CW: This week’s recommended podcast is about diet culture, and references eating disorders. Please feel free to skip over to the end of the newsletter. If you’re looking for resources on eating disorders, you can go to https://nedic.ca/.
If you, like me, were a big fan of the criminally underrated sitcom Happy Endings, you’ll be thrilled to know that Casey Wilson is hosting a new podcast, Fed Up. She is a delightful narrator.
Fed Up tells the story of the dramatic fall of the diet for the age of Instagram called F-Factor — F standing for fibre in this case. Fibre, according to F-Factor, is the key ingredient for weight loss. Only two episodes have been released so far, but the drama of the story is between one influencer, Emily Gellis, and the founder of F-Factor, Tanya Zuckerbrot. We haven’t quite gotten to the lawsuit yet, but the conflict is there: Emily meets Tanya, later tries out crackers recommended by the diet, and suffers immediate gastric issues. She posts about it on Instagram, and gets tons of messages from others who have had similar experiences. So she starts sharing those stories, anonymously.
Fed Up has all the makings of a juicy story. We hear from Gellis directly, and while Zuckerbrot declined to be interviewed, we do hear from her through videos she’s posted on social media. It’s a story with all the scintillating turns of a true crime drama, but as far as I know, everyone makes it out of the story alive.
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