Why We’re So Anxious About Food with Sarah Duignan

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Why We’re So Anxious About Food

with Anthropologist Dr. Sarah Duignan

Nicki Sizemore

Oct 29, 2024

Transcript

This ad-free podcast takes a considerable amount of resources to produce and can only happen with community support. If you find the work valuable, consider going paid. Paid subscribers have access to the full recipe archive, community threads, bonus content, and other fun perks. Regardless of what you decide, I’m so grateful you’re here. Enjoy the show! ❤️

Hello my friends, and welcome back to the podcast! I have a fascinating conversation for you today examining why we’re culturally so anxious around food (and how it connects to pop culture and 19^th Century health reformer movements!). I speak with

dr. sarah duignan

, a medical anthropologist and writer who explores the relationship between food, culture, health, and the environment. Sarah publishes the
anthrodish essays
newsletter and podcast, and her work has been featured in CBC Radio, The National Observer, Salon, Kitchen Work Magazine, and more.

Sarah and I explore the intersections of food, culture and identity. She shares her own personal history of anxiety around food, and how it led her into the work she does today. We talk about the impact of pop-culture in defining how we think about food and our bodies, and Sarah takes us back to the Victorian era, describing how our food system changed during the 1800s and how health reformers like Sylvester Graham (inventor of the graham cracker!) and John Kellogg (think Kellogg cereals!) have influenced our notions of health and morality.

As we discuss, food anxiety is culturally pervasive. We have more choices than ever before when it comes to the foods we eat, and we’re also confronted with more marketing and health messages than ever before. It can be really hard (and downright confusing) to figure out what foods to eat and to distinguish between health claims and marketing campaigns. As Sarah describes, we’re left with a whiplash of food choice, where one day one thing is good and the next it’s bad, and it’s a system that benefits food conglomerates, who profit from this confusion.

Sarah offers a great tip for reclaiming our individual control over our food choices and for educating ourselves about the brands we buy. While we can all choose for ourselves what to buy or not buy, the issue is actually a much deeper structural problem. It’s less about our individual choices and more about coming together as individuals to change a very problematic and inequitable industrialized food system.

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xo, Nicki