Talk:Diet culture

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Launchballer talk 14:47, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

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• ... that diet culture was intertwined with scientific racism in the late 19th century, including the common belief among medical practitioners that black women were unable to control their consumption?

• Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-racist-roots-of-fighting-obesity2/, “In the eyes of many medical practitioners in the late 19th century, Black women were destined to die off along with the men of their race because of their presumed inability to control their “animal appetites”—eating, drinking and fornicating. These presumptions were not backed by scientific data but instead embodied the prevailing racial scientific logic at the time. Later, some doctors wanted to push Black men to reform their aesthetic preferences. Valorizing voluptuousness in Black women, these physicians claimed, validated their unhealthy diets, behaviors and figures.”

• Reviewed:
• Comment: I’m open to alternative hook ideas. Thank you very much!

Moved to mainspace by FortunateSons (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

FortunateSons (talk) 17:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC).

• I made an error: I wrote the article through AfC, but I’m not the person who moved it into mainspace. Can I just fix that manually, or is there a different way to do it? FortunateSons (talk) 17:25, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

• Everything is fine, there is no error. The article was moved to mainspace with a procedural move by an AfC’er, so noting it was moved to mainspace up above by yourself is acceptable, as it could refer to the general process alone in this instance. If nobody reviews in the next several days, I will do so. Viriditas (talk) 08:24, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

• @Viriditas:Thank you very much! I’ll try to implement the suggested changes during the next few days. FortunateSons (talk) 07:39, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: @FortunateSons: Please give WP:DYKTRIM another read to see if you can shorten the hook. I think you can get rid of the word "common", reduce "medical practitioners" to doctors (or the equivalent) and "consumption" to eating, to start. Viriditas (talk) 09:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

• I’m happy to straightforwardly cut down per your suggestion (that diet culture was connected with scientific racism in the 19th century, including the belief among doctors that black women were unable to control their eating?), or would alternatively suggest (that the 19th-century belief among doctors that black women were unable to control their eating is now considered part of diet culture?) I would cite to the teen vogue article (ref 3) either way to avoid any OR issue, but trust your judgement regarding which hook is better? FortunateSons (talk) 18:36, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Extended content

:::*@FortunateSons: I would avoid poor sources like Teen Vogue for a DYK hook about medical history and focus on the best sources available, leaning towards scholarly and academic ones, if available. You also need to fix the authors in the cited source. You have Condé Nast cited as the author, but that's the publisher. The authors of the article are Cameron Katz and Annie Elledge. Elledge is the subject matter expert here, but she's still a PhD student in the Department of Geography at UNC. Her dissertation is on the weight-inclusive wellness industry in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, which is frankly, an interesting subject, but I don't think she's published it yet. She has published similar research before.[1] That article implies she's citing Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (2019) by sociologist Sabrina Strings, but there was some minor criticism (Laura Jennings in our Wikipedia article). Glancing at Strings 2019, I don't see anything about "diet culture", so one wonders if this is Elledge's thesis that connects the two ideas together. If so, I think we need to be careful here, as I all I see here is her Master's thesis, as it looks like she's still working on her PhD. My personal opinion is that we should stick with the expert sources that we have, not the future experts. If Elledge is simply citing Strings, we need to be careful about closely linked this is to the concept of diet culture because Strings doesn't talk about this, and Elledge is not yet an expert in her field. So, on the one hand, I think your hook is important, on the other, I think we need to focus on solid hooks that are rooted in material directly about the subject based on good sources. You might want to look to see if Sabrina Strings has talked about diet culture, as that would seal the deal. Viriditas (talk) 18:59, 23 September 2024 (UTC) @FortunateSons: For what it's worth, registered dietitian and nutritionist Christy Harrison does discuss this material in the context of diet culture in "Chapter 1: The Roots of Diet Culture" in Anti-Diet (2019) . I'm working from an epub, so I'm not sure of the exact page number, but you can read the material here. As you can see, this is the direct line we are looking for. Harrison cites Strings while talking about diet culture. Some people might ask, is Harrison a reliable source? I think she is on this topic given her study at NYU and her professional work. I also looked into whether she was connected to the social media scandal talked about elsewhere in this discussion, and as it turns out, she's one of the few authors who hasn't taken money from the food industry. However, on her website, she admits to doing work and receiving minor compensation from a tea beverage company many decades ago, but this appears entirely unconnected to her work. The important point here is that Harrison is at least one subject matter expert who connects anti-black racism (like Elledge she cites Strings 2019) with the topic of diet culture. Your hook needs to do that. More importantly, when I read Harrison's take, I see a far more nuanced view. I will quote it here: "The nineteenth century also saw emerging theories about race and evolution that categorized people into a racial hierarchy based on which groups were supposedly more "civilized" or "evolved." The scientists doing the categorizing were predominantly white men of Northern European descent (including, most famously, British naturalist Charles Darwin beginning in the 1830s), and guess which group they claimed was at the top of the hierarchy? As important as evolutionary theory was when it came to explaining how we all came to be on this planet, it was also used in overtly racist ways, to justify the white Anglo-European male domination of other cultures and genders that had been going on for centuries. Evolutionary theory became a "scientific" way of upholding the status quo. White, Northern European women were deemed to be a step down from men on the evolutionary ladder, followed by Southern Europeans (again with the women a step down from the men), then people of color from countries that early biologists and anthropologists considered "semi-civilized" or "barbaric," and finally, at the bottom, Native Americans and Africans, whom they considered "savages." As part of their process of creating this bogus evolutionary hierarchy, nineteenth-century scientists started cataloguing the physical traits and cultural norms they saw in different societies. They decided that fatness was a marker of "savagery" because it appeared more frequently in the people of color they observed, whereas thinness supposedly appeared more frequently in white people, men, and aristocrats. In particular, fatness was said to be linked to blackness—an idea that started to take hold of the popular imagination in both Europe and the U.S. in the nineteenth century. Scientific writings from this period obsessively catalogued and measured the fatness of people from supposedly "primitive" societies, and of women in general. Women of all ethnicities were believed to be at greater "risk" of fatness, which was taken as further evidence of their supposed evolutionary inferiority. Thus, belief in a hierarchy of ethnic groups, with white men at the top, led to a growing demonization of fatness starting in the mid-1800s. These racist beliefs influenced our gender norms as well, including the definitions of what it means to "look male," "look female," and "look androgynous." Because thinness was deemed "more evolved" (given its supposed association with masculinity and whiteness), men with lots of fat on their bodies began to be seen as both less masculine and less morally upstanding. And whereas fatness or curviness was seemingly associated with femininity, the idea that larger bodies were inferior eventually translated to the idea that even women shouldn't be "too" fat or curvy. As sociologist Sabrina Strings explains in her 2019 book, Fearing the Black Body, this prohibition on fatness was especially strong for white, middle-class Protestant women, who were instructed on "temperance" by dietary reformers such as Sylvester Graham, and told that "excessive" eating was both immoral and detrimental to their beauty, as it would lead to having a body more like those of African or Irish women." Viriditas (talk) 19:38, 23 September 2024 (UTC) Comment: @FortunateSons: Aside from the length of the hook, I am seeing other issues, mostly minor grammar and style, although I do have some question about the overall presentation such as your use of the Scientific American SA article to discuss the antecedents of diet culture, a comparison that isn't explicitly stated. Keep in mind, "diet culture" as a term began in 2010. I note that the SA article cites two articles, one in Psychological Science (2015) and an op-ed in BMC Medicine (2018), while also noting there are others. As your other sources make clear, we are talking about two main issues in regards to "diet culture": the promotion of restrictive diets and the stigmatization of the obese. The SA article addresses the latter, but doesn't directly connect it to our topic. However, I think it is safe to say that others might, and I'm currently trying to help find them. We need to be really careful with original research and to only go as far as the sources do. Viriditas (talk) 20:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC) Comment: Part of the problem is that you have competing narratives that are rooted in different disciplines. For example, you have the narrative of the health sciences, which has elements of the history of medicine. This is overlayed with the narratives of the fat acceptance movement, which has its own perspectives and opinions, and the narrative of feminists and black history. As long as this is all based on the 2010 understanding of "diet culture", everything is fine, but this isn't immediately clear. I notice the scholarly literature isn't being used as much as it could be here. One way to address this problem directly is to fold all the subtopics into coherent narratives related to the main characteristics of diet culture. As I wrote above, one of your sources discusses the two major ones, the promotion of restrictive diets and the stigmatization of the obese. I think it's easier to follow all the subtopics when they are written about in that context, and if possible, to expand the other characteristics. This also has great benefits for the reader as it formalizes and organizes the topic. In such an outline, racism would be discussed in a section about stigmatization, etc. Viriditas (talk) 21:02, 20 September 2024 (UTC) Comment:An alternative way of looking at this is to review the article on carnism and take a look at the page organization and structure. Viriditas (talk) 21:45, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

• ALT1: ... that both scholars and activists believe that diet culture is often intertwined with racism and other forms of prejudice?

• Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539521001217 “For women of colour, diet culture was said to be reinforced through intersecting systems of patriarchy and racism, and further fuelled by capitalist systems that marketed the thin, white female body as a universal ideal.“ (p.7); “A focus on patriarchy, racism, and capitalism is often prevalent in the work of feminist and fat activists“; “We found that diet culture is characterised by a conflation of weight and health including myths about food and eating, and a moral hierarchy of bodies derived from patriarchal, racist, and capitalist forms of domination.” (p.9);

FortunateSons (talk) 00:11, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

• ALT2: ... that some analysis of diet culture utilises an intersectional approach to discuss the interactions of prejudice based on gender, race, and weight?

• Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539521001217 “Some feminist writers have explicitly used the term ‘diet culture’ in their analyses, especially feminist researchers focusing on weight (e.g., Jovanovski, 2017; Gagliardi, 2018; Kinavey & Cool, 2019b; Murray, 2020b). For example, Jovanovski (2017) describes ‘diet culture’ as a gendered form of surveillance, instantiated and reproduced by patriarchy to divorce women from their bodies and their appetites. Others, such as Gagliardi (2018), briefly reference the term ‘diet culture’ in relation to the marketing of weight-loss dieting products using the language of the Women's Liberation Movement and, specifically, the notion of female solidarity. Merson's (2021) paper also uses the term ‘diet culture’ to advance an intersectional perspective on weight and food restriction, citing the combined influences of patriarchy and anti-blackness in stigmatising larger-bodied women of colour. In these sources and others like them (e.g., O'Shea, 2020), diet culture is generally referenced to signify a harmful veneration for thin, or related, appearance ideals that results in women's subjugation.” (p. 2)

FortunateSons (talk) 00:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Copy of user talk page discussion

I'm going to make a brief, but detailed roadmap of how this DYK can pass. I will update it in an hour or so. I'm doing this because I think my last attempt was too ambiguous. Viriditas (talk) 18:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC) Thank you very much! I’ll try to fix grammar/style issues during, I hope you don’t mind? FortunateSons (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC) Please do so. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 18:57, 22 September 2024 (UTC) Hello, I would like to start moving things along and moving towards closure on this DYK. Some questions: Why does the first sentence in the lead need three sources? I pointed you to Harrison 2019, which is a single source that describes all of this (and I left you the full quote on the DYK review page). You don't have to use it, of course, but since we have good sources that summarize this info, it doesn't make sense to add three sources. Also, please get in the habit of formatting the sources (author, date, title, publication) so that editors can evaluate them. More in a bit. Viriditas (talk) 20:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I'm fixing the source issues now by adding the authors and publication names. Viriditas (talk) 20:25, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I just saw that, thank you. I’ll refrain from making any changes for now to avoid an edit conflict FortunateSons (talk) 20:53, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Too late! I'm done. Viriditas (talk) 21:01, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Sourcing is complete. Given how important intuitive eating is to this topic, you should make an effort to take it out of the see also and move it into the body. Not required for DYK of course, but it looks bad sitting by itself like that when it needs to be merged into the subject. Also, you're going to want to differentiate this subject from others like Health at Every Size. Viriditas (talk) 21:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I’ll find a spot for it, probably best placed in the history section, if I can find a source? FortunateSons (talk) 21:07, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Thank you very much! I like the Harrison quote as the citation (page 12 in my digital version), and would straightforwardly replace the sources currently used with it. I believe it covers all of the content, or do I need a second citation? (Such as Digital Mental Health Interventions: Differences in Diet Culture Intervention Framing. Von: Fitterman-Harris HF, Davis GG, Bedard SP, Cusack CE, Levinson CA, International journal of environmental research and public health, 1660-4601, 2023 Dec 23, Bd./Jhrg. 21 (on page 1))? FortunateSons (talk) 21:06, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Do it any way you prefer. One way I personally do this in articles is to bundle the citations using an asterisk or bullet. That way, the material is supported by a single citation with pointers to others if needed. To see an example of this style, see citation numbers 10 and 16 in the article Rooms by the Sea and look at the markup in edit mode. Viriditas (talk) 21:18, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Note, it might be instructive to lean heavily on a source like Jovanovski & Jaeger, as they are probably the most neutral and authoritative overview on the subject. From there, you can go on to cite the authorities they discuss in more detail if you like. My point is that if you use the Jovanovski & Jaeger framework as your starting point, you will encounter less problems when other editors review this article. Viriditas (talk) 21:23, 24 September 2024 (UTC) That’s a good idea. Is there a way to have the ref name created within such a footnote, or do I have to do it outside? FortunateSons (talk) 22:12, 24 September 2024 (UTC) There's a few different ways to do it, including ones that allow you to use anchors to cheat, but I would just do it on the outside for the moment. Viriditas (talk) 22:15, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Will do, thanks FortunateSons (talk) 22:16, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Regarding hooks: I like the more nuanced Harrison citation, but I’m not sure how to best hook it, perhaps: “that the 19th-century belief linking fatness to blackness is now considered part of diet culture?” or “that the 19th-century belief that fatness is an indication of savagery is now considered part of diet culture?” I would cite it to Harrison (p. 22), and avoid the citation to Strings. If this hook is acceptable, I would obviously include that content into the relevant section of the article body as well. Thank you ;) FortunateSons (talk) 22:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I'm currently thinking about this problem. Before we resolve it, can you take a look at this recent source? Thank you.. Viriditas (talk) 22:12, 24 September 2024 (UTC) It looks quite interesting, particularly for a citation in the reception, particularly the benefits of the different framings/names. Is there a particular use that you would suggest? Unfortunately, I don’t have the right scientific background for any in-depth understanding beyond that of a layman FortunateSons (talk) 22:20, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Understood, but that's not what I meant. I meant, look at how they are defining diet culture. They are paraphrasing Jovanovski & Jaeger as I recommended. Viriditas (talk) 22:23, 24 September 2024 (UTC) FortunateSons, I would encourage you to play around with it, but try to focus on the subject of diet culture. Some people might look at this and think it is coatrack-y. We know the racial component is tied into the social stigma of obesity and diet culture discusses this stigma. But as Zaragoza 2024 points out, this isn't limited to black women, or even black men, but all men and women, with Zaragoza discussing the men and women of the Latino community in particular and focusing more on the problem of homogenization of diets. Jovanovski & Jaeger frame this overarching problem as as a "moral hierarchy of bodies fuelled by health myths" based on "systemic and structural inequalities". I wonder if your hook would benefit from widening its perspective, to include all men and women, or rather, to focus more on diet culture as a general topic. I just made my way through Strings book and she doesn't discuss diet culture anywhere, so I see this as slightly problematic. This leads me to thinking we should discard the focus on String for the moment and find a hook that zeroes in on the subject at hand. I realize this might not be what you want to hear, and you shouldn't take it as gospel, but just consider what I'm saying for a moment and sleep on it. Viriditas (talk) 22:22, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I think that’s definitely a valid view, and I would be very open to it. I would sleep on it (as it’s quite late where I am) and get back to you? FortunateSons (talk) 22:28, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Sounds good. Viriditas (talk) 22:28, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Quick question: the article is accessible through the wiki library for me, isn’t it for you? FortunateSons (talk) 22:33, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I needed a hard copy to reference. I don't have access to TWL because I got into an argument with an admin on Wikinews who banned me, thereby invalidating my subsription to TWL. I have a copy of the article now. Viriditas (talk) 23:22, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I’m sorry to hear, that really sucks. It’s good that you have a copy now! FortunateSons (talk) 23:25, 24 September 2024 (UTC) Thanks. I see that a potential hook is partially supported on p. 7: For women of colour, diet culture was said to be reinforced through intersecting systems of patriarchy and racism, and further fuelled by capitalist systems that marketed the thin, white female body as a universal ideal. As long as a proposed hook sticks closely to a paraphrased version of this, and it appears in the body, I would support it, as it is tied directly into diet culture by the authors. Viriditas (talk) 23:28, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I appreciate the suggestion, and will write it once I’m awake. Thank you! FortunateSons (talk) 23:30, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I do wonder if it is problematic, however, since it is based on the results of a survey of anti-diet participants. I wonder how that could be worded accurately. Let's talk later. Viriditas (talk) 23:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC) I understand this concern, but considering the authors are discussing it in their own voice (as well as below: „A focus on patriarchy, racism, and capitalism is often prevalent in the work of feminist and fat activists“ and „We found that diet culture is characterised by a conflation of weight and health including myths about food and eating, and a moral hierarchy of bodies derived from patriarchal, racist, and capitalist forms of domination.”), I would probably characterize it as derived from the survey participants, but as the authors own evaluation. FortunateSons (talk) 10:57, 25 September 2024 (UTC) Make it so! Viriditas (talk) 23:12, 25 September 2024 (UTC) Perhaps something along the lines of that both scholars and activists believe that diet culture is often intertwined with racism and other forms of prejudice?” as a ‘safe’ hook, as that one can almost indisputably be cited to Harrison and J&J? It’s a bit less flashy compared to the original, but it avoids the coatrack concerns IMO. Or perhaps something along those lines making an argument regarding a “intersectional” approach to diet culture, as the term is used by J&J? What do you think? FortunateSons (talk) 11:04, 25 September 2024 (UTC) I think you are on top of this, and I'm impressed! Viriditas (talk) 20:18, 25 September 2024 (UTC) Hey, I'm going offline for a while, so ping me when you have added new hooks to the DYK page. I think we are very close to finishing this up and moving on to the next step. Great job! Viriditas (talk) 23:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC) Will do that tomorrow, thank you! FortunateSons (talk) 21:54, 26 September 2024 (UTC) @Viriditas, I have added two hooks (personally preferring the first) and added the two discussed academic sources to the relevant part of the lead. Are those acceptable? Thank you for your time and patience! FortunateSons (talk) 00:44, 27 September 2024 (UTC) Thank you! I am finishing up another DYK right now, and will get to yours in about an hour from now. Viriditas (talk) 22:24, 27 September 2024 (UTC) Don’t worry, it’s past midnight for me anyway, so no need to hurry! :) FortunateSons (talk) 22:25, 27 September 2024 (UTC) Thanks. I took you up on your offer to slack. I will return to it later tonight. Viriditas (talk) 01:30, 28 September 2024 (UTC) Thank you! FortunateSons (talk) 07:16, 28 September 2024 (UTC) Starting to finish review now. Viriditas (talk) 22:50, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Preliminary review comments

Current hook and source are not explicitly about "diet culture". There are, however, related aspects about diet culture and racism in other sources that may be used instead. Additional problems discussed above. Jovanovski & Jaeger 2022 discuss the complexity of the topic and the interweaving narratives in their paper, a perspective that isn't reflected in the article (for example, neither the lead nor the body make it clear that this topic is part of the anti-diet movement composed of a coalition of feminists, fat activists and health professionals, etc.) Additional work is needed to frame this subject accurately within the strict narrative of sources about "diet culture". Another issue is the current controversy around the subject. As you may know, The Washington Post attacked many of the people associated with the movement as a front for "Big Food", although there are questions as to whether this criticism is legitimate.[2][3][4] NPR covered this in April.[5] One of the takeaways here is that the term "diet culture" is part of the anti-diet movement and this isn't clear in the article. There is also a strong relationship with fatphobia, and it may be instructive to review the article on the social stigma of obesity. Given that race and fat acceptance is already covered in that article, I'm wondering if we really need two articles on this subject. I think we could conceivably keep this treatment separate using several different approaches. For example, registered dietitian and nutritionist Christy Harrison (who studied public-health nutrition at NYU) gives the subject an extensive treatment in her book Anti-Diet (2019). There, she defines the subject as "a system of beliefs that equates thinness, muscularity, and particular body shapes with health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss and body reshaping as a means of attaining higher status; demonizes certain foods and food groups while elevating others; and oppresses people who don't match its supposed picture of 'health.'" I think if we stick closely to the sources about diet culture we should be able to salvage this article. Note: Current version is greatly improved and I'm looking forward to signing off on new hooks.

Final review

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Support ALT1 and ALT2. Struck ALT0 for reasons discussed above in collapsed discussion and on user talk page in further discussion. I also copyedited the article and deleted the last paragraph because it was not ready for prime time. Feel free to rewrite it and add it back in without the weasel words by adding attribution. Personally, I think it's fine without it right now, but there is much more to say, of course. You might want to look again at the NPR and WaPo sources that explore this specific subtopic. Viriditas (talk) 00:29, 29 September 2024 (UTC)