Fat And Unhappy: How “Body Positivity” Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself), by Tristan Justice and Gina Bontempo, Bombardier Books
If you’re looking for a book that will make you want to wait outside of Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta with a few liters of soda to dump on an unexpecting executive’s head, go no further: Fat And Unhappy: How “Body Positivity” Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself) is that book.
Tristan Justice, a reporter for the Federalist, draws on his work writing about the intersection of health, politics, and pop culture, and Gina Bontempo, a writer and mother, draws on her experience as a health and wellness coach to explain why it is so difficult to maintain a healthy weight in America. Together, they share an eye-opening account of how our government, corporations, and scientists colluded to declare what is healthy, unhealthy, and vice versa. But rather than tell readers to just give up and join the so-called body positivity movement, the authors lay out a path to health and healing that can be followed by anyone.
“Our industrialized food supply is killing us,” they write, pointing out that more than 40 percent of the U.S. population is obese. Every person is responsible for his or her own choices, but in a system that sets individuals up for unhealthy lifestyles from childhood, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Self-proclaimed traditionalists catch a lot of flak for idealizing a return to the 1950s; Fat And Unhappy also throws cold water on the idea. The decade “saw the invention of high-fructose corn syrup, vitamin-deficient powdered orange juice known as ‘Tang,’ and the near-religious takeover of the low-fat diet craze backed by public health authorities based on discredited science,” Justice and Bontempo write. Our collective health has been on the decline ever since, not just because we’re undernourished and overfed, but because we’re a nation that moves, sleeps, and absorbs sunlight less than ever before.
In Justice and Bontempo’s view, this isn’t just a byproduct of industrialization. It’s the result of what might be called a corporate conspiracy. Procter & Gamble, the Sugar Association, the list goes on—these interests had products to push, and they used not only misleading advertisements but misleading science to push them. Some of the scientists most closely associated with this era of nutrition guidelines have mixed legacies today. Ancel Keys, who vilified fat but downplayed the negative effects of sugar, was one of the top nutrition experts as the U.S. moved toward industrialized food. (He even appeared on the cover of TIME in 1961.) “Researchers who crossed Keys had their reputations attacked and their funding stripped,” the authors write, comparing Keys to former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and the results of his research to the damaging coronavirus lockdowns.
Keys died in 2004, but the corporations that supported his research are still raking in cash and have “largely escaped accountability for their role in shaping misguided nutritional guidelines,” the authors write. Even today, prediabetics are told to cook with highly processed vegetable oil rather than with unrefined coconut oil, which naturally contains medium-chain triglycerides that can promote fat loss. Of course, losing weight is not just about looking better. Maintaining a healthy weight can save an individual from a lifetime of chronic illness and medical bills. Big Food and Big Pharma work together to create lifelong customers—and they take seriously any threat to their order, including the possibility of a rogue Health and Human Services secretary like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At his Senate confirmation hearing in late January, Kennedy uttered a line that sounded like it could have been pulled from this book: “A healthy person has 1,000 dreams. A sick person has only one.”
Justice and Bontempo discuss politics very little, but the unspoken context of their book is the growing politicization of fitness. “Getting fit is great—but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk,” read the title of a June piece published by a Guardian columnist. Kennedy’s endorsement of President Donald Trump brought an entire army of crunchy moms over to the Republican side—no small thing, if a recent report from the New York Times is to be believed. The health of future generations seems like something the left and the right can come together to support, but the food industry and pharmaceutical industry seem to find ways to coopt this vision nearly every time.
Justice and Bontempo are far from the first authors to point out what’s wrong with nutrition in America. They cite research from Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet; Robert H. Lustig, author of Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine; and Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. Where they start to tread new ground is their reporting on “toxic” body positivity, defining it as a movement that “seeks to eliminate the emotional toll of obesity by demanding the rest of the country normalize and even glorify excess weight.” Justice was even denied a press pass to attend Philly FatCon, a 2023 gathering of pro-fat activists including Joy Cox, author of Fat Girls in Black Bodies, and Sonalee Rashatwar, known online as “The Fat Sex Therapist.”
“The point of the conference was the promotion of far-left activism on social justice, and the organizers placed obesity at the center of it…. None of the conference speakers on the all-women lineup built their profiles by raising the red flag on obesity. They all made money on raising the white one,” Justice and Bontempo write.
So who’s funding the body positivity movement? All it takes is a little digging to realize that when skincare brand Dove launches a “Campaign for Size Freedom,” it’s actually acting in the interest of parent company Unilever, one of the top ice cream manufacturers in the United States. Companies like Dove act in tandem with fat-positive activists like Virgie Tovar to get the stamp of approval from this new social justice spinoff. Unfortunately, average Americans using social media unknowingly encounter this propaganda. They’re bombarded with videos from dietitians funded by the food industry who recommend soda and packaged snacks but never restricting unhealthy foods. In fact, some of the influencers who dole out health “advice” online refuse to even classify foods as “good” or “bad” because “diet culture, fatphobia, and systems of oppression have created false hierarchies of food” (yes, this is a direct quote from a so-called nutritionist cited by Justice and Bontempo).
You can’t discuss America’s obesity problem without the mention of another “o” word: Ozempic. Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide—the injection goes by many names, and an estimated one in eight Americans have tried some form of the prescription drug, according to a May KFF Health Tracking poll. Opposition to Ozempic is creating some strange bedfellows. Fat-positive influencers proclaim that such drugs only feed into fatphobia. Junk food manufacturers worry they’ll lose customers as Ozempic causes more Americans to lose their appetites. Opponents of Big Pharma point out that weight-loss injections can come with nasty side effects. Justice and Bontempo make it clear what side they come out on: “[I]f there were ever a drug perfectly engineered to capitalize on obesity without actually solving the problem, it would be Ozempic…. Most [patients] find they gain even more weight back once they’re off the Ozempic regimen.”
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Fortunately, Justice and Bontempo don’t leave readers without hope. In a rapid-fire series of chapters, they extol the virtues of nutrition, exercise, sleep, community, and even prayer for a healthy life. They embrace the “90/10” diet rule, which allows for flexibility and enjoyment. They stress that anyone can take control of his or her health at any point – but sadly, some damage cannot be undone.
“People who were once obese have a higher propensity for weight gain, and a study published in June 2023 shows obesity even causes permanent damage to brain metabolism. Children who are obese can expect to live five years fewer than their parents,” Justice and Bontempo write. But there is hope for the next generation. If there is a main takeaway from Fat And Unhappy, it’s that creating healthy patterns is far from impossible. Parents who want the best for their kids don’t have to get PhDs in nutrition or run ultramarathons—they can simply cook a meal for the family and enjoy it together.
Like many worthwhile things in life, good parenting requires intentionality, whether that means resisting Big Tech by refusing to buy your child a smartphone or resisting Big Food by opting for fruits and veggies instead of prepackaged junk. Giving your children the gift of health just might be the greatest gift of all.
