Episode 152 Transcript

Read the transcript alongside the audio.

Taurus in the Fierce Fatty Podcast episode 152 Diet Culture and Religion. I'm your host Vinny Welsby. Let's do it.

Unknown Speaker 0:23

Welcome to this episode and to 2023 Fatties. It's Vinny coming from Vancouver which is the stolen traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, Squamish, slaver tooth and Musqueam. Nation. So pleased that you're here with me today. I'm recording this on the first week back from our holidays once they are mine, I don't know maybe did you have a holiday? Hope you had a holiday? If you wanted a holiday? You don't have to have a holiday? You do? Do you? The holiday if you want to? Don't if you don't? Maybe you can't. I've got some of the January. Bill, I don't want to go back to reality, blues, sad brain stuff, as does probably millions, billions of people, or a billion people on the planet, let's say 7 billion billion people get that feeling? Yeah. And so I just saw, you know, hey, if you are feeling like that, I just want to say to you, and to me to try and give myself a pep talk that this is temporary, there will be happiness ahead. Things will change. Nothing's going to stay the same forever. And if I look back on all of the years before that I've had, it's January, all of the merriment of Christmas is over. And, and I'm sick of the sun going down at four o'clock and having like 12 seconds of daylight. And a daylight is is gray daylight, and there's only one month in it, depending where you live in the world that January, we just need to get through January, and then the sun is going to be out for longer. Before you know it. It's going to be the summer, you're going to have experiences and fun times and you're going to laugh and smile. And you'll even forget that January, you didn't feel good. That's my that's my hope and prediction. And yeah, I know, looking back on my times. I had it a lot worse previously, the worst one I think I remember is when I worked at a call center. Oh, it was horrible. This call center and I was terrified. I was so shy. And so it made it really difficult for me to do my job because every time the phone rang, I was like, Oh God, I have to talk to a human. I really didn't like doing it. And it was really strict. Like, you know, you had to you were monitored by the second of what you were doing. It was awful. So anyway, my life's not like that. Now I have more resources to hand I'm older, and wiser. And hopefully you're older and wiser and you have resources. Or you can I had no go and watch some nice happy videos on the internet, or take some drugs or whatever. So that's my, my New Year's wish for you. And I felt thought to do you know what? I don't do New Year's resolutions. But I thought you know what, this year, I am going to refuse to try and unconsciously not breathe hard. When someone's passing me when I'm climbing up a hill. You do that? I know people do this. When you're walking up a hill and someone's walking past you and then you're just like, hold your breath. Or just breathe gently. And then they pass and you're like thank God for that. Listen, every motherfucker is out of breath climbing up a hill. Okay, that's just human bodies for you. Unless you're like some sort of hardcore heel athlete. So I think it's pretty normal to be a human being and a bereave. And so I think about this and I think it's kind of funny, and also sad, but I think sometimes I recognize that I'm I'm doing it and like not realizing that I'm doing it so I'm gonna breathe and be a sweaty bitch and all of that stuff for 2020 to 2022 is for breathing and sweating. Okay, and I got a card in the post which arrived from Stay fat.co Stay fat design CO on the Instagram if you want to go to the website stay fat.co and the card says I hope I'm fat forever so I thought that was pretty cool so if you want to fat forever card go to stay fat.co on Instagram stay fat design co alright so let's get into today's show I've been thinking about this one for a while I found the website diet culture timeline.com And some anonymous person I messaged them on Instagram about a month ago maybe and they didn't message me back but I think maybe they're not as active on on the ground as much anyway, they I was like I want to know who this is so I can credit them and and tell them that I I'm really inspired by their work and and so it's an anonymous on an anonymous anonymous person that has created this diet culture timeline.com And I get it being anonymous. I mean shit if you're a fat person talking about fatness and how critiquing fatness on the internet, I mean, remaining anonymous is really a good thing for a lot of people's mental health. Anyway, and so I was I was you know, it's really detailed you can go through, it will take you hours to go through all of the content going through going back to let's see where they go back to like cavemen, joking? Like, do they isn't do these G's make my bum look big 300 Okay, 300 BCE, up to the 2000s. So there's a lot of a lot of stuff in there and it kind of intersects with you know, other things that are happening in the in in those time periods too. But there's a there's an infographic here which talks about the history of diet, culture and religion. And I've done an episode on the intersection of cults M L. FM's and did I was it was it religion I said, or religious cults or religious zealots or something anyway. But I wanted to do a kind of a deeper dive into that juicy history. And so with this infographic, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go read out little parts. And then I've I've, with the information I've got from diet culture timeline, I've then gone on and done extra research around specific things, as you'll see. So the history of diet, culture and religion, so we're going to start in 800 800 100 BCE, so 1200 ish years ago. So Catholicism in 800 became the reigning religion. And the diet culture impact of that was that fasting and avoiding certain foods were common on religious holidays, as a form of penance. So we see this a lot in different religions and fasting as a form of, of penance. And I mean, it's, it's theoretically a good form of penance because fasting still works, right? And so this is the beginning of that, that intersection of food and religion is starting with 800 to 1600, Catholicism, and fasting for pennants. In 1453, Western Rome fell to the Ottoman Empire, which practiced Islam. And the impact was that the Roman church educated its masses about Islam, stating Mohammed was indulgent of his senses, lustful and ultimately, the Antichrist. Of course I did. By the way, by the way, just to kind of like a pope personal biasing here. I am not religious, I am agnostic, atheist, agnostic, agnostic. I was brought up Catholic Irish Catholic and studied theology for a levels, always of my education. They're one of the one of the three subjects. It wasn't really actually because it led me to be becoming

Unknown Speaker 10:16

a non believer, which was very helpful for me because I internalized a shit ton of shame. And so that was the beginning of me beginning to let go of shame around religion. And that so there's my biases in regards to my experiences with Catholicism were shit. And I think a lot of people's experiences with Catholicism and various religions if they were brought up with them is shit. But I think that if someone does believe in God, or is religious, I don't personally understand it. Like, you know, I don't feel the same way as they do. But also I feel like you do you like if it's, if it's feels good to you, and it feels nice to think that there's God and there's Jesus or whatever, whatever religion someone practices, that's fine. I think when religion starts telling people, marginalizing people and telling people that they can't do this, and if they do, that they're a bad person. Unless it seems like unlike murder people, then that's when religion starts to become really problematic. And a lot of people use religion as a way to hide their bigotry. And sound moral about it, right? So if you're religious, and you're just a cool person, and God is feels good for you. Cool, do you know my cup of tea, but whatever. But it today we're talking about religion in the sense of religion that has caused harm, right? And it also it's not black and white, right? So Catholicism, bringing the idea of, you know, fasting doesn't mean that all of Catholicism is awful. I mean, but, you know, or, or we're gonna be talking about Protestantism, and doesn't mean that all Protestants or, you know, believe in diet, culture, or even believe that the history of Protestantism is good. Some Protestants can say this was fucked up, and we don't want to do this anymore. And that's all cool. Okay. All right. So, that disclaimer out the way that I should have said at the beginning. So Catholics said that Islam and Muhammad are bad because Muhammad is indulgent of his senses lustful and ultimately, the Antichrist 1500 Protestant Reformation so Protestant is an umbrella term for Baptists, Calvinists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and Adventists. And so the Protestant Reformation we're going to go into this deeper because this is where all the juicy shit is happening. But a quick overview is the impact here was that food became synonymous with morality. Finding pleasure in food corrupted the soul and dimmed intellectual intellect eating disorder behaviors were praised wealthy white men were developing and spreading these ideas because they could afford printing costs. Those who couldn't or wouldn't engage in these ideas, ideals were deemed in theory. So Protestants and the Protestant Reformation what is it? What the heck are we talking about? So, this is from national group geographic. The Protestant Reformation was a religious reform movement that swept through Europe in the 1500s. It resulted in the creation of a branch of Christianity, called Protestant, Protestant ism, a name used collectively to refer to the many religious groups that separated from the Roman Catholic Church due to differences in doctory. The Protestant Reformation began in Wittenberg, Germany on October the 31st. When Martin Luther no relation to Martin Luther King King, a teacher and a monk published a document he called disputation on the power of indulgences, or 95 thesis. The document was a series of 95 eight ideas about Christianity that he invited people to debate with him. These were controversial because they directly contradicted the Catholic Church's teachings. I tell you what, Martin Luther from 1517 Sounds like a fucking snooze fest. So basically A Catholicism was a thing and people could kind of make penance they could quote, sin, make penance and still get into heaven. Whereas Martin Luther was like berjon? I think so. You need to be living in a life away from indulgences. And indulgences. Didn't just mean food. It meant everything. Any type of fun to get into heaven and that you couldn't buy your way into heaven if you didn't behave in a pure way. Yeah, so he he wasn't fun at a party. Oh, Marty. Oh, Marty. He'd come in. He'd like look at you in a fucking canopy. Go into hell. Oh, have a sip of wine. Jesus, you are basically the devil. You know? So people would be like, Marty, can you fuck off? And so then he was like, Okay, right. Well, I'm gonna write this stuff down. And apparently he nailed it to the door of a church or cathedral or whatever. It was like, Hey, everyone, debate me about this stuff. And the church was pierced. The Catholic Church was like this this guy. This is this is not Catholicism, and we don't like you. You cannot come to our next canopy and wine party. Okay, Marty. So continuing Luthor statements challenged the Catholic Church's role as an as intermediary between people and God. Specifically, when it came to the indulgent system, which in part in our people to purchase a certificate or pardon for the punishment of their sins. Luther argued against the practice of buying or earning forgiveness, believing instead that salvation is a gift from God, to those who have faith. Protestant reform in England began with Henry the eighth in 1534. Because the Pope would not grant him a marriage annulment. So yeah, no good old Henry the Eighth piece of shit wants to get his dick wet with all the different wives. Hey, here's a little tip for you if you're ever in a pub quiz, and the the, the question comes up of who, who his wives were and what their fate was. Here's a little rhyme to get to remember so he had six wives. The rhyme is divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Okay. So you can you can remember that divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Unknown Speaker 17:51

So, because he couldn't get a divorce you want it to marry is his next wife after his first one. I think it was Amberlynn that you wanted to marry. He was like, Oh, I'm gonna just gonna make a whole new Church, the Church of England. So subsequently, King Henry rejected the Pope's authority, instead creating an assuming authority of the Church of England, a sort of hybrid church that combined some Catholic doctrine and some Protestant ideals. Over the next 20 years, there was a religious turbulence in England as Queen Mary reinstated Catholicism in England while persecuting an excellent exiling Protestants, only to have Queen Elizabeth the first and her Parliament attempt to lead the country back towards Protestantism during her reign. The monarchy now in the UK, I think it's Church of England. Yes, yes, it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because then when the Queen died, then Charles was then head of the Church of England. Oh, can you imagine? All of that is wrong? Fuck the rules. Some English businesses did not believe Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth efforts to restore England to Protestant Protestant ism went far enough those these citizens went fell into two groups both labeled Puritans. By their opponents. The first group known by separatists believed the Church of England was so corrupt that they their only choice was to leave England.

Unknown Speaker 19:27

Around 1607 some separatists tried to start a new life, they went to Holland, but their kids were assimilating to Dutch culture too much and they were like these fucking kids they're like going around with their Walkmans or I don't know what they had like tap tablets. You know, the old time tablets, not the iPad tablets. They were coming to Dutch they're walking around with clogs on and then like flowers and windmills and shit. We better get back to England because they're getting influenced too much. So they went back to England, and then they were like, oh, fuck this noise. Okay. He's here wearing clogs too. And so by 1620, the members of the English separatist church, where we're like, we got to get out of here we need to start a new life a new church, and they set sail aboard the Mayflower for New England and eventually landed near Plymouth, Massachusetts. And would be would be in time become known as the pilgrims. So Germany, UK, Henry the Eighth for Mike to get his deck wet. So I was like, Okay, let's make it make it a thing here. And then those Brits went over to Turtle Island, now known as the United States by many and took their beliefs and their beliefs became force known as the Protestant Ethic. So the Protestant Ethic in sociological theory is the value attached to hard work, Thrift, and efficiency in one's worldly calling, which especially in the Calvinists view, Calvinist is a branch off were deemed signs of an individual's election or eternal salvation and underneath all of that was you know, hard work Thrift, thrift and efficiency is also not indulging in things like food and sex, right. So this is an excellent piece by Leslie J. Owen, Dr. Lesley J. Owen, who wrote this before she was a doctor. But you can go read the whole thing it's really interesting consuming bodies, fatness sexuality and the Protestant Ethic. So I want to quote from here carnality and religion, fatness meats, sexuality and food. It may seem strange to combine sexuality, food and religion in this discussion of fatness. But it's important to remember that the mind slash body dichotomy characterized in western values as deep roots in Judeo Christianity among other philosophies. This has frequently manifested in separating the body into various components, spirituality, and men mentality which are connected with the Divine and the afterlife, and not incidentally with masculinity and rationality. And carnality and emotionality, which folks folk focus folks on this world, and are therefore corrupting and chaotic. As a result, anything connected to bodily or worldly pleasures, sex eating laziness, greed, becomes at the very least, and because of the lasting influences of Judeo Christianity in Western culture, popular popular, popularly suspect cording to Judeo Christian doctrines, including the infamous seven deadly sins. Gluttony is itself a sin against the body a blatant elevation of the body's appetites above spirituality and godliness. In fact, all this suggests that the ambivalence between the physical necessity and the carnal appetite for food manifests in stories of Eve and her Oh, so tempting fruit in the garden of Eden. Well, while as I mentioned, it is not historically or evangelically uncommon to connect eating and sexuality. The religious strictures against gluttony have connotations of immorality or their own. The religious connections between the excess of excess of hungers are apparent, but fatness is also reviled and its own merits by forms of Judaism and Christianity, for brilliant discussing discussion of how Jewish folks have been historically linked to fatness and diabetes, see Gillam 2004. So there's a there's a trope there and link with with Jewish folks and immoral fatness and diabetes. And you can learn more about that by going to Gilman 2004 Work concerning but perhaps most noticeably, POTUS. This word is always getting me Protestant ism, Protestant ism there seems to be too many T's even though we're removing sexuality from the equation in theory anyway, gluttony is also interwoven with several other deadly sins most and most noticed noticeably. sloth or excessive avoidance of work and physical effort and greed or unchecked desire for something or someone. Fat individuals are not only in parrot, when it comes to physical hungers, but are also constructed religiously and popularly popularly as lazy, indolent and idle in the face of industriousness. This is another one of those rather paradoxical discourses about fatness. Since it seems that people are unsure whether fat folks are driven to consume and assuage our ravenous hungers or to passion less to do much of anything. I really like that line. of paradoxical discourses about fatness seems people are unsure whether fat folks are driven to consume and assuage our ravenous angers, or to passion less to do much of anything. Yeah. Max Aviva. A key figure in classical sociological theory wrote a book in 1920 that touches on a number of these issues. his classic book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism traces one of the threads of the diligent work ethic characterizing high capitalism. Oddly enough, he notes that the emergence of Protestant Protestant protest and Protestantism, Protestant Protestantism coincided and coexisted quite snugly with early capitalism. I shall devote and unfortunately a brief discussion to his enormously influential theory paying special attention to how examining the Protestant Ethic illuminates some of the steep seated roots of fatphobia in Western culture, most specifically in the United States. So that bit there is we're talking about the work of what Max Weber Weber veba, who is linking Protestant, the Protestant Ethic with capitalism. And so we've got the the ethic, which includes around food and, you know, not being lazy and working hard. And then the roots of capitalism being if you want to be good or seen as good, you need to be a productive member of society. And to be productive. You need to do the things work hard, not eat, be thin, all that type of stuff.

Unknown Speaker 27:50

Okay, so Weber traces the Western reverence of independence back to Protestant Protestantism, paying special attention to Calvinism and its notion of predestination. According to Calvinists, and several other Protestant sects, God has chosen only a limited number of persons 144,000, to be just as precise as his total number of electoral heaven bound. The blasphemous idea that individuals had any control over the elect pneus challenge God's on omniscience, and as well as his fillings his filing system. Therefore, Calvinists accepted that accepted the rather grim notion that out of millions and now billions of people who have ever lived, only a tiny fraction will ever wander into paradise. The question then arises, why bother to exercise self control and live a moral life when one salvation is pre destined, in response, an ethic emerge in Protestantism, of proving one's a laxness by living a life dedicated not to worldly, read bodily pleasures, but to God alone. Unlike Catholicism, which allowed the purging of sin through confession, Calvinists sin accumulated throughout their lives, in order to prove one's elect status, Calvinists and other Protestant sects preached and living from one sin free moment to the next. As a result, one's level of asceticism in life also served as his or her or their test of righteousness. From this individualization of salvation, arose an emphasis on measuring personal behavior, read a shoe in worldly pleasures to determine one's degree of holiness, indulging in such worldly desires that delights as laziness, greed and gluttony represented the height of immorality leading to, quote, attitude toward the towards the sin of one's neighbor, not often sympathetic understanding but of hatred and contempt of her or him or them as enemy of God bearing the signs of eternal damnation. So I mean, shit. Clearly, if 144,000 People are the only ones that are going to get into heaven, then you go on to be really good, really good. Considering this now 8 billion people on the planet and you know how many billions people have already lived in the years that God has been around? Then? I'm just thinking like, when God, When did God begin to begin a big bit? When did God make the presence of God known? According to religious people? I'm like, is it? Did they say 2000 years ago? Is that what that? No whatever. So let's just say billions and billions of businesses, so it means that your chance of getting into heaven are very, very low. And so instead of just being like, Oh, I'm just gonna, not gonna I'm not gonna have dessert today. Theoretically, then it's kind of like No, every single thing has to be perfect, or I am not going to be one of the small percent that gets into heaven. And so, you can see how that righteousness that really clearly the Protestant Ethic did not confine itself to religious institutions, where it was Protestant Ethic is, and its teachings of moderation and hard work pervade us, in such forms as the late 19th century and early 20th century temperance movement, movement, the recent war on drugs and the cult of health ism that has emerged within the last 25 years. Fat persons are supposed representatives of quote overindulgent and lassitude, then violate many Americans 91 million of whom identify as Protestant, deeply rooted values of hard work and self sacrifice. Yeah, so it's interesting to see how, you know, we're talking about the history here, we're going back to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and it's kind of like, well, we don't believe that stuff. Now. I mean, we know we're not we don't think the same ways and we don't hold those beliefs. And there's, you know, not what did they not your 1 million Protestants in America? And how many of those Protestants are like, yeah, if I ever eat a cookie, I'm gonna go to hell. You know, it's probably a very, very small portion of those, many of those are probably a lot more liberal in their views compared to before, but that doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter even if you are not religious, because these beliefs and the ethics around production and who is a worthy person and morality, it's into woven into the fabric of our current society so much, so we don't know where it comes from. We're not aware of it, we just know it is. We know deep down that we are more worthy in quotation marks, if we work hard, if we have a thinner body, if we are not lazy, if we do not indulge if we're not having sex with lots of different people, right. And of course, do all those things sound amazing? All the sexy all the vote. But it's in this is something I think about a lot of me trying to me trying to unlearn. And we've not even mentioned me trying to unlearn all the stuff we've ever mentioned. The fact that this comes from white people, white people who stole land and murdered indigenous communities, and indigenous communities, we're living in ways that are totally different from what we're describing here. Right? And they didn't have the the same beliefs of you need to be productive and thin and make penance for being alive. Or and white folks try to wipe all of that out because we believe that the way that we thought and believed was the right way, and that without doing the things that We thought we're gonna save us we will go to hell. And so it's unlearning white supremacy is unlearning racist ideologies. And we're not even talking about in today's episode about the connection between religion and anti black attitudes, because they are totally woven together. They are hand in hand they are they go, one doesn't go anywhere without the other. Right. And a lot of this stuff was that white superiority, see in black bodies and thinking, well, they are bad. They're not good like us. They are lazy ingredient too big and, and unlike us, we're superior. Because we have decided that you know, we are not going to eat this and we're going to do that and let alone and if you want to learn more about that, Dr. Sabrina springs, strings sorry, has an amazing book that goes into as well as Protestantism. fairing the black body. On all of this stuff, right. Sabrina strings. Okay, the theories of American individuality the Protestant ethics, condemnation of hedonism and materialism, and the belief that fat persons are seeking gratification in ungodly places, and things combined together to form a coherent picture of scientism built on the foundations of us individualism and asceticism. This is why as le Beskow notes, Protestants are especially taught intolerant of fatness tied as it is in popular discourse to notions of laziness and overindulgence. However, this concept of fat folks as embarrassingly lazy and greedy is not confined to Christians, as Weber so brilliantly demonstrates the Protestant Ethic contributes to the work hard now delay gratification until later ethos still buttressing capitalism. While its roots lie mostly in Protestantism. I would argue that the notion of working hard to get ahead in this land of endless opportunities is quintessentially capitalistic, and American, it is no longer in other words, confined to teachings from the pulpit. This explains why studies rank American as highest among industrialized nation citizens in our negative views of fat persons, and why some authors link fat phobia as vehemence and persistence to Western notions of freedom and individuality. I do sincerely believe the Protestant Ethic is more than a quaint concept from a bygone era. I think it still thrives today in the thought form of sin taxes, laws against vagrancy 12 Step programs, and condemnation of people regarded as slackers and carnal. indulges, this revulsion can expand to include anyone, but it's consistently applied to fat folks, many people of color and perhaps most obviously, poor people.

Unknown Speaker 38:36

Yes. So that that piece is that's just like, one snippet from that piece. But you can go all of the links to what we're talking about today in the show notes, which is facebook.com forward slash 152. Just an FYI. 152 Okay. So that was just one section Protestantism merge. Now I can say partisan ism is a big culprit. And I'm not saying Protestants up Pat, and a Protestant ism is evil, and solely responsible. But I mean, it's got a big big part to play right and I mean, it's it's why people it's why isn't what is white people. It's white people. Just why hello? Hey, my ancestor. And yeah, yeah, okay, so 1650 French king, Louis XIV, which is 10 Five minus 414. French King Louie the 14th was in power and declared himself above God. XIV is at 14 Let's google it. Let's just make sure XIV See, look is a little here's a little tip for you for working out. Those Roman numerals x is 10. Ay is one, V is five, and some if you've got x phi v x is 10. But then the AI is before the V. And if the AI is before the V, it means you take one off five, if the AI is after the V, you take, you add one to the five. And so if you had x i v, you would take two from the five. And so it would make x 10 plus the I V, so I two minus five is three makes it 13. But say if it was x VI, it would mean x 10 V five plus one. The i 16. Don't ask me about any I don't know what 20 is. Tony's probably xx. Anyway, Roman numerals for babies. French King Louie the 14th was empowering declared himself above God, as you do. What is it with these monarchs who were just like, fuck it, I'm better than Jesus. And the impact was new ways of cooking were created. And what we think of as classic French cuisine was developed. classic French cuisine being lots of delicious you know, how they say like lots of butter and, and delicious bread and cheese and meat and all of that type of stuff. Which is huge. So food and drink were allowed to be pleasurable. In that'll 1650, so 1675 taverns, tea houses, and other food and drink establishments that became popular. I mentioned before that there was, you know, not that many taverns and tea houses where you're going to where you're going to be at the Starbucks, right? I mean, really. And so the impact here was, these are sabotage and their popularity contradicted the religious messages calling for austerity and abstinence from pleasure. And to, and the people were torn between the two. I mean, I would be imagine if you were in 1965, and you spend all of your life eating like, I don't know, crackers and shit. And then there's a tea house or like a place that serves fresh bread with some butter or whatever. Or Ale, you be like, Oh, give me some. Did you see the new tavern that's opened across the road, you'd be down there, you know, getting shit faced. And then the next morning, you're like, Oh, my God, I'm definitely going to hell. That would suck right now. You got your first hangover, but also you think you're going to hell, I mean, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, that you scratch in making a little hole for himself. That's gonna be guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. You know, think of all the people though, who were like, I don't believe in that stuff. I'm just gonna fuckin eat some food. I'm just gonna have some sacks behind the in behind the tavern, whatever, I'm going to eat some chicken or what you know, they're having a very hard time. They're probably like, this is a future. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the future. We've got our taverns. Okay, so 1985 King Louie, again, audited destruction of Protestant churches, schools and the expulsion of Protestant clergy from France bit mean, I mean, you know, burned down the schools, I mean, Jesus. And so Protestants fled from France to neighboring countries and to America taking with them their austere ideal surrounding food, drink and pleasure. So, King Louie was like, Get out of here we want to eat and we want to eat butter and we want to have sex and have fun. It was kind of mean about it. 1700s women were not permitted to participate more in church, meaning that they were held to the church's beliefs more orange ugly. Beauty became synonymous with morality. And morality meant abstinence from pleasure, aesthetics, aesthetic ideals included thinness people were body shamed for not adhering to these ideals. Uh huh. Uh huh. And the thing is The thing is, the thing is as well, this stuff, you know, 1700s and so, everything about the transatlantic slave trade 1600s and white people being more exposed to variations in bodies, and and then to be a good white woman. You have to be not like black women. I mean 1750s There was a growing sect of atheism. Can you imagine being an atheist in like, medieval times? Imagine if you were like, This is what you for medieval times, like except 1750s isn't really what is medieval times? It's probably like the zeros or something, right? Medieval medieval times an entertainment company dates. When do you think it is? You haven't guessed? I have a guess. See if you're right. Many medieval area also called the Middle Asia, the Dark Ages began around 476 ad and went from ending in 1400. Let me go 1450. There we go. See? Same, just out of the medieval medieval area. You might imagine going back to the 1750 and being like, I'm a fucking atheist. Like, I'm pretty scared. If I had like a time machine. I'd be going back. Yeah. Yeah, yep. Yep, definitely. Because what are they gonna do you know, that French king was like, went to bed and your judges lol How fun guys. Like, it'd be worse if you were like, not a white person. Didn't matter what you said you'd be you'd be fucked. So there's a growing sector of atheism and 1750s. While they shunned organized religion, their opinions and vernacular remained rooted in religious ideal ideas about food and body morality. Same story, new name. Yeah. So, you know, even though you're even though they're still, even though they're a, they are atheist doesn't mean that they're going to unlearn all that stuff. That's 100 years, hundreds of years in the making, right? It's just a part of what we quote No. And why would we be any better than those people who are who are atheist? You know, like, yeah, we have the internet and shear, and we can do do research. But I mean, it's, it just goes to show that if we don't examine these things, when they just sort of perpetuate and then you know, the roots are, the roots of it are unhelpful and harmful to a lot of people. But then it just becomes, as you know, we all know, we all know. And I wonder about, like, what else do we currently do? I currently believe that is rooted in oppressive ideologies. You know, pseudoscience, religious zealot type stuff, but I'm just like, well, you know, I'm wonder I just can't I can't wait to find out you know, and be like, Oh, shit. Oh, really? Have any you thought this? Yeah. So that's the end of the infographic on diet culture timeline, but

Unknown Speaker 48:29

this bullshit didn't has didn't stop in the 1750s. One guy that I particularly don't like, is Sylvester Graham, who was a Presbyterian minister. So in an 1830 Graham, Sylvester Graham, from graham cracker, or as North Americans like to say, graham cracker, forgetting there's an H in there you lot. Graham cracker, or graham cracker. Sylvester Graham, I guess he was North American himself. So we'll call him Graham. met William Metcalf. Reverend Metcalf was preaching on vegetarianism and promoting George Chait. George Cheney's dietary advice of portion control and water therapy in the pursuit of godliness. Graham was a believer. He took these messages and use them to reinvigorate the old Protestant food morality beliefs in America. He preached that certain foods weren't just gluttonous, but were also bad for your health. Well, he didn't invent the Good Food bad food dichotomy. He did proselytize it to Graham, sugar, caffeine, meat, spices, yeasted. Bread, condiments and alcohol would cause indigestion illness, civil unrest and lead to ungodly sexual appetites in men, including masturbation, whether married or not. Not masturbation. If you have some spices on your mood, his story sounds like the author dot Orthorexic diet culture of today sans the sex talk. He claims certain bad foods made himself poor as a child and once he cut them out of his diet, he felt better. What he didn't share was that his childhood was full of trauma. By the time he was an adult, he was reportedly an exhausted and bitter person. Yeah, no shit. He's another one you him and that other fella from from like seven when at whatever the reformer the Protestant reformer him them two together at a party. Oh my god. Imagine you were stuck there. You just walked out there to them to nattering away. You walked up with a glass of wine. What are you talking about? And they're like, oh, wow, I'm on this wall as I only drink water then I'm gonna go to lasers. He encouraged his followers to eat only bland unstimulating Food for health and morality, which he believed would make a person of robust, his followers feed becoming too thin. So he had several set he had several set about prove to prove the naysayers wrong. For the first time in recorded history, people weighed themselves to determine if their diet cause weight loss or not. Although the intention was to not lose weight, their experiences proved that we still see time and time again with any version of restricted eating they lost a little bit of weight initially, and then gained it back or maintained the same weight Yeah, so Sylvester gray and then also Kellogg's, John Harvey Kellogg Cohen, John Hart, John Harvey Kellogg was a P. S piece of shit 1905 the Kellogg company was selling about 150 cases of conflicts per day, not counting other products. And one of their popular snacks were graham crackers. Named after Sylvester Graham Kellogg was a fan and follower of Graham's diet recommendations. Let me go back to stuff about Kellogg. So Kellogg early 20th century advocates for sexual temperance both developed him and Graham both developed foods to keep sexual excesses included the dread dreaded masturbation and homosexuality in check. cornflakes, for example, were designed by Jay haitch Kellogg as a massive Anna aphrodisiac, aphrodisiac, so opposite of aphrodisiac to temper and eventually reduce sexual ardor in American men. More interesting than the introduction of these healthy foods was the public's unblinking reaction to the concept of controlling sexuality through foods. I argue this is because the links between the two runs deep in Western culture and as especially salient example of such linkings occur in overuse discussion of the perceived improprieties of the contemporary black bottom. In the quote in the mind of the black, upwardly mobile the but may connote a lack of self analysis, a loose, unrealistic restricted appetite for food sex dances like the atomic dog. It's like having a big mouth, or no table manners. That's interesting. Aubrey Aubrey from 2004. Let me tell you more about Kellogg. Just as a side note because Kellogg is not religious or it probably was religious. Probably.

Unknown Speaker 53:56

1906 John Harvey Kellogg provided capital to help found the race Betterment foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. What could this be about the race Betterment foundation? This was a eugenics institution that promoted the idea that quote inferior peoples should not be permitted to reproduce fun times. Kellogg warned that it warns that if white women had one child with a black man all hurt children afterwards would be part black and this would be bad blood. Yeah, so you Genesis racist. John Harvey Kellogg wonder when he died let's have a look. John.

Unknown Speaker 54:49

Oh yeah. Dr. 1943 wonder what side he was on in world One on mobile two. I'm gonna watch some videos about this guy this guy's getting on legit John Harvey Kellogg. I'm gonna go into a YouTube black hole now and be like, know everything about this one guy. Also it was either Graham or Kellogg or both of them who advocated and and successfully advocated for circumcision. And because they didn't want men to masturbate and a great way to get men to not be able to masturbate is to take away the beautiful foreskin and obviously, penis havers can masturbate without a foreskin but it their thinking was that it was not going to be as fun and so they they told people to chop off their children's part of their sex organ in order to stop masturbation. So that's fun. I mean, what is the point of being alive? It no masturbation no food, no drinking no anything like and even when I'm saying drinking not even at you know I'm not even thinking about alcohol like you know, orange juice you know? No having fun no dancing no just just die I mean really what is the point so moving into more recent times we've got an article here purity through food how religious ideas sell diets from the Atlantic trigger warning there is I mean these are the this is not written by pro fat people this is written by by people who are like diets a silly but move that people are obviously unhealthy lol So just a heads up on that. So quote from this, foods aren't either natural or unnatural. They are good or bad bad foods harm you and good foods cleanse you bad foods or sinfully delicious or guilty pleasures, good foods or whole real clean and natural bad foods are fake and natural unprocessed. The terms we use reflect idiosyncratic dietary faiths. The religion scholar and Alan Levin of its explains in his new book, that gluten lie. So this book, I guess, came out in 2015. This is when this article is wrong. And I presume reading this article that the book is about how we shouldn't be afraid of gluten unless you're celiac Gluten is a okay. So, the book gluten lie in which he examines why people tend to put moral and religious lenses on food terminology. Much of people's relationship to food can be explained by religious patterns of thought. Our words are often more philosophical than scientific and our words and form approaches to eating and overall well being in deeply consequential ways. So hence that you know that beginning bit foods are good or bad, you know, that type of thing. When Levin of it was studying in China during the area era, when everyone in the US was terrified of mono sodium, glutamate, MSG, he talked to local people who are wholly unconcerned. MSG was everywhere, and it was fine. It was simply living of its rights in the book, a sodium salt first extracted from seaweed by Japanese scientists in 1908, and a staple sneeze seasoning in the cuisine of long lived East Asian Asians. But health conscious Americans knew better, knew better as in they didn't know better. In the States, MSG was an interloper. By the way, MSG is great, it's fine. The fear around MSG is racism. Okay, MSG makes things taste great. And it's not going to kill you. Okay? So if you've been avoiding MSG, because you think that you know, you're going to spray it on your eyeball or something, then I encourage you to go and look into Google MSG. Racism. Because it's the word here interloper, MSG being an interloper. It's racism. Continuing, I was shocked to learn that people thought sugar was bad in the late 1700s. He said, still appearing genuinely shocked, as he told me when we met recently in DC by sickly as soon as it was introduced, people said it was bad. Yeah. So imagine if you had sugar for the first time in 1700s this new thing and tastes so good. You've never had sugar. You've never had sugar before. And then you taste sugar you and then you were religious. You brought it all down, go down. Okay, so yes, Sugar was bad even before diabetes and fatness they use your word existed in the average person's mind. The reasoning. Pleasure was sinful. People blamed hypersexuality and alcoholism on sugar. Sugar was foreign. It was associated with savages who eat it, it was bad. According to James Wright, James Redfield, 1852 Comparative fizzy you're not physio and not non non physio not non me. Okay, today there's been so many long words in this episode and I am feeling deeply unintelligent for not know how to pronounce all of them, but I'm gonna hope that you are giving me grace. And what's the word? laughing with me when I tell you this. This is a book from 1852 Okay, so who knows a word is no physio no with a why physio Nom nom nom physiognomy. Okay, physiognomy. Animals that eat honey are courageous and careful like the bee, the hummingbird and the bear, while those that prefer sugar are not virtuous, like their housefly or the ants that lives in the Sugar Bowl. Even though honey is higher in fructose, and then the high fructose corn syrup people now love to blame for all our health problems. Honey has long had enjoyed a halo of naturalness. So honey is higher in fructose than high fructose corn syrup. But there's a Haley's has enjoyed a halo of naturalness. And high fructose corn syrup, people love to blame on all of our health problems, which is to say that it is not the cause of all of our health problems. It's the same halo that protects juice, but demonizes soda, even though the differences at a macro nutrient level are negligible. Younger level of it's initially thought he'd become a bio ethicist, but took to religion because of an interest in the way narratives inform beliefs. Philosophy is all about evidence and logic. But then there's religion where people just tell stories, and that was a way of convincing someone of a worldview. He assumed for a long time, like most people who haven't studied the origins of religious food traditions that people were taught to avoid pork, for rational reasons, like the outbreak of chicken osis the shellfish because of food spoilage, but that biological theory was rejected by many anthropologists. Level of its explains in the 1960s, Mary Douglas wrote a book called purity and danger where she pointed out that most food taboos can't be accounted for by medical concerns. She makes the argument that foods were prohibited in Leviticus how to do with animals that cross boundaries. For instance, for instance, fish without scales, they were dirty, not because there was some plausible biological basis for ingesting shark and getting sick. They were dirty. None of its agrees, quote, because they didn't fit into a neat creation scheme. In other words, in other words, they weren't natural, natural. Pope Francis has embodied this position in his entreaties, to respect nature, at least implicitly, not to genetically modified foods. Genetically modified foods are fine. Everything. If you're eating an apple, it's been genetically modified. If you're eating a potato has been genetically modified. If someone is using

Unknown Speaker 1:04:45

genetically modified doing genetic modification in a lab, versus even in a field is genetic modification, right? It's like picking out the best potatoes that cropped and said these are the ones that we want to plant again, right. Okay, so This is one of the greatest challenges of our time he said last year to convert ourselves for a type of development that knows how to respect creation. Can the Pope did the pope just die

Unknown Speaker 1:05:14

from it then died because the Queen died. Just yeah, okay. incumbencies 2013 I didn't say how old he is. See, I'm like God so many titles. Yeah, how old is he

Unknown Speaker 1:05:34

nicknames His Holiness. Anyway, whatever. Go back to back to this the, by the way the pipe is not dead. Okay, that was something popped into my mind. Maybe I had a dream about the pipe died. And I'm like, that's the point. Did I see every news story about that? Alright, so wrapping science around beliefs creates arguments like and then I didn't century that interracial man marriage leads to repeat offsprings. Now the same logic is used against genetically modified plants, people use biological arguments to justify the same belief. There's been around since the beginning of time, new things are a natural and dangerous stuff was better before we're risk adverse and scared of new things. That makes sense from a survival perspective. But it makes for lousy science. I'm also in the web now modern days there are lots of places and religions that do talk about how being thin and not eating a lot of food and all of that type of stuff they stick there's a lot of religions that that teach you that I covered one. In episode 125 called Food faith, MLM, MLM, MLMs and cults. So it's faith, food five, M L MLMs. And cults from Episode 125. And we talked about GWEN SHAMBLIN And Gwen Shamblin have a diet called the way down and she had a colts religion but there's a hilarious hilarious, juicy, scandalous stuff that comes with Gwen Shamblin there's a documentary called the way down on HBO max or Craven if you're in Canada, talking about her life and the cult, it's really good but to watch it if you haven't already. It's called the way down. And anyway, so she's someone recently who is like you need to be thin to go to heaven to be godly you need to put down there she she's like put down between key and you'll go to heaven. She has really big hair lots of hairspray. Blonde, and she's a huge character. Yeah, and lots of lots of scandal I think was she may be like in an lmm or something. But anyway, there's a there's a piece called from Nexium to the way down cults really love a diet. I love a dangerous diet culture. So Nexium was another was another cult who rounded women and also made them starve themselves. Because the leader was had a preference for very, very thin and young looking women that he would then have sex with. So yeah, all of this stuff is still going on now. And even if people are agnostic or atheist or whatever, it's still a part of, of our, our DNA right? Of who makes a good person. And yeah, so Protestant ism was the kind of leading leading force however, many other religions have have have stories and rules and guidelines around fineness being close to godliness. Maybe not as much as those Protestants and maybe not as much as today. Have not researched modern day, Protestants. them. And I'm pretty sure that it's it's not like what it was. Maybe I'm wrong is Google it. God in faith alone rather than a combination of faith with good works, posits that the Bible is the sole authority, infallible authority reject, they reject papal supremacy, but they disagree among themselves regarding the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the matters of Ecclesia Ecclesia color, color Ecclesia capital policy and apostle iStick succession so he's probably he's probably not now. I mean, maybe maybe presidents and listen to this and being like, for folks like this is what we do. Now. We've got nothing to do with all of that, that wacky stuff we did in 500 years ago. But I'm sure something I'm sure you know, you know, as in within all people with faith and with not faith, there's going to be people who were spouting diet cultural bullshit, and people who are doing the opposite right so yeah, yeah, yeah. So there we have it the overview of the history of diet culture and religion and yeah, I wonder if we've you know, what we can do to question these beliefs of, of laziness and I'm good or bad if I eat this and realizing where they come from and and as well just a reminder as well this is all this stuff is deeply tied into anti black racism and white supremacy. And to learn more about that go check out Dr. Sabrina strings and her book fear in the black body for that religion and anti black racism piece, going even even more in depth on that stuff. So yeah, thanks for hanging out with me today. Links for everything that we talked about in the show notes which is facebook.com forward slash 152. Hope you're feeling now if you did have the winter blues. You're feeling a little bit better after hanging out with me today. Hopefully not worse. And I'll see you on the next episode. Okay, stay face funny.