Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Are You an ALMOND MOM? Talking EXTREME Generational Diet & Wellness Culture with Rina Raphael

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

In this discussion about children and diet culture, we cover a lot of fascinating findings:00:00 - Introduction01:49 - Mom Shaming 10109:10 - Almond Moms & Kids Fit Bits14:54 - Kids $150 Peloton17:50 - Wellness Barbie19:21 - Diet Culture in School21:49 - Tween Wellness Influencers25:00 - Adult Agendas for Kids Lives28:45 - Goop is Dead32:00 - Best Practices for Raising Healthy KidsReferences:https://portal.nifa.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1020701-how-mothers-evaluate-and-spread-information-related-to-child-nutrition-on-social-mediahttps://hbr.org/2019/08/research-on-many-issues-americans-biases-are-decreasinghttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562308/https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/141/4/e20172955/37784/Intergenerational-Transmission-of-Parent?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30847737/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31500945/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10357749/Check in with today’s amazing guest: Rina RaphaelSubstack: welltodo.substack.comInstagram: @rrrinsWebsite: rinaraphael.comBook: The Gospel of Wellness by Rina RaphaelDisclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider.If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com.  🥤 Check out my 2-in-1 Plant Based Probiotic Protein Powder, neue theory at www.neuetheory.com or @neuetheory and use my promo code BITEBACK20 to get 20% off your order! Don’t forget to Please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review! It really helps us out. ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTERS ⤵️Neue Theory newsletterAbbey's Kitchen newsletter 🥞 FREE HUNGER CRUSHING COMBO™ E-BOOK! 💪🏼 FREE PROTEIN 101 E-BOOK! 📱 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchen My blog, Abbey’s Kitchen www.abbeyskitchen.comMy book, The Mindful Glow Cookbook affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3NoHtvf If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review with your thoughts and let me know who you want me to discuss next!

Moms today are supposed to be self-sacrificing, perfect, but with little structural support. And when it's just on the individual, the stakes are much higher. It forces you to become more judgmental of others, but also of yourself. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today's episode topic is one that I really do feel passionate about as an anti-diet culture dietitian and mom of two. So we're going to be talking about raising healthy kids in an age of

internet nutrition misinformation, fear-mongering, shame, and pressure. Joining and mom of two. So we're going to be talking about raising healthy kids in an age of internet nutrition misinformation, fear-mongering, shame and pressure. Joining me today is the author of the gospel of wellness, Jim's gurus, Goop and the false promise of self-care, Rina Raphael. Rina is an acclaimed journalist who's been published with the New York Times, the LA Times and so much more, specializing in a critical analysis of health, wellness, and consumer trends. So today we're going to be talking about diet culture mom shaming, almond moms, kids fit bits, and so much more.

A quick note that the information in this episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only, and is never a replacement for one-on-one health advice. Also, I would love if you would give Bite Back a follow wherever you listen to your podcasts. And also, if you would leave me a review and a little comment, it really does make my day and help me out. All right, let's get into it. All right, Rina, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to talk about this.

I'm glad to be here. So obviously there's just this enormous amount of pressure on parents to make sure, you know, that our kids are quote unquote healthy. And most of this falls on moms who are often seen as like the nutritional gatekeepers. From your research in this area, what is it about food specifically that makes it such a magnet for social judgment and mom shaming? Yeah, I actually wrote a piece for the LA Times on how judging other parents' food choices has become, quote, a blood sport. And I live in LA, so that's, it definitely feels like

that here. Just, I'm going to give one stat, but I think there was a Pew Research Center survey of more than 4,000 US parents, and it found that nearly 40% of parents feel judged, and the majority of that judgment centers around food. There was another poll by the University of Michigan that said that six out of 10 mothers of young kids say that they've been criticized about parenting, and half of those complaints were just about what they feed their kids. So it has increased. And I mean, I found some really incredible stories, like parents who were getting notes

from teachers saying, stop poisoning your kids with donuts if they dare gave them a treat. Oh my God. Or kids now needing permission slips to drink soda at a birthday party. It's funny, I have a friend here in Los Angeles who once told me that it was a Sunday, she packed her two kids into the car with her husband,

they went to a birthday party, they get to the birthday party. They saw balloons outside a house. They went inside the house. They're sitting there and they're realizing they don't recognize anyone at all. They don't notice any of their friends or their neighbors. They're like, huh. And then suddenly she spots something, someone pouring soda into a glass. And she turns to her husband and goes, Oh my God, we're at the wrong party. No one we know would serve soda. And it really does kind of feel that way, especially here in Los Angeles, where this idea of how you feed your children and what is children's nutrition has really taken on this sort of heightened alarm. And

one of the most simplest reasons is simply for the fact that there's just so much more talk about childhood obesity. And well, it is definitely an issue that it is sort of in some situations become a sort of moral panic. And so all this sort of attention around childhood obesity makes people far more, I would say, alarmist about what they feed their kids, or more than

that, how others will perceive them if they feed their kids an Oreo. That's part of it. So this heated discourse has really put extra pressure on parents. And the second thing is that parents these days hold really, really fierce opinions about diet and nutrition, right? I like to give the example of, and this is kind of a little side segue, but a couple of years ago, NPR did a piece on organic food and they basically asked the question, is it healthier than non-organic food? And based on the research that they were basically giving out, they said, it's not necessarily healthier than non-organic food. And they were flooded with phone calls where people were so angry with them where they

had to do a follow-up segment. And why is that? Because it's not just organic food. It's come to symbolize a different type of values, come to symbolize an appreciation of nature, healthy eating, better parenting. It's instilled with all these values that people then internalize. So that when you are potentially criticizing organic food, you are criticizing the person and their value system. And the same thing goes to parenting, the way I feed my child, the preciousness, that all the sort of values I put into that, when someone necessarily

looks at it, it might feel like they're not just attacking your motive feeding, it's attacking your parenting. Definitely. But parents are also concerned about how their children will be perceived if they are larger sized, right? So they don't want to be judged by other parents. But more than that, they're also worried about how it will set them up for life. I think we're seeing a lot of sort of middle, upper middle class anxiety about children's futures, where they're so concerned about them getting into the right schools,

getting into the right colleges. All those things they believe start at a younger age. This idea of why would I hold my child back from maybe being as athletic as he can be and then he's not going to get on the right teams and he's not going to get the right scholarship. It's like a really almost snowball effect that goes into people's minds. The other thing I'll say is that good parenting, and I'm using air quotes here, good parenting, however you want to define that, it's become really idealized. And there's so much pressure these days on people being sort of perfect parents and having sort of these like perfectly situated acai bowls for their kids when

they come home. Like everything's kind of become a lot harder for parents in terms of how they actually parent their children. So moms today are supposed to be self-sacrificing, perfect, you know, but with little structural support, you know? And without that institutional support, it's on the individual. And when it's just on the individual, the stakes are much higher. And when the stakes are much higher, it forces you to become more judgmental of others, but also of yourself.

So when we talk about people judging other parents, they're just as hard on themselves. Oh yeah, no. It is such a hard time to be a parent,, you know, like it's so hard to feel confident in your choices when there are so many conflicting messages online for parents to try to absorb. And like you said, I think that unfortunately we live in diet culture, we live and breathe in this world where at the end of the day, larger body folks are in a lot of ways disadvantaged, right? So it's not just about their child being able to like be the star athlete. This is, you

know, about are they going to be able to get the job that they want? Because we know that, unfortunately, folks in larger bodies are often overlooked for positions that they should have. And are they going to get the health care that they provide that they want? Are they going to find the life partner that they should have? Like all of these things, it feels like such a daunting, daunting thing for parents to have to grapple with. And they're doing it alone. Yeah, and they're doing it alone. And it's so funny, because you're really at the Venn diagram and the people who are most scrutinized, because in my piece, I interviewed a lot of nutritionists and dietitians who say they're really under

a magnifying glass, where anytime they know they give their kid a Gatorade, someone's like, I can't believe you of all people. But it's also being a mom and how they're treated different than dads. There's one anecdote that someone told me was that they had a group of friends who would meet once a week for a picnic in the park. It was usually moms. And if one mom brought something like goldfish crackers or this and that, people behind her back would be like, I can't believe she brought that.

She should be feeding her kids something healthy. But then the dad shows up one day and he comes with an armada of Oreos and cookies. And the response was, what a good dad. He brought snacks. Remember to bring snacks. Fun dad, fun dad. I know. We are absolutely not held to the same standards. And so it is so interesting. I mean, we hear a lot about the kind of quote unquote, almond mom trope that goes around. We don't hear about an almond dad so much. You know, essentially what this

is are moms who feel obsessed or concerned over their children's diet and their children maintaining this kind of healthy, perfect, or socially desirable body shape and size. And there's like a lot of ways that this trope can kind of manifest within families that can be very dangerous. And I'm curious, because you've done some reporting on this in families with young kids getting given Fitbits to encourage them to exercise. And I'm sure this is done with the best intentions,

because again, we as mothers and as parents, no exercise is good for our kids. And we want our kids to move their bodies and get their steps in, all this. And this is really based on what we are reading and seeing online. But based on the interviews that you've done, what are some of the unintentional outcomes

of giving kids these kind of wearable devices to encourage them to do what diet culture has really taught us that we should be all doing, which is exercise and getting 10,000 steps a day? Yeah, so first and foremost, I think it's kind of backwards to think that we're going to get kids excited about movement with these sort of extrinsic rewards, you know, these games, these points, et cetera, versus intrinsically them being excited about play, which is very simple.

They just need opportunities to be with other children. Yeah. But, you know, what's funny is that it's worth asking whether these fitbits for children actually work. And let me explain why. The first is that some studies that are done on schools that have incorporated these have found that some kids don't react well to them. It makes them really competitive with their peers. There was one case of one kid who wanted to get, who got 25,000 steps in a day to sort of become the victor of his classroom. They found, much like adults, that sometimes these trackers can kind of suck out the fun out of an activity. It becomes about getting as much steps in versus sort of, again, just play, just enjoying it. And

you become so focused on sort of, again, this sort of just enjoying it. And you become so focused on sort of, again, this sort of extrinsic thing, you have to get these certain points or steps. And this idea that kids would care about how many steps they take, I mean, that's what armies do. It's like, it's just, it's a very silly thing for kids to want to care about. So that's the other thing.

The other problem is that much like adults, same thing, they lose interest after a couple of months. I mean, I think there was one study that found that half of consumers, adult consumers, throw their activity trackers in a drawer after a couple of months, because they just get bored of it, or because they don't enjoy it.

So the same thing happens to children. So I think even just from a functional point of view, it's not necessarily something that is worthwhile for a parent. But it really does get back to what we see as the fetishizing of health. That this concern about health, this concern about fitness, movement, and diet is seeping into younger and younger age groups. And parents are doing everything they can to get a leg up on that. And in some ways that I think are counterintuitive. So I think my one advice for that is it's worth asking your kid what they actually enjoy. Maybe it's skateboarding,

maybe it's free play with friends, whatever it is, and then going that route versus trying to dangle this shiny thing. Because what's actually funny is when I was reporting on this was it wasn't just children who become sometimes obsessed with getting in all their steps or doing all their... There were stories of kids who would be waving their arms for half an hour after dinner because they didn't get enough steps in and they're trying to sort of game their Fitbit. Which is funny only because Fitbits are also only, I think, something like 80% accurate. So sometimes they're not even, they're not even necessarily accurate. So you're just basically doing all this extra exercise. There were tales of parents who

said that their kids were running circles in the kitchen because they didn't feel like they made their points for the day. But also parents were becoming obsessed. Parents were checking their kids stats before they went to sleep. So it was kind of like a multi-generational fetishization of it. And that's terrifying to me. I mean, you know, that, if we do look at the research in kids specifically, like there was one study on kids that were like 14 years old, and they found that Fitbit use did promote these like negative feelings around their activity, made them, you know, equate exercise simply to just like not being fat, which is kind of the starting point for an eating disorder.

And even if it doesn't result in a full-blown ED, there's lots of research showing that tracking every single step, like you said, like makes us dislike movement and also dissuades us from engaging in well-rounded exercise that doesn't like rack up steps on the app, like strength training and biking and swimming and yoga and skateboarding and things like that. It's not running around in circles in your bedroom, which is really, it's borderline. It's a slippery slope. I personally hate them. Yeah, and they don't work.

I spoke to, I think it was the University of Washington Health Kids Fitness Clinic, and they said that what works the best is actually modeling that behavior. The family goes on walks. The family plays sports. The family, it's not just telling your kids, you should exercise. Here's a thing that's gonna force you to do it. 100%. And I also, okay, I need you to tell listeners about that little Tyke stationary bike thing.

Like the ad for this toy is wild. Can you just explain what this toy is and how it's marketed to parents? Because it's wild. Right, yeah. So they have something called the Pelican. And it's basically a Peloton. But it's for toddlers and little kids.

It costs $157. And the idea is to instill good habits at a younger age. But the funny thing is, is that the reason that the Peloton exists is because adults do not have time to go out and play and have fun and be outside. It's because they need, like they only have like a 30 minute break at home, you know, in between work where they're able to work out. That is not what we should be subscribing to children. It's kind of like this reverse hysterical thing. Now, people will also say, no, kids are interested in everything that their parents do. In the same way that we used to have baking sets or a whole bunch of stuff that kids just want to model their parents. Sure, but there is something

kind of dystopian about it because the idea of a kid sitting at home riding on their little pelican versus just going outside and being on their tricycle seems kind of backwards. So backwards. It really does overlook the movement benefit matrix that is so key to childhood, like physical and emotional development, like taking into consideration the community and the imagination and the teamwork and nature and creativity, the risk taking of just like going outside and get yourself dirty and climbing a tree. You can't get that.

Or asking a friend to play. Even the idea of asking a friend to play has its own set of risks. There's so much that's being learned when you go outside and play. 100%. This idea that we have to instill better health habits starting younger and younger, it's sort of, it's just really funny. I mean, even Cocoa Melon, which is a very famous children's song group, you know, they have like now, they have a song that's called like Stay Healthy and another one called like Working Out is Good for You.

I mean, it's just, and oh, there's also another. Peas, peas, you gotta eat your peas. Yes, it's just and oh, there's also another piece piece. You got to eat your piece. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, you know it. And but oh, I know. But there are even like toy barbell powerlifting sets to quote, train children slowly. And I think the Fisher Price one comes with like a fake protein shake. I mean, yeah. So that's just, you know, the kids market is really, really interesting because there is a market forward and especially for parents who love Juana's culture, it is very much part of their identity. They kind of want to give that to their kids, but I do think a lot of parents believe that it's going to

actually instill habits in their kids. When I think that at such a young impressionable age, they may not sort of get the message that you want. For example, Mattel has a wellness Barbie collection and wellness Barbie basically has, you know, her little smoothie stand and her spa accessories and you know, her athleisure wear. And basically the message you ultimately give to kids is that health or wellness is all about all these accessories

and looking nice. It's all about products. They start to conflate health with sort of the wellness industry and the wellness industry, which is very productivity pressured and very much focused around consumerism is very different than actual health habits, which are much simpler.

So that's sort of the problem, I think, with all this. And even Barbie, she has a YouTube page where she talks about self-care, and it's always about me, myself, and my gratitude journal. It's very much a lonesome endeavor of how Barbie gets well. Barbie never says I'm gonna get well by going out and hanging out with my friends. So it just instills this idea that it's a solo journey.

So funny, I always used to criticize the wellness industry that one of the biggest pillars of health is socialization, is being social. And they completely ignored it. Why? Because it's really hard to monetize. That's the number one reason. Now they're trying to monetize it in weird, kooky ways with all these sort of social groups. But in general, it just didn't make money, not the way that a product can.

Yeah, no, 100%. I also kind of want to talk about the influence of school because I just remember when my son was like maybe four years old, he was sent home with this assignment to sort foods into like healthy, quote unquote, healthy and quote unquote junk categories. And obviously as a dietitian, I was like freaked the fuck out. But anyways, my preschooler got the assignment wrong because he put tacos into the supposedly healthy category because he knows we have tacos every single week. But apparently the tacos were supposed to be categorized as junk. And I just want to make it like super duper clear that this is

not the teacher's fault. They're not nutrition professionals. They are being influenced by the same kind of problematic content that parents are and children are. But I'm kind of curious from your research, like what are some of the other most misguided initiatives taken by schools to, you know, with best intentions, of course, but to try to control children's meals or bodies? You kind of mentioned earlier about like the permission slips and stuff. What, can you talk more about that? Those are for birthday parties. Those are for birthday parties.

But yeah, no, I did a story that found that a lot more schools these days are introducing wellness courses or wellness curriculums, and they're not being taught by a dietician or nutritionist. It's basically like a homeroom or just a teacher who's not necessarily specialized in health or wellness. And for example, some of the assignments they give are food tracking diaries where they ask tweens, young girls and boys to sort of track what they eat

and then dictate whether it is either bad or good, healthy or unhealthy. And I spoke to one parent and one girl who she developed an eating disorder because of that. Now, I don't think that's the norm. I don't think most kids are, you know, developing eating disorders, but it does show sort of the risk of it.

But also, what do they actually get out of this? This idea of sort of moralizing foods as good as bad. It's especially problematic at this age because it's such a vulnerable age. And also, it sets the stage for a lot of health habits and eating habits for later in life. I read one study that I believe that orthorexia is very, a lot of time starts between ages 13 to 16. It's one of the biggest demographics.

Orthorexia is obviously an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy. So there is sort of a, maybe a more insidious harm that could show up later. Yeah. Okay. And it's obviously not just, you know, parents and educators who, you know, are being swayed by wellness culture and diet culture. Can you talk about this whole genre of like gen alpha influencers? Because again, it's like young people talking to young people. Yeah. But you're finding that, you know, it used to be you had an idea of who a wellness influencer was. She was gorgeous, thin, she had this perfect, you know, kitchen where she made all her smoothies, but was maybe sort of in her 20s or older. And now you're finding that a lot of teens are even attracted to

making content around wellness. And that is for the simple reason that they open up their Instagram or TikTok and that's what they're being served. They're no different than us. And again, it's just what's popular. I was just reporting on the fact that there's now kind of a lot of, I would say more maha specific teen influencers

and these are kids who are touting, drinking raw milk and mouth changing and sort of parrot all the same concerns about red dyes and organic food. And they're gaining a loyal following because there is a teen market that cares about that stuff. Now, I would say the girls' content is very different than boys' content. Girls care a lot about sort of clean eating, avoiding, I'm using air quotes here, chemicals. They might be into something faddish, like avoiding seed oils or whatnot. Boys care much more about fitness,

eating protein, gaining muscle, but they have their own sort of, I would say, concerns in the sense that they talk about only eating protein and taking all of these supplements, and they also wanna eat clean. It's kind of almost a mirror of what girls have, but it's a little bit different. And I spoke to several kids' health clinics and dieticians

who said that they're seeing many more boys have eating disorders because they're overindexing and only eating protein to the exclusion of other food groups. Oh, yikes. And the idea that something's coming from your peer is all the more powerful. Definitely.

But when I ask these teen influencers, because I've interviewed them, how did you get into this? They'll say, well, I opened up Instagram and it was like all health and wellness content. Or a lot of them also have the same origin stories as adult influencers that we all kind of got accustomed to. They had some gut issue or they had some health issue and then they tried some radical new diet and poof, they felt better. And then now they've been sort of christened a wellness influencer. they had some gut issue or they had some health issue, and then they tried some radical new diet, and poof, they felt better.

And then now they've been sort of christened a wellness influencer. We actually just had a similar discussion that was specific to young boys and men around the intersection between diet culture and the manosphere, and this kind of like pipeline that so easily young boys can fall into from this like looksxing kind of space

of how do I get my jaw to be defined, how do I get those muscles, and how like you very quickly can like fall into like the Andrew Tate's of the world. So yeah, boys, unfortunately, we've overlooked young boys and men when it comes to protecting them from diet culture and wellness culture and talking about it and body positivity and all that. But you're right, like boys are absolutely so susceptible to these messages as well. The other thing that I think is really interesting is that we're just sort of seeing, and discussing all of this, it's really sort of seeing this adult culture trickle down to teens in the sense and almost of a blurring of the barriers between kids and adults.

And I spoke to Nancy McDermott, who's the author of The Problem with Parenting, How Raising Children is Changing Across America. And she told me that more and more we're seeing adult agendas really dominate kids' lives. And I think that's really, really true, that this idea that there's just kids' culture just isn't really true anymore. They're really starting to mimicking what us adults care about.

And I think that, you know, in some ways that could be good, but in general, I think that could be really, really problematic. You know, this idea of even these teen influencers going online, and a lot of them are telling me they're spending between 30 to 50 hours a week working on content. And they'll tell me things like, we don't go eat out with our friends, we don't do sleepovers because I have to be asleep by 8.30. And I need to, I can't go out and eat because I don't trust that food. It kind of robs them of their youth when they're caring

so much about these adult agendas. And that's what I think the saddest thing is. That is the saddest thing. I mean, generational diet culture runs so deep. And I hear from so many of my followers who struggle with disordered eating patterns that they're so scared to pass these problematic behaviors or thought patterns onto these kids. But it's just so sad that now it's almost like the possibility is that this is flipped and that now it's young people who are being indoctrinated so early on into these wellness and diet culture messaging that they very easily could be passing that on to their own families, bringing this home, being like, mom, we can't have seed oils anymore. We can't eat any sugar in the house anymore.

We can't go out to eat as a family. I don't want a birthday cake. All of these things, it's not just from family, parents onto children, but actually it might be from children onto family. And that is so sad. I was speaking to the founder of Generation Skeptics, which develops curriculums for better critical thinking for kids in schools. And they were telling me that there's these battles being waged right now within schools where these kids are coming to school with all these sort of conspiracy theories about

dietitians and the health industry and the pharmaceutical industry, but also coming in with they are observing raw diets, they're drinking raw milk, they're really into something called pheromone maxing, which is, I believe, not showering for a few days because they're told online that it'll help attract the other sex. They're taking all of these supplements and doing all these crazy diets because supposedly it'll heal their acne. They're getting this stuff online, but also sometimes from their parents because their parents are also- Online.

Online and just sort of in taking all of these sort of wellness ideas that aren't necessarily evidence-based. And basically these teachers are put in these positions where, you know, they're kind of having to try to inform the kids, but sometimes are backed up by parents who believe these things themselves. So it's become very, very hard for them. The echo chamber is so loud once you're in it, that it's very hard to think critically and break outside.

Okay, so this is all quite depressing, obviously. You know, I've got young gen alphas who are not on social media yet, and I'm going to just do whatever I can to delay that as long as I can. But is there anything hopeful that parents can take away from this? Yeah, one thing is that sort of the goopification of wellness is sort of on its way out. I think you'll notice we don't see as many ridiculous items. If you go back several years ago, it used to be like every week there was a new item that seemed like it was literally stripped from as seen on TV. It'd be like adaptogen ice cream and CBD toilet paper and charcoal infused cheddar cheese. And that's kind of died down for a number of reasons.

And one is sort of Gen Z's influence. Gen Z is not as interested in this sort of productivity pressure, perfectionist, glossy wellness that was really sort of identified with the millennial age group. They're kind of rebelling against this sort of perfectionist mandate and they're much more able to talk about sort of their flaws and they don't want this pressure to be sort of perfectly happy, beautiful and healthy. They're a little bit more messy. And so they're kind of rejecting a lot of that.

They think it's absolutely silly. So there is ways that they're sort of fighting back against that industry. The other thing is just that there's two big things that I think really impacted the general consumer, but also Gen Z. One is COVID. During COVID, a lot of us were sort of barred from these very expensive classes or going to Sephora shopping sprees. And people sort of realized it could sort of get the same effects with just, I don't know,

a cup of tea or going on a walk with a friend. It really sort of made us reassess how we treat wellness and health in our lives. The second is that people are watching their wallets more. By now, every woman I know has a beauty cabinet filled to the brim with useless CBD creams. At a certain point, people become more skeptical because they bought too many useless products. Now they're looking for evidence, they're looking for scientific studies. The flip side of that is that the industry has sharpened to that and now they're doing a bunch of science washing where they pretend products have the actual scientific backing

that they do not have. But you're seeing Gen Z reject a lot of the things that I think made wellness a lot more toxic for the millennial class. They have their own issues within wellness and trust me, they love their gummy supplements. But I think they sort of watered it down a little bit and made it a little less potent. And I think that's also why companies like Goop are just completely irrelevant now. Yeah. Oh, well, thank God.

And also, Gen Z was raised by Gen X. And Gen X just happens to be a more skeptical cohort. They're just more skeptical of consumerism. Remember, they were always rallying against the man. So they've just been raised with a little bit of a more critical eye. And so I think they are having an impact. I mean, I know they're having an impact.

I speak to brand analysts. I speak to companies. They're already starting to pull back a little bit on the reins of sort of all of this ridiculous health marketing that's going to boost immunity and promise all these things. They're kind of bringing it in because it just doesn't appeal as much to Gen Z. So true. And also a bit of a hopeful message for folks who do have kids in that cohort. And hopefully those Gen Zs can influence our Gen Alphas.

And we can all just get over this, this neck, this phase of life. So thank you so much, Rina. This was incredibly insightful and scary to think about, but also just very, very important. So I'll be leaving links in the show notes below for where folks can find you and your book. So thank you again. Such a great conversation and one that I can fully relate to as a mom of two myself. You

know, as parents, we want nothing more than for our kids to live healthy, happy lives. And while we maybe can't prevent like a genetic predisposition to disease, or a spill on the soccer field, or a virus picked up at school, our kids' diet does feel at least somewhat within our control. But we can create structure and boundaries that can support our kids' healthy relationships with food and their body without the harm of rigid control. A few key strategies here are to model a balanced, pleasurable relationship with food and exercise, avoid dichotomous good versus bad language when it comes to our bodies and foods,

teach kids to critically evaluate what they're seeing online, and discuss the value of movement and nutritious foods beyond aesthetics and weight management. Raising healthy eaters is a long game, and we need to be thinking about the holistic well-being of our kids not just in childhood, but as they grow up later on in life. And I don't know about you guys, but I care a lot more that my kids dodge an Eam disorder or develop low self-esteem or food fears than I care about the amount of vitamin C in any given meal or how many steps they took that night.

But that's all we have for today folks. Thank you again to Rina Raphael for helping me to bite back against diet culture. Also again, I would love if you would give me a 5 star review and just like leave me a nice little comment because it really really does Help me out as a new podcast Signing off with science and sass. I'm Abby sharp. Thanks for listening