Introduction to Food (and Body Acceptance)

Summary

Feminist Survival Project: Introduction to Food (and Body Acceptance) Episode Release Date: May 6, 2025
Hosts: Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

---

1. Introduction and Prerequisite Understanding

The episode begins with Amelia announcing upcoming live sessions and then transitions into the core discussion. Emily emphasizes the importance of body acceptance as a foundational step before delving into nutrition. She states:

"You cannot learn about nutrition stuff in gestures broadly before you accept that your body, precisely as it is in this second when you are listening, deserves care, pleasure, and to be nourished."
(00:56)

This sets the stage for the conversation, highlighting that genuine nourishment begins with self-acceptance.

---

2. Separating Health from Weight Loss in Food Choices

Both hosts discuss the critical distinction between making food choices for health versus those aimed at weight loss. Amelia introduces the idea:

"One of the only things you can say that's universally true, good nutrition advice for everyone across the board is food that is less processed will, in general be better."
(02:26)

Emily reinforces this by explaining that weight loss behaviors are inherently unhealthful:

"Weight loss food choices are not healthy. Definitionally unhealthy."
(01:38)

They argue that health should not be conflated with weight, emphasizing that weight changes do not necessarily reflect one's health status.

---

3. Processed vs. Less Processed Foods

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the impact of food processing. Emily uses the example of chicken to illustrate the difference:

"A whole chicken that you're gonna broil… versus a chicken nugget, which… scrapes tissue off of the carcass… added starches and binders."
(04:37 - 05:02)

Amelia adds that processing alters the food's natural state, making it less nutritious:

"Flour… ground that tiny part of the plant into a fine powder… so, like, there's a lot of steps between when that flour was alive and when it made it onto a chicken nugget."
(05:03 - 06:22)

They argue that minimizing processing retains more nutrients and aligns closer with how foods existed naturally.

---

4. Emotional and Familial Aspects of Nourishment

The hosts delve into the emotional connections tied to food, asserting that love and family bonds are integral to nourishment. Emily shares a heartfelt perspective:

"If eating your grandmother's cookies feels nourishing to you because it's a connection to this person who made them. That's not an unhealthy food choice. Like, don't worry about whether or not it's 'healthy.' It is good for you because it's about the love. Love is the most important macronutrient."
(03:20 - 03:37)

Amelia nods in agreement, highlighting that emotional satisfaction plays a crucial role in how we perceive and enjoy food.

---

5. Misconceptions and Barriers in Nutrition

The conversation shifts to debunking common myths and addressing barriers to making healthy food choices. Amelia recounts her high school biology class experience where fat was demonized:

"Fat was universally known to be the bad guy… we ate angel food cake because it was fat-free."
(08:12 - 08:49)

They discuss how outdated nutritional guidelines have perpetuated misconceptions, making it challenging to navigate modern nutrition.

---

6. Marketing Influences on Food Choices

Emily and Amelia tackle the powerful role of marketing in shaping our eating habits. Amelia shares a personal anecdote:

"I ordered a milkshake… the dude behind the counter… judgmental about it."
(31:54 - 31:57)

They highlight how marketing strategies often promote processed foods, making it difficult to resist unhealthy choices. Emily mentions:

"In the UK, they have banned fast food commercials either from children's television or all television."
(36:16 - 36:19)

This underscores the pervasive influence of marketing on our dietary decisions.

---

7. The Myth of "Calories In, Calories Out"

A substantial debate unfolds around the flawed concept that all calories are equal. Emily expresses her frustration with this notion:

"How could I have believed this Physiological bonkers… a calorie is a calorie is a calorie… it's so ridiculous."
(27:02 - 27:44)

Amelia concurs, emphasizing the complexity of human metabolism:

"Our bodies have evolved… why would we think that our bodies would just treat this source of calories the same as this other source of calories."
(27:54 - 28:16)

They advocate for a more nuanced understanding of how different foods affect our bodies beyond mere calorie counts.

---

8. Budget Constraints and Nutrition

The hosts acknowledge the financial barriers many face in accessing nutritious food. Emily reflects on her grad student days:

"A packet of dry pasta and a powder that when you boil it all turns into a sauce… for a dollar."
(47:00 - 47:32)

Amelia adds that low-budget individuals often compromise on nutrition due to financial constraints:

"Industrial food production is for some people; that's affordable."
(51:25 - 51:29)

They emphasize that making the best choices within one's financial limits is essential and commend listeners for doing their best.

---

9. Practical Nutrition Tips and Final Thoughts

Towards the end, Emily offers actionable advice for listeners looking to improve their nutrition:

"Half of the clock face vegetables… a quarter protein… a quarter carbohydrate… and then whatever else you put on it to make it delicious."
(52:12 - 52:36)

Amelia reiterates the importance of reducing steps between food's natural state and the plate:

"Fewer steps between when it was alive and when it got to your plate."
(54:00)

They conclude by acknowledging the numerous barriers to healthy eating but encourage listeners to prioritize love and pleasure as vital components of nourishment.

---

Notable Quotes

• Emily: "Love is the most important macronutrient." (03:20)
• Amelia: "Weight loss food choices are not healthy. Definitionally unhealthy." (01:38)
• Emily: "Just do your best. And love and pleasure are nutrients." (54:16)

---

Conclusion

In this comprehensive exploration of food and body acceptance, Emily and Amelia Nagoski intertwine personal anecdotes, scientific insights, and feminist perspectives to dismantle prevailing myths about nutrition. They advocate for a holistic approach to eating—one that honors both our physical and emotional needs while navigating societal pressures and systemic barriers.

---

Note: This summary excludes introductory announcements, tangential anecdotes unrelated to the main topics, and concluding remarks about upcoming episodes or external content.

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 our second episode about food, and we have a prerequisite.

[Emily]

Welcome back to the Feminist Survival Project Zombie Apocalypse Edition. You are not allowed to listen to this episode until you've listened to the previous episode, the one that we're calling. But what if you're beautiful?

[Amelia]

Actually, yeah.

[Emily]

Because you cannot learn about nutrition stuff in gestures broadly, before you accept that your body, precisely as it is in this second when you are listening, deserves care, pleasure, and to be nourished.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And more specifically, that weight loss behaviors are more dangerous than fat.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Having fat on your body. So we did that whole episode to separate making healthy food choices from making weight loss food choices. Because weight loss food choices are not healthy.

[Emily]

Definitionally unhealthy.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Unhealthful.

[Amelia]

Your weight may change when you make.

[Emily]

Different food choices, but your weight may change, period.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. But that doesn't. That is not an indicator of health.

[Emily]

Yes. And it took us, that whole episode even to begin to explain all of the justifications we have for why that's true. So if you're like, no, nutrition and weight loss go hand in hand, you are not allowed to listen to this episode until you at least try.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

The idea that you're fine already.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That it's better to eat what is nourishing to you today on so many levels.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

Amelia has a list. Go.

[Amelia]

First of all, spoiler alert. I think the conclusion of what we're trying to say is that one of the only things you can say that's universally true, good nutrition advice for everyone across the board is food that is less processed will, in general be better.

[Emily]

I would not use the word better. I would say healthier. Have more nutrients. Nope. Has more nutrients. Because what is health? Health is multidimensional. It is not just about physical health. It's also about emotional health, spiritual health, cultural connection.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

Familial relationships. If eating your grandmother's cookies feels nourishing to you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because it's a connection to this person who made them. That's not an unhealthy food choice. Like, don't worry about whether or not it's quote unquote healthy. It is good for you because it's about the love. Love is the most important macronutrient.

[Amelia]

And even if it's not The. Like your grandmother's homemade cookies. If it's Hydrox. Butterscotch tasty cakes.

[Emily]

Oh, God.

[Amelia]

Butterscotch tasty cake. Which, by the way, they taste gross. I have had them in adulthood for the nostalgias, and I was like, this is not delicious.

[Emily]

But eating peanut butter candy cakes, my thing.

[Amelia]

Peanut butter candy cakes. Yeah, they're called candy cakes, but our grandmother called them dandy takes.

[Emily]

Dandy takes. Yes, she did.

[Amelia]

Anyway. But in general, if you are making nutritional choices, food choices for your health, less processed, very broadly speaking, first question.

[Emily]

Is, did it grow that way? What did it. What did it look like when it was alive? Is the question you ask. So, like, you know, a whole chicken that you're gonna broil. What did it look like when it was alive? Pretty much just like that.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

If you're looking for a whole bunch of protein and some fat, then a whole chicken that you broil at home and you make choices about what else you put on it. Like, that's what it looked like when it was alive versus.

[Amelia]

Chicken nugget.

[Emily]

Let's go in the middle. A boneless, skinless chicken breast.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, you can tell where that goes on what it was when it was alive versus a chicken nugget, which, like, there isn't a nugget on a chicken. But, like, all they did was scrape tissue off of the carcass and blended up together so that it had an extremely smooth texture. And then they batter fried it.

[Amelia]

They didn't just scrape the flesh and then. And then grind it up. They added a bunch of stuff.

[Emily]

They added some things.

[Amelia]

They added some starches and they added some binders.

[Emily]

Starches.

[Amelia]

To add it all together. Preservatives.

[Emily]

They put in some glue. They put in some. Yeah, yeah. So they added some things. It looks less like it did than it was alive. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that, like, if you go like flour, which is like the simplest version of, like, how you bred something, what did that look like when it was alive? Well, it was a shaft of wheat. So not only have you removed, like, this one tiny part of the plant, you then ground that tiny part of the plant into a fine powder. So, like, there's a lot of steps between when that flour was alive and when it made it onto a chicken nugget.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And there are fewer steps between, you know, a homemade sourdough loaf and chicken nugget breading.

[Emily]

Right. For that piece of wheat, for example.

[Amelia]

So, I mean, so it works for.

[Emily]

Both plants and animals. What did this look like when it was alive. How much? How similar? So that's my like one simple. Like if you're just looking for like making a nutrient based choice.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Choose broadly speaking, something's going to be more nutritious when it looks more like it did when it was alive. There are exceptions. It's better to cook many vegetables. It is certainly better to cook meat.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because not only does that kill potential infectious things, it makes the nutrients more bioavailable. So cooking is making it look less like it did when it was alive, but it's making it more nutritious.

[Amelia]

Right. Not all processing is bad.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Just when we get to like ultra processed, like packaged foods where food scientists. And this leads me to like, if it's shelf stable. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Stuff that's alive isn't sort of by definition is not shelf stable.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. So this leads me to like the things that you gotta unbelieve and unlearn about food choices that are falsehoods that we carry with us from ancient days. I have a very distinct memory of being in high school and in 10th grade biology class with Mr. Twilley and he was talking about how chicken fat has been shown to have like, antimicrobial immune support kind of properties.

[Emily]

Schultz is the bomb dot com.

[Amelia]

Right. So like when you eat chicken soup, part of like the nourishingness of that is, in fact there's like a science based thing where consuming chicken fat is good for you. And a girl in our class, very popular girl, a literal cheerleader, spoke up and said, so fat is good for you. And I remember thinking like, yeah, I had the same kind of thought in my head because this was the 90s when fat was universally known to be the bad guy. Like, you know, we ate angel food cake because it was fat free.

[Emily]

Fat free. So it was basically good for you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like diabetic grandmother's nutritional guidelines from a hospital nutritionist was like, eat jelly jello.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Candy is fat free. Jelly beans, fat free.

[Amelia]

It's fat free. So it must be good for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Choosing industrial fats instead of animal fats because.

[Amelia]

Absolutely.

[Emily]

Yeah. Because they're not saturated fats.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Oh, boy. They didn't know about trans fats yet.

[Emily]

The world of, like, nutrition has flipped literally upside down since the, like Gen X were kids.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

When we were taught that fat is.

[Amelia]

And of course since then we have learned that, like, not only is chicken fat good for this very, like one specific, like, when you're sick, eat chicken soup reason, but also, like, turns out fat that Comes from an animal, like, in its form of coming directly from an animal as opposed to being, like, hydrogenated, like, you know, in a factory. In a factory. Like, there are other things that are. And also, like, the balance of fat to carbohydrates to, oh, boy, protein in your diet. Like, that ideal has shifted. Anyway, I remember this, like, ancient, ancient moment for.

[Emily]

From history of being confronted with, like.

[Amelia]

With like, fat is. Fat is good for you, actually, when, like, it was not a question of, like, fat is good for you. It's a matter of, like, there's something about fat that's not pure evil.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yep.

[Emily]

And again, like, the fat question is moderately easy to assess for your own nutritional needs. When you ask yourself, how far back do I have to go before I figure out what this looked like when it was alive?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

If it is marbling in animal meat that is of interest to you to eat. Okay. Versus hydrogenated fats from a factory that were once upon a time corn.

[Amelia]

We are right now talking about eating animal parts sort of neutrally. And we are going to talk about kind of questions of ethics and food in a later episode.

[Emily]

Today, we're not talking about just nutrition. We're just talking about, like, getting, like, feeding your body.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

At the simplest level of putting nourish, like, what does your body actually need as nourishment? And the simplest way to think about it is like, the deal is humanity evolved all over the surface of the earth. Yeah. In every climate that you can imagine where life can survive. Humans evolved in those places. We evolved in places where we had almost no access to animal products and ate almost exclusively plants. We evolved in places where there was almost no access to plants and almost exclusively access to. To animal products.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Human beings are trash compactors. We're goats. We can survive on anything. The simplest way to think about it is just like, what did this look like when it was alive?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because things that were alive comparatively recently are more like the kinds of things our bodies are adapted to be able to process. And our bodies will process anything we put in them. Our bodies will process a McDonald's bun. They will. They're frickin freaking miracles.

[Amelia]

Right? Yeah.

[Emily]

Thank you, Bodi, for processing that for me. And when it comes to. And like, many of us have profound nostalgic memories of McDonald's.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We grew up poor, poor, poor, poor. And McDonald's was a treat.

[Amelia]

Below the poverty line, receiving government aid poor. Government cheese poor.

[Emily]

Holding back food poor.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

For us to go to McDonald's as little kids was A special treat.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So I have like emotional nostalgic feelings about the flavor and especially the smell of McDonald's.

[Amelia]

I don't anymore because it does not taste good. Good for you.

[Emily]

Oh, that. I'm not there yet. That is. That is not an experience that I share with you.

[Amelia]

I gotta say, there is sometimes. I've got a craving.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's like I can't say I'm 100% out, but like, it's not a default feeling for me anymore.

[Emily]

And again, this is. This is about, like the emotional experience. It is not about my cognitive understanding of the ethics at all.

[Amelia]

Or nutrition.

[Emily]

Right. It's just like. But there are multiple dimensions to being nourished. We talk a lot. The point of this whole thing is stronger than the fire. We want you to be nourishing your body in a way that makes you stronger. And when we talk about polyvagal theory and being in a ventral state, loving the food you eat, experiencing emotions of connection and safety and love and joy and playfulness, that is a state in which your body is going to be most able to absorb the nutrients that you give it. And if the food you are eating helps you transition out of a stress state or a shutdown state into a sense of connection and peace and joy in your body, that's. That's a nourishing food.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Does that make sense?

[Amelia]

Yeah. I have a. There is a childhood thing that still tastes good to me.

[Emily]

Nutty bars.

[Amelia]

Nutty bars. I am less. Nutty bars definitely scratch an itch. But I don't like, enjoy the flavor so much as they taste so processed that like, they're a little off putting. But at the same time, they do.

[Emily]

Have that, like there's a chemical taste in the peanut butter in particular. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. The one thing that really tastes like this is a luxury from childhood that makes my nostalgia go and my taste buds enjoy it. It's the Pepsi with real sugar. Pepsi from before corn syrup.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It tastes totally different.

[Amelia]

It tastes completely different. And it tastes like childhood. Best moments of childhood. The good. Oh my gosh, I am drinking Pepsi. Special moments.

[Emily]

Yeah. That's.

[Amelia]

That's the one thing that still tastes good to me. That is. Well, no, there's also one thing which is like a deli meat sandwich on white bread with mayo and mustard like grandma made.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That also is like, sometimes you just need that.

[Emily]

Yeah. Our grandmother was a food magician who somehow managed to imbue into packaged, processed snacks the same, like, love that you could taste in her made from Scratch beef stew.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like the, and into the like white bread, Lebanon baloney, American cheese, mayonnaise sandwich.

[Amelia]

Lebanon baloney, man.

[Emily]

Lebanon baloney.

[Amelia]

It's a, it's a, it's a mid Atlantic thing. If you don't live in the mid Atlantic area.

[Emily]

Very specific.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. So like these are foods that like activate like some of our deepest senses of being loved.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Our mother was also a pretty good cook, but very actively, consciously, out loud, interested in nutrition.

[Emily]

Yes. From the very beginning, we grew up with nutritional yeast in the fridge.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, is to say like the food didn't taste as good because it wasn't full of fat and sugar.

[Emily]

Right. But it is a grandparents job.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

To look.

[Amelia]

To give your grandkids luxuriating treats.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Ice cream right before bed.

[Amelia]

We did do that.

[Emily]

That did happen. We did. We sat in our grandmother's shirts as night shirts and had like ice cream and cake right before we went to bed.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

[Emily]

Oh my gosh. There's photos of it.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yep. Okay, so what we're talking about is how to make healthy food choices. And healthy food choices includes food that feeds your soul.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

I want to talk about some of the misapprehensions and lies and barriers that people need to overcome or unlearn.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And one of those is food choices as virtue signaling. Oh, yeah. I can't buy this food because it means that I believe X or Y or Z or I can't eat this because it means, you know, which is not. Which is very different from I'm not going to eat this because it does not align with my values. Right, right.

[Emily]

It's the virtue signaling as opposed to.

[Amelia]

Values, your actual ethics and values that you hold inside you. It's the appearance of like. I know. Okay, so here's the thing. I shop online for my groceries. I. I do curbside pickup because I can't walk around a grocery store. It's not physically possible for me anymore. So when I shop online, I know that there's going to be a shopper going around the store buying things for me. And I am conscious of, did I buy any produce? This shopper's gonna be like zero. Zero vegetables. Really? Zero fruit. It's all, it's all meat and fat and sugar. Really? Is this what you're like? I do. I am conscious and aware that like, sometimes I'm like, maybe get some lettuce. So look, somebody saw me buy lettuce.

[Emily]

Yeah. Virtue signaling, food choices. Yeah. That's like being At a restaurant. And, like, because you're a person of size and you expect people to be looking at what you eat, you get the salad. That is not the thing you want, but you are behaving yourself, and that is how you have. You're, like, granted cultural permission.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

To have fat on your body. As long as you're behaving yourself and not eating that food that is, like, so delicious because it's full of, like, fat.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Flavorful, flavorful.

[Emily]

Flavorful, delicious flavors.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Not to say salads cannot be flavorful, delicious flavors. They absolutely can be.

[Amelia]

Yeah. But people definitely feel pressure to make food choices based on how it will look to others.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And validly so, because people do.

[Emily]

Do judge.

[Amelia]

Judge our food choices. My.

[Emily]

Can you talk about your experience of eating at a table of men?

[Amelia]

Yeah. This was a solid 15 years ago. I was at a conducting conference, and, you know, college conductors in particular are mostly men. So I was at a table having lunch, and it was a table full of men, and somebody ordered a cheeseburger with fries and somebody else ordered a salad, and. And no one commented on either one. And I was like, what That I. I was just used to as a default. Like, of course you're all going to be like, oh, you're eating that salad trying to lose weight. In fact, when I was in one of my first years of teaching college, I went to lunch with my department and my. And one of the professors ordered, like, it was a Chinese restaurant, and she ordered, like, steamed vegetables without any, like, rice or like, she. It was basically like a. Like a keto sort of general thing at a Chinese restaurant, which is, like, unusual. And people were really like, how can you eat that? And why would you eat that way? And she was very, like, just, like, chipper. This is the thing that's feels good for me. And I was very like, people's conversations about judging your food, like, so that one meal that I had with all those men conductors where nobody talked about food, and I, at the moment, I was like, I guess this is what it's like to eat with men. But then at that department lunch, it was all men who were making these comments to this woman. And so there were few women at.

[Emily]

The table, at least some women at the table. And men feel permission to judge women's food in a way. They don't feel permission to judge other men's food and only when there is more than one woman.

[Amelia]

And at the time, I was also eating super low carb. I had just learned, like, wow, my body really enjoys this kind of choice. But when I went out to eat in public, I didn't make that choice. I made the choice that would help me blend in. I made the food choice that would signal that I'm conforming. And this other professor did not make that same choice. She chose what was good for her body instead of what was going to pass muster from the other people at the table, like I did. I specifically avoided that conversation.

[Emily]

That was your autism mask. Now we know.

[Amelia]

Yes, now I know. But honestly, still, sometimes I do it so that I don't spark a conversation.

[Emily]

Me too.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

So the.

[Amelia]

The appearance of virtue is a barrier to people's making healthy food choices. And with good reason, because they genuinely will be judged. And sometimes you have to, like, balance. Do I want to have this conversation?

[Emily]

Do I want to do this emotional labor?

[Amelia]

Do I want to shut this. Do I want to do the work of shutting conversations down and telling people that it's inappropriate to talk about other people's food choices and to judge them? Like, sometimes you just want to get through your first ever faculty lunch.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Because you're a visiting professor and you want to get hired as an assistant professor next year. Yep.

[Emily]

Sometimes you make those choices. And that is legitimate.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Another thing that stands in people's way is the notion of calories in, calories out.

[Emily]

Oh, God.

[Amelia]

This is one of those, like, parts of the Bikini industrial Complex. One of these ideas that lives in the. In the septic system in my front yard.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

That burbles out sometimes. This is when I think about. Yeah.

[Emily]

When I have very deep old memories about calories in, calories out.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So, for example, in high school, in health class, we got taught calories in, calories out explicitly. And we went to, like, the little gymnasium, like, with exercise machines that our high school had. And I got on the stationary bicycle, counts calories, had a calorie counter, and.

[Amelia]

Which is such bullshit.

[Emily]

I said to the teacher, oh, look, I just burned off breakfast.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because I had had, like, a slice of bread, and it was, like, 60 calories.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I have never been a person who likes. He eats breakfast. Breakfast is the most. Breakfast is only the most important meal of the day. If breakfast is important to you, if it feels right for you, people vary in whether or not breakfast is right for them. And so I was not particularly hungry and had only one piece of bread for breakfast, and I burned it off on the bike. And saying that out loud to my teacher was not a sign of a disorder. That was that. That was me doing what I Was taught.

[Amelia]

Yeah, I was following the rules.

[Emily]

I was doing it right.

[Amelia]

This is Amelia recording an insert after the fact. Because I didn't insert anything about timing of food and the health choices you make around timing. I just want to recognize the fact that your body might want to eat at different times of day. Emily would want me to tell the story about sometimes you need to eat right before bed because your body needs to know in order to be relaxed enough to sleep, it needs to know that it has food inside of it. Although there's research that shows that that's not maybe like the healthiest choice to make. And there's also the thing that Emily was talking about, you know, eating a slice of bread for breakfast and the saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And like it is only if your body tells you that it is. And a lot of people do intermittent fasting and one meal a day. And the timing, you need to listen to your body to discover what the timing of food means for health for you. I didn't include timing in the original episode. Here's me inserting it after the fact. Sorry. Thanks. As you were. Yeah. And to this day, calories on the package are the biggest thing on the package.

[Emily]

So, yep, they. That's what's listed.

[Amelia]

That's what's required to be listed on nutrient guides. Restaurants are required to make it available. Yeah.

[Emily]

And the science of why it's not true. So when I finally read Good Calories, Bad Calories, which is Gary Tubbs book, the. That fundamentally changed. Like, if there is a book that marks the transition away from fat, evil carb good to like, what if maybe fat. Okay.

[Amelia]

Yeah, what if what?

[Emily]

What if maybe carb bad. When I read the actual. Like, like his breakdown of the science is very high quality. And when I read it, I was like, how could I as a science loving person ever have believed this nonsense? Why would anyone believe that it's true that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, that the way our bodies have evolved would treat this source of calories the same as this other source of calories. How could I have believed that for 32 years?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

How could I have believed this Physiological bonkers. Why?

[Amelia]

How?

[Emily]

Why? Because they come from different places. Our opportunity to eat them is going to be different. Our metabolisms are so complex. Why would we think that our bodies would just be like, this is energy. This is just a neutral form of energy that I'm going to treat like all the other forms of energy. It's so ridiculous when you think about, like, what a human body is.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That it would just treat a unit of heat as a unit of heat.

[Amelia]

Which is what a calorie is.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Calories. I avoid saying the word calorie when I can. One of the things we talk about when we talk about burnout is the ways that cognition is affected by stress and the high energy requirements of cognition. Your brain burns more calories than any other organ in your body. But, like, I never, ever talk about burning calories when I talk about this, because the word calorie carries. I mean, it's a measurement of a unit of heat, and it's.

[Emily]

They're required to put them on fast food menus now as if it is irrelevant. And, like, the reason it's there is because the government has been instructed that this is relevant, important information. When people are trying to make heavy air quotes. Healthy choices.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Number of calories.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And then there's Brennan Lee Mulligan, who comes from a perspective of, like, a very young person trying to live independently, trying to get as many calories per dollar.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

Which is, like, a very funny perspective.

[Emily]

Very funny.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

There's a show on Dropout called Gastronauts, where he challenges three professional chefs just to cook the heaviest food.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Just the heaviest food.

[Emily]

Just the heaviest food. Which turned out to be lasagna.

[Amelia]

Well, this is a man who learned to shop by unit price.

[Emily]

Like us.

[Amelia]

Yeah, like us. Yeah.

[Emily]

Like we have taught our spouses to do.

[Amelia]

That's poverty math, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a man who's been broke or poor.

[Emily]

He, like, took home a container of this lasagna.

[Amelia]

This is the best show. Yeah. This is the best show on dropout. It was funny. Okay.

[Emily]

It was. And I related.

[Amelia]

So hard.

[Emily]

That was a challenge that I related to. So hard.

[Amelia]

Same, same. Same thing.

[Emily]

Heavy. I just want just like, a physically heavy food.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Just maximum calories per dollar.

[Emily]

So. Yeah. Calories and calories. Do I need to say more than, like, if you think about it for a second, why would our bodies possibly process. Yeah. Different forms of energy.

[Amelia]

The same. And if people want to be like, just show me the receipts. Calories, good calories, bad calories is the book to read for the receipts.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Okay. Another barrier people face is marketing. It's real hard to stand against the tide of marketing, people telling you what's healthy so that you make choices that profit them.

[Emily]

Yep. And the choices that profit them are, like, you eating foods that are the cheapest for them, not just to Produce, but to ship and put on a shelf.

[Amelia]

Yes. I once had. This is not quite related, but I should tell you, while I'm thinking about it, there was a time when I was quite ill. My digestive system was not working the way it was supposed to, and I couldn't eat solid food for about six weeks. And trying to get enough. Yes, I should have talked about those calories. Trying to get enough calories when you can't eat solid food is hard. So one day I went to five guys and I ordered a milkshake. And I was like, I want chocolate because I want all of the calories. And the dude behind the counter went, do you want a burger with that? Like, do you want, like, actual food with your milkshake? And I was like, no, no. And I wanted to be like, yeah, I can't eat solid food. I'm just trying to get some calories.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Like what? He was so judgmental about it.

[Emily]

Like, yeah.

[Amelia]

Oh.

[Emily]

Yeah. There's. There's another. This is another thing from Dropout where someone was talking about ordering. Like, how did you get banned from Postmates? Well, I wanted a milkshake. I just wanted a milkshake. But I thought, you can't just get a Postmates delivery of just a milkshake. So I ordered fries, too. And when the order showed up, it was just the fries. When all I had wanted was the milkshake. Milkshake. And, like, I had been ordering Postmates a lot that month, and there had been a number of mistakes. And so when I tried to get a refund, they were like, this can't possibly be true. And I was like, you know what? Just refund me for the milkshake and ban me. Yeah. All she wanted was the milkshake, but she, too, felt like she had to order. Well, she not. She, too, because you did not feel like you had to order something else, but you got judged for it. The reason she felt like she had to order something in addition to the milkshake is because of that judgment that she knew damn well someone is probably going to experience somewhere along the line of processing that order.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Which is why I have in the past ordered groceries, including vegetables that end up not getting eaten.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Anyway, I have.

[Emily]

This is. This is an actual. Like, I feel physically embarrassed when I think about saying this out loud. Am I going to say this out loud? I'm going to say this out loud because I want to normalize it.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

I have ordered big orders of fast food, like, at the. Like, I go in the Building. And I order from a person. And I act like I have a list of things wanted by different people. Like, I'm the one who was selected with the list to go into the restaurant and order the food.

[Amelia]

That's smart.

[Emily]

So that it will not be like.

[Amelia]

This one lady wants all this food.

[Emily]

Is ordering all this. You don't just want a double cheeseburger. You also want a crispy chicken sandwich, and you want the fries. And what they don't know is I'm gonna pull this all apart. I'm gonna put that crispy chicken patty between the two meat patties on the double cheeseburger. And then I'm gonna put fries on top of one of the meat patties. And what I'm doing is making the most monstrous, delicious, salty, greasy.

[Amelia]

Just.

[Emily]

Yeah, I'm. I'm frankensteining this shit. But I have to make it sound like I'm ordering for a family in order not to be embarrassed.

[Amelia]

There's a Key and Peele sketch about that. It is not an okay Key and Peele sketch, but it's this, like, very fat dude on a couch ordering pizza and, like, calling as though there's people at the party with him.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

This is a fat phobic sketch. That's not.

[Emily]

But it. But it's. But it's real.

[Amelia]

But it's real. Yeah.

[Emily]

And this was happening when I was.

[Amelia]

Straight sized in general. Key and Peele are. Have, like, some intersectional social justice awareness.

[Emily]

Yeah. But fat is one place where people feel like they're still allowed to.

[Amelia]

Yes. And this was. This was quite a while ago, so I don't think they would make the same joke now.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

I hope. Anyway, I did that in real life. That thing.

[Emily]

That was sketch and a funny joke.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

As a straight sized white woman at a fast food counter, I pretended like I was ordering for a whole family.

[Amelia]

I've also heard stories of women who order as though they're ordering for a party so that the delivery person doesn't think they're alone.

[Emily]

For safety reasons. For safety reasons. Perfectly legit. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So many barriers.

[Amelia]

We were talking about marketing, and then I told this tangential story. But marketing is another force that makes us believe. Malin all the time is like, I saw this ad for this thing. Maybe we should try that. I'm like, all right. I. When I watch a commercial, I am very easily swayed by food commercials to be like, oh, God, now I want pizza.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Now I want a sandwich.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's influential. It's made. Designed to. To push your choices.

[Emily]

To be influential. Yeah. In the UK they have banned fast food commercials either from children's television or all television. Yeah.

[Amelia]

I mean, I kind of wish they would ban it from. Because.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

No, it's when I'm watching a streamer and the conversation in the chat turns toward, like, oh, I'm eating dinner. I'm having chicken nuggets. Like, now I'm like, God, now I want chicken nuggets.

[Emily]

Now I want chicken nuggets. Just because I heard the words, like, that's real.

[Amelia]

And struggling to avoid you once. I think Rich had a pair of pajama pants with, like, hot dogs on them, and he didn't want them anymore because they were a trigger for him to make him want hot dogs. Do I remember that correctly?

[Emily]

I don't know that story. Or if I have. I've forgotten it. He has had underwear that had hot dogs on it.

[Amelia]

I think it was a pair of.

[Emily]

Pajama pants that Rich can decide whether or not he wants the hot dog, pajama pants included.

[Amelia]

Okay. But, like, I totally get it.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Like, I can't. I don't buy pajamas with pictures of, like, cupcakes and stuff because, yeah. Craving it's gonna make me want a cupcake every time I look at it. And, you know, not that I object to eating cupcakes. I eat cupcakes, but I don't want to eat cupcakes every time I look at a pair of pajama pants.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And. And that. And that. That influence is hard to resist. Speaking of hard to resist, the food science that is creating foods that you can't stop eating.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah.

[Amelia]

That's a real barrier to making healthy choices.

[Emily]

The book for this one is Salt, Sugar Fat.

[Amelia]

Salt, sugar Fat, and also, what's the book about? Highly processed foods. Ultra processed foods. It was great. Ultra processed foods book. The book for this is also ultra Processed why We Can't Stop Eating Food that Isn't Food by Chris Van Tullekin, I guess is how it's pronounced. The thing that I took away from this was how much processed food is extruded. It's extruded foam. And this is when I started having less taste for soft serve and Wonder Bread and chicken nuggets because I started to see how the food is extruded foam, and, like, the texture became very unappealing to me.

[Emily]

Circus peanuts.

[Amelia]

Can I tell you how much I have loved circus peanuts? But it's not even things that are explicitly foamy, like chicken nuggets are foam. Like, soft serve ice cream is Foam. It's not even foam made of, like, dairy fat. Like, I get in homemade ice cream. You want to, like, add air and fluff it up and make it kind of a foam that gets frozen. Frozen. But there's so much air in it that it's, like, bubbly and it's fluffy and smooth and creamy.

[Emily]

You're literally making my mouth water.

[Amelia]

Pancakes are so fluffy because you want to, like, create a kind of foam in the batter, and that's delicious. But, like, when you do that to meat and when you do that to just a bunch of chemicals, that's what made me kind of not want to eat ultra processed. That's what gave me the thing that made me feel like ultra processed foods were gross.

[Emily]

Yeah. I avoid saying things that, like, foods that aren't food, like Michael Pollan says, eat food mostly plants, not too much.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I find all three of those things to be, like, not universally relevant. And also, like, it feels pretty privileged, entitled and judgmental.

[Amelia]

Right, and judgmental. Yeah. So, like, that's not food because those.

[Emily]

If you eat it, it'll keep you alive.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That makes it food.

[Emily]

Better than starving.

[Amelia]

People think that. Some people think that, like, grubs aren't food. Bugs can't be food. That's not food. Well, that's. That's white supremacist of you to say.

[Emily]

Yeah. So, yeah, I don't. I don't say things like, this is not food, or.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

But I. But I am willing to say that, like, if you're looking for nutrients, look for things that you can think to yourself what happened between now and back in the time when it was alive. Right. Like, that's a more neutral way to think about it, I think. And also remember that, like, emotions, love is a nutrient. So also think about, like, you are allowed to eat for pleasure and joy and connection and community and spirit. Like, all those things are, like, part of nourishing your body.

[Amelia]

Crumpets are for sure extruded foam.

[Emily]

100%.

[Amelia]

They're extruded foam from my childhood.

[Emily]

So.

[Amelia]

So, yeah.

[Emily]

And they're more extruded foamy now than they used to be. There's a phenomenon. I think it's vanishing mouth feel. So Oreos when we were kids.

[Amelia]

Yes, yes. Vanishing mouth feel. Yes, yes, yes.

[Emily]

Oreos when we were kids. Like, you had to chew them in order to be able to swallow them, but Oreos now, you take a bite and it just dissolves in your mouth and it feels like you haven't eaten anything.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Cause you didn't have to chew it because it just dissolved vanishing mouthfeel, which is a characteristic that I very, I find it very pleasurable.

[Amelia]

Everyone does.

[Emily]

I love a Cheeto for like savory vanishing mouthfeel.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You used to have to chew Cheetos.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And the thing is that chewing is part of nutrition.

[Emily]

Yeah, it's.

[Amelia]

Chewing is. There's a GI doctor on YouTube that says chewing leads to pooing. Like if you are constipated. One of the things you can do that I do to help my chronic constipation is chewing. I chew a lot very deliberately. And one of the things that makes ultra processed foods so easy to consume, more than you would ordinarily, is because they're soft, they don't require chewing. They just go down and you don't feel like you've eaten anything. So I, I chew another thing.

[Emily]

Like you literally can't chew an Oreo or a Cheeto for very long.

[Amelia]

There's nothing to chew on.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So another thing in that book, though, that made me. That helped me be like, oh, yeah, that ultra processed food seems. Seems not delicious to me anymore, is that is the history of the ways that these food corporations have exploited people. Like research on indigenous populations, where food corporations have come in and changed those populations by offering them these ultra processed foods. So the food science that changes the way we eat by changing our body chemistry and the ways our bodies respond to what we're eating is a thing that is a barrier to overcoming, you know, to actually making choices that are good for your body. Because sometimes, because we say all the time, listen to your body. But when you eat foods that are designed by science to make you want your body signals.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

To mess with your body signals, that gets complicated and confusing and can lead to less. Less nutritious choices. Yep. And the final thing about making healthy food choices is even the food that comes straight from the earth, the earth is now depleted of nutrients in farming locations. The food we eat is less nutritious because the soil is depleted. So when you buy organic food that is not supplemented, the soil is not supplemented with nutrients because it's organic. That food has less nutrients in it than food that is not organic. Which is not to say that one of those choices is better because one of them has more pesticides and one of them is not as good for the workers who pay all those ethical choices we're going to talk about in a later episode. In a later episode.

[Emily]

This is just nutrition.

[Amelia]

This is just nutrition. Like, it is true that the food we eat now has less nutrients in it than it used to. Chickens are much bigger. Not because they are more densely packed with Omega 3s or whatever. Just because they've been, you know, fed a diet that. Yeah. That makes them bigger and not more densely nutritious. Yeah.

[Emily]

So the food that's currently available to us is not. Even if you're like a chicken. My grandmother ate a chicken. This is the same food.

[Amelia]

No, it's not the same food anymore.

[Emily]

The chicken is different.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Are you going to talk about money as a barrier?

[Amelia]

I was. I don't have that on my list, but that's a great, that's a great point.

[Emily]

So you have mentioned previously that after Covid just like ruined your digestive system.

[Amelia]

Oh, yeah. You, in February, you were eating like.

[Emily]

Carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates. Was sort of all your, like a bland diet is essentially the thing was all your digestion could cope with or it punished you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And you noticed you were spending a whole lot less money on groceries because they are so much less money, so much cheaper.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So if you're trying to feed yourself and. Or anyone else on a budget.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Nutrition is expensive.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Dense nutrients, very expensive.

[Emily]

It's like the most expensive stuff. We ought to live in a world where soda costs like $40 a liter.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And broccoli is 10 cents a pound. Always like. And, and that's not the world we live in through combination of like agricultural subsidies and the nature of food science and shelf stability and the fact that our packaged food originates in like meals ready to eat for the military in World War II. For all sorts of reasons. The cheapest food is the food that offers the least in terms of straightforward nutrients. Macro calorie, macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients are fat, protein and carbohydrate. Micronutrients are all the vitamins and minerals and shit like that.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So budgeting. When I was a grad student, I, you know, you get like a little packet that's got dry pasta and a powder that when you boil it all, it turns into a sauce. You can get a packet of that for like a dollar.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

A can of light, not quite light tuna was about 50 cents at the time. And a box of frozen spinach or broccoli, either one pound of it. Those three things together would be like most of what I ate in a day because I was a broke ass grad student. But I knew how to shop cheap and that was like a whole bunch of protein And a whole bunch of, like leafy greens and some carbohydrate and salt to make it tastier. Yeah.

[Amelia]

And filling.

[Emily]

So was it like the most nourishing thing I could. I was doing my best because.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

All we can ever ask of anybody listening to this is that they do their best with the resources that are available to them.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I don't know the resources available to any particular individual, but like, if you are a broke ass grad student, if you are working two jobs at minimum wage and trying to feed kids, like, just your best is all anybody can ask for. And making a child feel full.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Often, like, feels so much more rewarding than, like, I put broccoli on their plate and like, I know they're not going to eat it, but, like, I gave my kid broccoli.

[Amelia]

Right. And this is another ethics thing where we're worried what people are going to think about what we're feeding our kids.

[Emily]

Oh, my gosh.

[Amelia]

Our kids only eat Mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. And, and why is that all they eat?

[Emily]

Because of the food science designed to get them, like, limited in their palate.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And why am I buying it? Does that make me a bad mom? No. You're buying what you can and making sure your kid gets calories and feels and like, can I just say, like, a kid who never worries about if there's enough to eat is a lucky, lucky kid.

[Emily]

Yeah. And who is never made to feel ashamed of hunger.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Who has never made to feel guilted for, like, especially, like, if you get raised as a girl and you eat a lot because you're hungry, there's a strong likelihood that someone in your life has shamed you for your hunger and your willingness to feed your body.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I'm glad you brought money up. I don't know why that wasn't on my list. That was a good. Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

Money is a, Money is a major barrier.

[Amelia]

Major barrier.

[Emily]

Making choices about nutrition and like, the key is just to do your best.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I want to say about, like, if you get, if you're assigned female at birth, you get to adolescence. Girls physical activity drops hugely like 40%. And their rate of burning calories stays the same because that is how much energy it takes to move through puberty. As somebody whose body is, like, figuring out how to menstruate.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And girls, teenage girls get called lazy all the time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because of how much sleep they need, how much they sit still.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And chances are, like, they're not eating enough because we live In a culture that doesn't let girls just eat.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We live in a culture that treats hunger as a medical condition.

[Amelia]

The last thing I want to add is I should have talked about this when I talked about marketing. Is that the ideas about like, what nutrition is that are taught to us when we're young. Like the food pyramid. Just a reminder that the food pyramid is brought to you by the. Not by the Food and Drug Administration, but by the US Department of Agriculture.

[Emily]

Agriculture.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

So like not Health and Human Services.

[Amelia]

It's eating the food that America, American farms produce, which is wheat and corn. Corn, Corn, corn, corn, corn.

[Emily]

Like, it would be great if everybody could like join their local farm share csa, get like boxes of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables from their supporting local agriculture. Small farmers, where they respect the earth and their workers and all that stuff. Disrupting. Yeah, it'd be great.

[Amelia]

Industrial food production is for some people, that's affordable. Yeah.

[Emily]

And in some places that is not an affordable option.

[Amelia]

In a lot of places, like, it'd be great.

[Emily]

Just. Just do your best. I'll give one last nutrition tip. We have acknowledged so many of the reasons why it is difficult to make choices. I just want to make it simpler to make choices. So we sort of talked about like this spectrum of like, how many steps did it go through before since it was alive, like it was alive, then it was dead, and then it got to my plate. How far, what happened to it along the way? If you look. So this is a standard, like nutritionist thing to say. If your plate is a clock face, half of it, vegetables.

[Amelia]

A quarter of.

[Emily]

It, whatever protein source really rocks your world. A quarter of it, whatever largely sort of carbohydrate source really rocks your world.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And then whatever else you put on it to make it delicious. Because pleasure is also a nutrient. Pleasure and love are nutrients.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That is not great advice for me.

[Emily]

It's.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

This is just like broad strokes.

[Amelia]

So broad strokes.

[Emily]

If you are at the beginning of learning what feels right for your body, this is the default. You start off with like this sort of like half the clock faces vegetables. Maybe some fruit too, because fruit's delicious. A quarter protein, quarter, whatever, carbohydrate rocks your world. And you mess around with that ratio and see where your body calibrates, like where it feels good. And that's going to change with illnesses and it's going to change with time as you age. Like, there's all kinds of reasons why it would change. This is just a sort of like in the same way I have to give sort of like, baseline drinking advice to college students who are exposed to alcohol and have to make decisions. Like, I want to offer base guidelines. One drink an hour, measure, count, pace, blah, blah. I'm not. I don't know what anybody's particular relationship with alcohol is. I don't know what anybody's particular metabolism is.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

But, like, if we just want baseline starter advice where it's a sort of do no harm thing, this is the do no harm starting place.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So the clock face and food that if you're going to be like, how can I eat more nutritiously? How can I make better choices?

[Emily]

Fewer steps between when it was alive and when it got to your plate. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

And also, there's a million barriers that we acknowledge, and that's okay. And like, just do your best. Just do your best. And love and pleasure are nutrients. That's three. Three points.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Basic nutrition stuff. There are tons of barriers. So just do your best. And don't forget that love and pleasure are nutrients.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Great. I think we did it. Our nutrition episode.

[Emily]

We did it.

[Amelia]

Oh, God.

[Emily]

I was really dreading this.

[Amelia]

Yeah, I know. I had to push pretty hard.

[Emily]

You really did.

[Amelia]

Yeah. How did we get here?

[Emily]

And it wasn't easy.

[Amelia]

No. And I hope no one listened to this before they listened to the previous episode. What if you're already beautiful, actually, just because you are. Because you are. And you don't need to make food choices based on.

[Emily]

And you deserve to be nourished. And you deserve pleasure and you deserve love.

[Amelia]

That's it for this week. We're done. We're not adding any more things. Cue the ukulele. Cue the.

[Emily]

Cue the ukulele. Cue the ukulele.

[Amelia]

First try.

[Emily]

That's right. I did that right the first time. Okay.

[Amelia]

This shopper is gonna be like, zero. Zero vegetables. Really? Zero fruit. It's all. It's all meat and fat and sugar. Really? Is this what you're buy? Like, I do. I am conscious and aware that, like, sometimes I'm like, maybe get some lettuce so that somebody saw me buy lettuce.

[Emily]

Yeah.