amelia]

That would be nice.

[Emily]

It would. You know what I miss?

[Amelia]

Bread pizza.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

There's no gluten free crust.

[Emily]

No replacement sourdough crust. Because the point of pizza crust is gluten, is the gluten development.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That gives you the chewy.

[Amelia]

You're supposed to knead it for like 10 minutes.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's like the opposite of all other flour based things.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But sometimes it's worth it and I'm willing to pay the price.

[Amelia]

There's a place on Cape Cod that has the best sourdough crust. Pizza. It is the best crust. It's the crust that, like, you eat the crust even if you're not like a crust eater. This crust is so bubbly and crisp and flavorful. It's called Moto Pizza. There's like three locations on Cape Cod. Highly recommend. Notsponsored. Because we'll never be sponsored by anyone ever.

[Emily]

Who the hell would sponsor us?

[Amelia]

And I already have Dot's money, so what I'm looking for. Right.

[Emily]

We don't need Any money beyond Dot's money? Or in my case, it's Annie's mustard money.

[Amelia]

Annie's mustard Fancy.

[Emily]

Fancy. She's got that Annie's mustard money.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I bought dots, and they weren't even on sale.

[Emily]

They weren't even on sale?

[Amelia]

No, they weren't on sale.

[Emily]

Oh, there's good news about Polar.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

They changed the lining of their cans, and they no longer have forever chemicals. So you can buy Polar again. Nice. Yeah, that's. That changed in 2024. Oh, great.

[Amelia]

That's good news because less expensive than Lacroix.

[Emily]

It is less expensive than Lacroix, which is Rich. Tries to buy it on sale, but it's still 50 cents a can, and I drink 10 a day. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yes. You spent a lot of money on water.

[Emily]

$5 on La Croix.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

The only thing I consume every day that's more expensive than that is my antidepressant.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That's a lot of money per day on water.

[Emily]

On water.

[Amelia]

When I know I'm gonna be fasting, I buy La Croix or expensive water because I want to make sure that it's very easy for me to drink a lot of water.

[Emily]

Just tons of water.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So that's. That's when I decide it's worth the money to buy Lacroix. But see, that's a very complicated choice for me to make of, like, based on a lot of very specific kinds of restrictions, which is why I thought we should dedicate an episode to food restrictions. In conclusion, the end. Yeah.

[Emily]

In conclusion, do your best.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Don't comment on other people's food. We're done.

[Amelia]

We're done. We've said it all.

[Emily]

We're done. Cue the ukulele. We did it. I talked about food, and it was fine. And, like, if you want to burn a bridge.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We're not here to tell you not to burn a bridge.