Course Spotlight – Debating Diet
“Those in closest proximity to structural ‘power’ shape our food, body, and health beliefs.” – Patrilie Hernandez, Founder of Embody Lib.
Fat studies meets food studies in a recently revised course. MET ML613 – Debating Diet, will be taught online in Spring 2025 by Catie Duckworth.
Course Description: “Diet” hails from the Greek word “diaita” meaning “way of life.” The English word, originally used to describe the food and beverages people regularly consumed, eventually came to be used to categorize a restrictive way of eating, specifically with the goal of weight loss. Evidence of diet culture can be found in nearly every aspect of Western society, from media to nutrition advice. This course will bring together the fields of fat studies and food studies by exploring different meanings of the word diet and in the process dissecting the socio-political influence of diet culture on our food systems, eating habits, and moral associations with food. The course materials will trace the history of anti-fatness from its root in anti-blackness to infiltrating the modern Western healthcare system. Students will have the opportunity to expand their understanding of nourishment through additional functions of food (joy, pleasure, comfort, community, etc.).
My (Catie’s) research focus sits at the intersection of food studies and fat liberation. I am a trained culinarian, a graduate of the Gastronomy program, and a fat liberationist. My most recent energies have been devoted to developing this course and my volunteer work with Bigger Bodies Boston, a fat liberation collective. It is not only my work but my lived experience as a fat woman that have shaped my understanding of this subject. And I admit with still more to learn, as my positions as a white, educated, cis-gendered person allow me certain privileges denied to more marginalized identities within the fat community.
It is with acknowledgement of my relative privilege that I aim to bring an inclusive fat studies lens into the food studies discipline, inviting guest speakers to expand beyond my own expertise. Readings will include foundational texts like Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Julie Guthman’s Weighing In. Some weeks will include more hands-on activities, such as reviewing cookbooks in search of morally coded messages.
Through the texts, class activities, and guest lectures, this course will address the following questions:
- Who benefits from diet culture? Who is harmed?
- Why do we label foods as “good” or “bad”?
- What does “good food” and “bad food” even mean?
- What are the goals of fat liberation/body liberation?
- In what ways do these goals conflict with the dominant narratives on food justice?
- What if optimal individual health is not everyone’s goal?
- How can we decolonize “nutrition” and “wellness”?
- What different moral values can we decode in language around food/eating?
- And many more that we will discover along the way!