This week, I’m sharing a conversation from the archives — one that feels even more urgent today than when we first recorded it.
Dietitian Shana Minei Spence joined me over a year ago to bust myths about processed foods and talk about the deeper forces that shape our relationship with eating — from family and culture to privilege and the social determinants of health.
Since then, the fear-mongering around food has only intensified.
The list of “bad” ingredients gets longer by the day. “Clean” eating has been rebranded into “non-toxic” lifestyles and “wellness” labels. Even as millions of families face growing food insecurity and reductions in food assistance programs, the pressure to eat perfectly (and to judge others for not doing so) keeps rising.
When food becomes a marker of morality—when it becomes something to perform or prove—we lose sight of what eating is actually for: nourishment, connection, survival, pleasure.
Shana and I talk about this tension—about how diet culture and healthism feed off the idea that our individual choices define our worth, while ignoring the systems that limit those choices in the first place.
She shares how her own disordered eating shaped her path to becoming a dietitian, and how she’s unlearned so much of what her formal education taught her—the obsession with BMI, the stereotypes about “healthy” eaters, the false promise that if we just tried harder, we could “fix” ourselves.
If you’ve ever felt pressure to earn your food choices, or guilt for eating something “processed,” this episode is for you.
Because when we moralize food, we erase the realities of access, affordability, and culture. We erase the truth that privilege often determines what’s on our plates.
And we forget that the healthiest relationship to food is one built on flexibility, not fear.
So this week, I hope you’ll listen (or re-listen) to this conversation — and maybe, let yourself off the hook a little.
What questions do you have about processed foods? It’s high on my list of topics to tackle more specifically over the next few months, and I’d love to hear from you.
