Quitting I Quit Sugar

Nothing winds up my anti-diet nutritionist guest Tara Leong more than the influencer-led anti-sugar movement. She is in FITS of rage - to the point of goosebumps - about the mountains of misinformation being spread as liberally as nut butter. She’s LIVID about harm being done to innocent people who are being told that they’ll risk giving their kids cancer if they eat bananas. She is OUTRAGED by the misleading tactics being used by these for-profit companies who aren’t able to print the truth on their nutrition labels. She is f***ed off about fructose. And don’t even get her STARTED on the fruit pyramid! Join us for a much needed discussion about the anti-sugar movement, Tara’s attempts to reach out to Australia’s anti-sugar guru Sarah Wilson, and Sarah’s foray into mental health advice. This is one hell of a conversation!

ShowNotes My guest is Tara Leong from The Nutritionist & The Chef, and she is fired up to the point of GOOSEBUMPS about the influencer-lead I Quit Sugar (IQS) trend! Sugar is definitely public enemy #1 right now, and this global sense of fear is impacting everyone, from all ages and all walks of life. We’ve seen various foods demonised over the years, from fats, to carbs, and now sugars. And leaders of these food fad movements have historically been weight loss gurus or medical professionals. But the anti-sugar trend seems to be dominated by “influencers” spruiking their lifestyle brands. There have been some medical professionals - like Dr Lustig who loves to crow about sugar. But in Australia, the shiny beautiful people, like Sarah Wilson, are really heading up the anti sugar movement. Tara commends Sarah for raising awareness about how we can take care of our bodies, but the messages put out via her “I Quit Sugar” social media channels and in the book “I Quit Sugar” are not based on science and are destructive, especially with regards to the impact these messages have on people’s relationship with food. The whole Sarah Wilson/“I Quit Sugar” phenomenon traces back to 2011. Sarah is a journalist and was the ex editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, back then she was a judge on the first season of Masterchef. After that she moved to Byron Bay and began to freelance, writing articles for newspapers. She literally didn’t have a topic for an article one week, and had read David Gillespie’s “Sweet Poison” book (Gillespie is a lawyer). So she did an experiment quitting sugar, wrote about it, and the “I Quit Sugar” machine was born. She started to sell e-books and from there it became a massive empire. She caught the Zeitgeist - just at the start of the anti-sugar climate. Plus, she’s pretty and can write well, and is well connected. This also came at the tail end of the low-fat movement, when research began to recognise that fat wasn’t actually a villain - so we needed a new villain. Enter sugar! Wellness industry 101: 1. Find the villain, 2. Find very vague modern health symptoms like ‘brain fog’ or ‘bloating’, and blame this on the villain, 3. Use your own vague health symptoms to glowing health story as ‘proof’, 4. Sell people a rule-based program to rid themselves of aforementioned villain. I Quit Sugar (IQS) requires people to stop eating any added sugars for 8 weeks. This was beautifully skewered on “The Katering Show”, 2 comedians with a parody cooking show who did a great job of showing, through comedy, just how awful it is to quit sugar. Modern influencers are using this tactic of telling their own stories, of sharing their own tales of ‘recovery’ from vague health symptoms, to sell their ideas. Influencers use their humanity, their accessibility, they are friendly and you feel like you know them. Whereas health professionals are discouraged from sharing their own stories with clients as it is not seens as ‘professional’, especially in psychology where the space is created for the client, not the psychologist. Influencers use their stories as aspirations, as hope - and of course, thinness! “If y