Maintenance Phase

"Celebrity chef Pete Evans has activated his last almond with the Seven Network."

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• Pete Evans on COVID-19 restrictions 
• Pete Evans on who gets COVID 
• Introducing the BioCharger 
• Coronavirus treatment spruiked by chef Pete Evans criticised by health associations, to be investigated by TGA - ABC News 
• Pete Evans' company fined for alleged COVID-19 advertising breaches | Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) 
• Pete Evans fined $80,000 by health department for alleged unlawful spruiking of devices and medicines 
• Australian celebrity chef Pete Evans under fire for sharing views of UK conspiracy theorist David Icke
• Pete Evans' boasts he played 60 Minutes Australia like 'game of chess' 
• Oh, for Pete's sake: The rise and fall (and possible rise) of Pete Evans 
• Dumped by sponsors, what happens to Pete Evans now? 
• Sonnenrad, symbol used in shooter's manifesto, explained
• Pete Evans Is Now Posting Neo-Nazi Symbols And The Far-Right Love It
• Celebrity chef Pete Evans' Instagram account deleted for 'repeatedly sharing' Covid misinformation
• Neo-Nazi groups allegedly targeted celebrity chef Pete Evans before infamous black sun cartoon
• The URL 'Pete Evans For Senate' redirects to unexpected webpage

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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How a beloved TV chef became one of Australia's most polarizing public figures. 

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• Going Paleo: What Prehistoric Man Actually Ate
• The Paleo Way (video clip) 
• Paleolithic nutrition for metabolic syndrome
• Paleo diet still lacks evidence
• Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history
• How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked
• Ancient leftovers show the real Paleo diet was a veggie feast
• Expert dismisses Pete Evans' claims that modern diet causes autism 
• Celebrity Chef's Paleo Cookbook for Babies Delayed After Health Fears
• Pete Evans: paleo cookbook for mums and babies under fire again 
• AMA accuses Pete Evans of endangering lives with unscientific health advice 
• Pete Evans provides 'evidence' for his fluoride claims 

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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In 1998, a researcher rolled out an innovative approach to education. And in 2015, Methodology Twitter had a big fight about it. 

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• The original 2004 paper
• The 2015 re-analysis
• The 2015 meta-analysis
• The Tanzania dissertation
• Doing Good Better
• Worm Wars: The Anthology
• Deworming Debunked
• WHO advises blanket anti-worming treatment for children despite lack of benefit
• Deworming Delusions? Mass Drug Administration In East African Schools
• Understanding Heterogeneity in the Impact of National Neglected Tropical Disease Control Programmes
• What Has Been Learned from the Deworming Replications: A Nonpartisan View
• Mass Deworming Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence
• Is it worth treating everyone who might get worms?
• New research debunks merits of global deworming programmes
• Should the WHO withdraw support for mass deworming?
• Why Don't People Take Their Medicine? Experimental Evidence from Kenya
• Dear journalists and policymakers: What you need to know about the Worm Wars

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This year, the UK implemented a law requiring chain restaurants to list calorie counts on their menus. Where did these policies come from? What impact do they have? And why is a Julia Roberts quote from 1990 the best way to describe them?

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Links!

• Calorie Labelling Regulations - GOV.UK
• Calorie labelling: implementation guidance - GOV.UK
• Do Menu Calorie Counts Actually Change How We Eat?
• Calorie counts on menus: What's the real impact on diners and restaurants?
• Court Upholds the City's Rule Requiring Some Restaurants to Post Calorie Counts
• Menu Labeling | Center for Science in the Public Interest
• Menu Labeling Requirements | FDA
• Calorie Labeling And Food Choices: A First Look At The Effects On Low-Income People In New York City
• The influence of calorie labeling on food orders and consumption: A review of the literature - PMC
• Changes in Calorie Content of Menu Items at Large Chain Restaurants After Implementation of Calorie Labels
• Why Listing Calorie Counts on Menus Can Do More Harm Than Good

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Weight loss is as simple as “calories in, calories out,” right? Or — gasp — could the reply guys be wrong!? This week, we dig in on the surprisingly complex science behind a seemingly simple calculation.

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• History of the Calorie in Nutrition
• Caloric Equivalents of Gained or Lost Weight
• The Foreign Policy of the Calorie
• Why the most popular rule of weight loss is completely wrong
• Time to Correctly Predict the Amount of Weight Loss With Dieting
• Mysteries of Weight Loss
• The energy balance model of obesity: beyond calories in, calories out
• “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake
• Olympians owe gold standard to a 19th-century chemist
• Calories on food packets are wrong—it’s time to change that
• Why Does the FDA Recommend 2,000 Calories Per Day?
• Who Actually Needs a 2,000 Calorie a Day Diet?
• The Nutrition Facts Label: Its History and Updates

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week, Mike and Aubrey take on a manual for creep behavior masquerading as a diet book. Along the way, we cover shopping guides, journalism salaries and the proper preparation of Cornish game hens. We love our curvy husbands.

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Links!

• How to Take 20 Pounds Off Your Man by Kalter, Suzy: (1984) | The Book Store 
• Suzy Kalter Gershman Obituary
• The book cover

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Debunking some of the most widely repeated myths about fat and health.

Here's Mike's new video! 

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Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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How a liberal journalist entrenched a libertarian fantasy.

Thanks to Sarah Taber for helping us with the research for this episode!

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• Julie Guthman's "Weighing In" 
• Rachel Laudan's "Cooking and Empire"
• Heidi Zimmerman's "Caring for the Middle Class Soul"
• Joel Salatin’s Unsustainable Myth
• Chris Newman’s Blog
• Everything I Want to Do Is Racist: How America’s favorite farmer lost his way.
• Clean Food: If You Want to Save the World, Get Over Yourself.
• The USA lags behind other agricultural nations in banning harmful pesticides
• Governing food: Media, politics and pleasure
• Michael Pollan's Misguided Food Nostalgia 
• A Plea for Culinary Modernism
• The French Terroir Strategy, and Culinary Modernism
• The Dark Side of Local 

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week's show is still in the oven so we're releasing one of our first Patreon bonus episodes. We asked our listeners for the wildest and wackiest fad diets they've ever tried and ended up doing mini-deep dives into The Rotation Diet, The Shangri-La Diet, The Special K Diet, Bethenny Frankel's "Naturally Thin" plan and the Blood Type Diet. Enjoy, and see you next week!  

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Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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In 2019, Jordan Peterson disappeared from public life. One year later, he re-emerged with a diagnosis, a story and no self-reflection whatsoever.

Thanks to Katelyn Burns and Talia Lavin for help fact-checking this episode and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Links!

• Joe Rogan Experience #1070 - Jordan Peterson
• Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jordan Peterson
• When Your Psychologist Goes Viral: How Jordan Peterson’s Fame Affected His Private Practice
• Jordan Peterson’s Gospel of Masculinity
• The Intellectual We Deserve
• Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube
• The Left’s Contempt for Jordan Peterson Is Perfectly Rational
• I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous.
• Jordan Peterson: Why I am no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto
• Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism
• Sunday Times: Unedited Interview Transcript
• Algorithmic extremism: Examining YouTube's rabbit hole of radicalization
• What is the “lite” in “alt-lite?” The discourse of white vulnerability and dominance among YouTube’s reactionaries
• Exposing Jordan Peterson’s Barrage of Revisionist Falsehoods About Hitler, the Holocaust and Nazism

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Oops all meat: How a '50s bodybuilder, a Grateful Dead roadie and an unreadable professor accidentally launched one of America's wildest fad diets.

Here's Mike's "Cancel Culture" video!

Note: In our discussion of Jordan Peterson’s political correctness lecture, I made a sarcastic comment about looking “slim in this dress.” After the episode came out, we started hearing from listeners that my comment reminded them of fatphobic jokes they’d heard in the past and didn’t feel consistent with the message of the show. They were right! It was a bad joke and we've removed it from the episode. We'll be discussing this and our approach to handling feedback and editing past episodes in more detail soon. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to let us know! — Mike

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Links!

• Joe Rogan Experience #1070 - Jordan Peterson
• Atlantic article on the all-beef diet
• Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy
• Is Jordan Peterson the stupid man's smart person?
• How dangerous is Jordan B. Peterson?
• The Intellectual We Deserve
• Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism
• The Pronoun Warrior
• Jordan Peterson’s Gospel of Masculinity
• The Bizarre Fad Diet Taking the Far Right by Storm
• Inside the World of the 'Bitcoin Carnivores'
• Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians
• My carnivore diet: what I learned from eating only beef, salt and water
• The Inuit Paradox
• Why Right Wingers Are Going Crazy About Meat
• Owsley “The Bear” Stanley’s Active Low-Carber Forum Posts

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Aubrey thought she could swear less in this week’s episode. She was wrong.

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Links!

• Super Size Me Trailer
• "Super Size Me" - CBS NewsWhere's the Beef? The Challenges of Obesity Suits
• Morgan Spurlock on Sexual Misconduct Confession, 'Super Size Me 2'
• Former Employees Say Morgan Spurlock's Production Company Was 'Fratty Boys' Club'
• Food and Drug Law Journal
• “Cheeseburger Bill” protects food industry - The Lancet
• Meet the science teacher who lost 60 pounds eating nothing but McDonald's three meals a day
• Impressed by the demise of Supersize? Take a closer look

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In 2015, Belle Gibson was an Australian "eco-preneur" with a vegetarian cookbook, a blockbuster wellness app and a terminal cancer diagnosis. Today, she's one of the most hated figures in the country.

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• The Woman Who Fooled The World
• What we know about Belle Gibson
• The mystery of Belle Gibson, who claimed she cured cancer with clean living
• Friends and doctors raise doubts over 'Healing Belle' cancer claims
• Mega-blogger Belle Gibson casts doubt on her own cancer claims
• Melbourne mum Belle Gibson on taking the world by storm with her app The Whole Pantry, while fighting terminal brain cancer
• The Belle Gibson scandal: The rise of lifestyle gurus as micro-celebrities in low-trust societies 
• Belle Gibson: "My lifelong struggle with the truth"
• Catalog of Belle’s posts and timeline
• Bad Influencer: The Great Insta Con
• Cosmo: An honest account of our experience with Belle Gibson
• Julia Watson's "Breakfast, School Run, Chemo"

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Who’s that Bond villain stroking a cat and yelling at beloved public figures? It’s Karl Lagerfeld! This week, Mike and Aubrey go in on fashion’s favorite turbo troll and his fancy, joyless diet. This episode serves four.

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Links!:

• The Karl Lagerfeld Diet
• Kaiser Karl: The Life of Karl Lagerfeld
• Karl Lagerfeld: My childhood was very simple
• A Look Back at Designer Karl Lagerfeld’s Iconic Fashion Career in Photos
• Seven of Karl Lagerfeld's most iconic moments
• Karl Lagerfeld Becomes a Video-Game Character
• Karl Lagerfeld's most controversial quotes on fat women
• Karl Lagerfeld's most controversial quotes
• Karl Lagerfeld on Adele (archived)
• Karl Lagerfeld’s illustration of Adolf Hitler and Angela Merkel (archived)
• Paris is Losing it - The New York Times
• Here's What Our Nutritionist Thinks of Karl Lagerfeld's Diet
• Karl Lagerfeld: Adele 'fat' remarks taken out of context
• Karl Lagerfeld Would Marry His Cat Choupette If It Were Legal

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How America's oldest fat camp — and the inspiration for Disney’s "Heavyweights" — became the symbol of a health intervention that enjoys worldwide popularity despite no evidence that it improves anyone's health.

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Links!

• The Epic Family Feud Behind an Iconic American Weight-Loss Camp for Kids
• Two teenagers placed in foster care after weight loss plan fails
• Calls to set up fat camps for obese children in Scotland
• Childhood obesity: are new treatment centres the solution?Weight-loss Camps and Their Effect on Childhood Obesity 
• Psychosocial outcomes in a weight loss camp for overweight youth
• Inside Britain’s First Ever Residential “Fat Camp” 
• Working at Camp Shane: Employee Reviews
• Missing campers, falsified documents and other issues revealed in CT weight-loss camp investigation
• Kids Weight Loss Camp That Closed Has History of Violations
• Weighty Problems by Laura Backstrom
• The Actually Terrible Things that Happen at Fat Camp

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Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" was one of the most popular and acclaimed wellness books of 2017. There's just one problem: Much of it isn't true. 

Thanks to University of Ottawa Postdoctoral Fellow Dylan Smith for helping us with the research!

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Links!

• Walker's TED Talk
• Alexey's blog post: Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors
• Walker’s Response
• Trouble With TED
• Does daylight savings kill people?
• Why We Sleep: A Tale Of Institutional Failure
• Is Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep” Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors?
• Up All Night: The science of sleeplessness
• Exploring the Necessity and Virtue of Sleep
• Why Do We Sleep?
• Siesta in Healthy Adults and Coronary Mortality in the General Population
• A Chronobiological Evaluation of the Acute Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk
• Has Adult Sleep Duration Declined Over the Last 50+ Years?
• Americans Are Sleeping More, If Not Necessarily Better
• High-profile sleep researcher loses paper for duplication

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It's a sexual health episode! This week, Mike and Aubrey dive into the hotly debated medical history of vibrators and ask: who fact-checks the fact-checkers? 

Note: A previous version of this episode included language that referred to “the female downstairs,” implying both that gender is linked to genitals (it isn’t) and that vibrators were used primarily by cis women (they weren’t). We love our trans listeners and we don’t want to do anything that makes them feel excluded, so we’ve removed the sections where that language appeared. We'll be discussing this and our approach to handling feedback in more detail soon. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to let us know! — Mike


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Links!

• The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel Maines
• Buzz by Hallie Lieberman
• Signior Dildo
• Hysteria! trailer
• Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys
• A Failure of Academic Quality Control: The Technology of Orgasm
• How Gosnell Duncan Changed the Sex Toy Game Forever
• Victorian Doctors Didn't Treat Women With Orgasms, Say Historians 
• (Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong

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For nearly four decades, Americans have heard a simple story about health, longevity and obesity. This week, we learn it's a little more complicated. 

Thanks to Katherine Flegal, Paul Campos, Jeff Hunger and Jason Salemi for helping us research and fact-check this episode! 

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Links!

• Katherine Flegal’s “The obesity wars and the education of a researcher”
• Walter Willett's " Evidence does not support benefit of being overweight on mortality"
• Flegal’s 2005 paper
• Flegal’s 2013 article
• Willett’s 2016 meta-analysis
• The infamous 2004 CDC paper
• Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity
• Paul Campos's "The Obesity Myth"
• Walter Willett’s Food Fight           
• The obesity research that blew up
• Flawed methods and inappropriate conclusions for health policy on overweight and obesity: The Global BMI Mortality Collaboration meta-analysis
• Does Body Mass Index Adequately Convey a Patient’s Mortality Risk?
• The Weight of Medical Authority: The Making and Unmaking of Knowledge in the Obesity Epidemic
• Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic? 
• Commentary: On ‘public health aspects of weight control’
• Obesity And Its Relation To Health And Disease
• Does Being Overweight Really Reduce Mortality?
• Individual and Aggregate Years-of-life-lost Associated With Overweight and Obesity

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At the height of her "Murder She Wrote" fame, Angela Lansbury released a home workout video full of synth music, peach jumpsuits and ~sensuality~. This week, we’re exploring the anti-Goop-ness of Angela’s fitness book and video, "Positive Moves."!  It gets a little heavy toward the end, but we promise: No one was canceled in the making of this episode. 

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Links!

• Positive Moves video on YouTube (cued up to “moving freely”)
• Positive Moves book
• What is Gaslighting? The 1944 film Gaslight is the best explainer.

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In the sequel (sorry) to our first installment, we take a deep dive into Rachel's wildly problematic books and deeply weird downfall. Along the way we discuss allyship etiquette, MLMs and Ronald Reagan. We remain convinced that getting matching tattoos was the right decision for us.  

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• The infamous Tik Tok
• Savy Writes Books' video essays
• The Rise & Fall of Rachel Hollis
• The Divine Rise of Multilevel Marketing
• Kaitlyn Luckow's "Girl, It’s Okay To Be Dirty: A Look At Toxic Self-Help"
• Multilevel-marketing companies like LuLaRoe are forcing people into debt and psychological crisis
• Jesus never called us to chase after power, money, and fame 
• “Girl, Wash Your Face” Is A Massive Best-Seller With A Dark Message
• Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside
• Influencer Rachel Hollis Is Facing Accusations She Is Plagiarizing On Her Instagram

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Girl, stop reinforcing the status quo.

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Videos!

• The infamous Tik Tok
• Momfession: I get up at 5 am
• The "bikini mom" talk
• How To Start A Podcast

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Last year, spiritual leader Marianne Williamson made headlines when she ran for president.  But 10 years earlier, she wrote a bestselling book that promised to teach readers how to “surrender" their weight forever. This week, Mike and Aubrey take a deep dive into Williamson’s life story and her 2010 book, “A Course in Weight Loss."  Along the way we talk nonprofit drama, Eleanor Roosevelt and gays for Marianne. Plus, Mike’s got a message for the twinks.

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Videos!

• Marianne Williamson on Forgiveness
• A Course in Weight Loss
• A Course in Weight Loss, Chapter Two 
• A Course in Weight Loss, Chapter 7
• A Course in Weight Loss, Chapter 8

Links!

• Who is Marianne Williamson? Her 2020 presidential campaign and policies, explained 
• The Divine Miss W
• Faith: Marianne Williamson Is Full of It
• The Gospel According to Marianne Williamson 
• “No One Decides to Run for President Impulsively”: Marianne Williamson Explains Her Magical Thinking
• Marianne Williamson has almost everything 
• Marianne Williamson is a controversial AIDS-crisis figure for gay men.
• Into America's Spiritual Void With Marianne Williamson
• Why Marianne Williamson’s most famous passage keeps getting cited as a Nelson Mandela quote 

Thanks to  Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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How Nestlé executives, global health institutions and a very racist white lady seeded a series of nutritional misconceptions we're still living with today. 

Special thanks to John Nott for helping us out with this episode! Here's his papers on the history of protein and the British Empire.

• “No one may starve in the British Empire”: Kwashiorkor, Protein and the Politics of Nutrition Between Britain and Africa
• “How Little Progress”? A Political Economy of Postcolonial Nutrition

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Links!

• Cicely Williams’ dissertation
• Dariush Mozaffarian's "History of Modern Nutrition Science"
• The Incidence Of Protein-Calorie Malnutrition Of Early Childhood
• An Error of Medicine? Kwashiorkor and the “Protein Gap”
• Childhood Malnutrition In Developing Nations: Looking Back and Looking Forward
• The Politics of Protein
• The Impact of Colonialism on Health and Health Services in Tanzania
• Breast-Milk and the World Protein Gap
• The Influence of Colonialism on Africa’s Welfare: An Anthropometric Study
• Food, Colonialism and the Quantum of Happiness
• Revisited: Is Subclinical Protein Deficiency A Significant Public Health Concern?
• Listening to the Ga: Cicely Williams’ Discovery of Kwashiorkor on the Gold Coast
• “Milking the Third World: Humanitarianism, Capitalism and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott”
• The Controversy Over Infant Formula
• War on Want’s “The Baby Killer “
• 75 years of Kwashiorkor In Africa
• The Rise and Fall of Protein Malnutrition in Global Health

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Over the last 30 years, fatness has been defined as a risk factor for disease, then a disease in itself, then a global epidemic. What caused this rapid shift? Who’s gonna join our group of B-roll vigilantes? And did we just hear Morgan Freeman?

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Books!

• Fat Politics 
• Killer Fat 
• The End of the Obesity Epidemic 
• Folk Devils and Moral Panics 
• Moral Panics 

Links!

• American Obesity Association PSA
• AMA Recognizes Obesity as a Disease 
• Regarding Obesity as a Disease: Evolving Policies and Their Implications 
• For Researchers on Obesity: Historical Review of Extra Body Weight Definitions 
• Obesity task force linked to WHO takes “millions” from drug firms 
• Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer 
• Research: How Americans’ Biases Are Changing (or not) Over Time 
• Satcher: Obesity Reaching Crisis Levels 
• Do Photographic Images of Obese Persons Influence Antifat Attitudes?
• Did the American Medical Association make the correct decision classifying obesity as a disease? 
• What exactly is a disease? 
• The “Childhood Obesity Epidemic”: Health Crisis or Social Construction? 
• Fears of a fat planet overblown, skeptics say 
• An Unjust War: The Case Against the Government’s War on Obesity 
• Expanding Definitions of Obesity May Harm Children 

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The BMI is EVERYWHERE. But is it scientific or scientif-ish? While many Americans think of the body mass index as an objective measure of health, its history reveals a more complicated story. This week, Mike and Aubrey tackle the first in a two-part series about the BMI and the “Obesity Epidemic.” Along the way they visit 18th century Belgium, learn a gross new acronym and dissect Dracula's facial features.

LINKS!:

• The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI (Elemental) 
• Adolphe Quetelet, Social Physics, and the Average Men of Science, 1796-1874 (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Mindful of eugenics’ dark history, researchers are reexamining the genetics of social mobility (Quartz) 
• Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874)—the average man and indices of obesity (Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation)
• For Researchers on Obesity: Historical Review of Extra Body Weight Definitions (Obesity)
• Quetelet, Adolphe (Canada’s Eugenics Archives)
• Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus (NPR)
• The False Science Linking Body Shape to Personality (The Atlantic)
• Obesity task force linked to WHO takes “millions” from drug firms (The BMJ)
• Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity (Obesity Reviews) 

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This week we're diving into one of the biggest-ever scandals in nutrition research. For nearly two decades, Brian Wansink's Food and Brand Lab told Americans that lower weights, healthier workplaces and better school lunches were just a few small tweaks away. Then, in 2015, he wrote a blog post and it all came crashing down. 

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Links!

• A Credibility Crisis in Food Science
• Statistical heartburn: An attempt to digest four pizza publications from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab
• Brian Wansink: Data Masseur, Media Villain, Emblem of a Thornier Problem
• The Wansink Dossier: An Overview
• More Evidence That Nutrition Studies Don’t Always Add Up
• Here’s How Cornell Scientist Brian Wansink Turned Shoddy Data Into Viral Studies About How We Eat
• False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
• Death of a Veggie Salesman
• The Strange, Uplifting Tale of “Joy of Cooking” Versus the Food Scientist
• Moms, “Food Fears” and the Power of the Internet
• The science behind Smarter Lunchrooms
• You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition
• Energy balance measurement: when something is not better than nothing
• Scientific method: Statistical errors
• Effect of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act on the Nutritional Quality of Meals Selected by Students and School Lunch Participation Rates
• 9.67 Degrees of Deception

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So long, root vegetables! This week, we dive into the strange and surprising history of the 100-year-old ketogenic diet. Along the way, we encounter a Victorian bodybuilder, an infamous podcast bro and the possibility of a bad Meryl Streep performance (!). Get in, loser, we're counting macros!

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Links!

• What Is the Keto Diet and Does It Work? (NYT)
• The Ketogenic Diet for Weight Loss (Today’s Dietitian)
• Meet the Wackiest Billionaire Ever to Run for President (Money)
• Trailer for "First, Do No Harm"
• Keto Diet History - How the Ketogenic Diet Went Mainstream (Men's Health)
• 7 Dangers of the Keto Diet | Health.com (Health Magazine)
• 15 Keto Diet Side Effects to Know – Possible Keto Diet Dangers (Prevention)
• Ketogenic Diet May Lead to an Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes (The Physiological Society)

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Special guest Kimberly Springer joins us to talk about an infamous, dangerous faith healer and his two — two! — appearances on Oprah's talk show. This episode contains, we're sorry to say, detailed descriptions of sexual assault. 

Buy Kimberly's books:

• Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture
• Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980

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Links!

• Behind the Bastards podcast series on John of God 
• The O Magazine article
• John of God, the Miracle Healer
• Celebrity Healer in Brazil Is Accused of Sexually Abusing Followers
• Oprah’s 2012 article

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Do you have weird feelings about Oprah? So do we, and so does our guest! Kimberly Springer, co-editor of "Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture," joins us to talk about the rise of Oprah Winfrey and her infamous "wagon of fat" weight loss episode.

Buy Kimberly's books:

• Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture
• Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Clips!

• Oprah Winfrey Rolls Out A Wagon Of Fat  (Buzzfeed)
• How Oprah's Weight Affected Her Relationship with Stedman (Oprah)
• MadTv - Oprah - Fat Cam (Mad TV)

Links!

• The Importance of Being Oprah (New York Times Magazine)
• Oprah's 'Fattest' Mistake (CBS News)
• 5 awesome objects from the new Oprah exhibit (Washington Post)
• Oprah's biggest on-air mistake? The wagon of fat (Today)
• Diet That Made Oprah Winfrey Slim Demands Discipline, Specialists Say (New York Times)

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Do you have viruses? Cysts? Cancer? Are you tired sometimes? According to Instagram, the  problem might be a lack of liquefied vegetables! This week, Mike and Aubrey take on a troubling taste test, meet a ghost with bad intentions and encounter the longest list of problematic celebrities we've ever seen.

Plus, we start the show with an announcement: We're doing Patreon-only bonus episodes! Sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/maintenancephase

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!

• Anthony William on Extra
• Anthony William on Keeping Up with the Kardashians
• Celery Juice Is the Perfect, Probably Pointless Trend for 2019 (Vanity Fair)
• Food Isn't Medicine. Here's Why It's Dangerous to Believe It Is. (Huffington Post)
• Is celery juice a viable alternative to nitrites in cured meats? (McGill University)
• Is Celery Juice a Sham? (The New York Times)
• Today's Diet Fads (Today's Dietitian)
• People think celery juice can protect you from COVID-19. Here's why that's categorically false. (Mama Mia)
  
  

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Special guest Mike Rothschild tells us how the road to wellness can be an on-ramp to a conspiracy theory. Along the way we debunk oil pulling, explore Instagram aesthetics and bemoan anti-vaxx argumentation tactics . Mike gets the date of the January 6th insurrection wrong and he is sorry.

Mike Rothschild is on Twitter and you can pre-order his book here!

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week is our first  Diet Book Deep Dive, where we dig into some of the worst and wildest weight loss advice we can find.  First up: Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon's pun, alcohol and misogyny-fueled diet plan from the 1970s. Hope you like broiled steak and Sanka!

Clips!

• Ed McMahon & Britney Spears on Star Search
• Ed McMahon for American Family Sweepstakes

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Thanks to Lynn Barbera for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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 In 1996, Proctor & Gamble launched an artificial fat substitute that promised all of the taste but none of the calories. There was just one problem. 

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Links!

• Marion Nestle’s The Selling of Olestra
• Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything
• The 1996 Federal Register
• The Trouble With Fries
• Reduction of the body burden of PCBs and DDE by dietary intervention in a randomized trial
• Review of the effects of dilution of dietary energy with olestra on energy intake
• Authors’ Financial Relationships With the Food and Beverage Industry and Their Published Positions on the Fat Substitute Olestra
• Postmarketing Surveillance of New Food Ingredients: Results from the Program with the Fat Replacer Olestra
• Effects of wheat bran and olestra on objective measures of stool and subjective reports of GI symptoms
• The effect of ingesting olestra-based foods on feeding behavior and energy balance in humans
• Effect on Body Weight of Replacing Dietary Fat with Olestra for Two or Ten Weeks in Healthy Men and Women 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Fat people have them too! This week, special guest Erin Harrop tells us about one of America's most under-diagnosed and misunderstood problems. Along the way we talk about elbow bumps, Twitter etiquette and '90s sweatpants. Our content warnings are becoming increasingly threatening.

Here's Erin's faculty page and a bunch of her research!

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Thanks to Mitra Kaboli for production support and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Get your flex point calculators and food scales! This week, Mike and Aubrey are talking about one of America's most iconic diet programs: Weight Watchers. Along the way, we encounter The Rock, the mating habits of straight people and a new James Bond villain. 

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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!

• Jean Nidetch, a Founder of Weight Watchers, Dies at 91 
• Mass Firing on Zoom Is Latest Sign of Weight Watchers Unrest 
• Weight Watcher's Kurbo app slammed for targeting kids. Makers defend it 
• What's gone wrong at Weight Watchers? 
• Weight Watchers Is Offering Teens Free Memberships and People Aren't Happy 
• Americans’ new way of losing weight has left Weight Watchers behind 
• How the Oprah effect helped Weight Watchers regain Americans' trust 
• Deal Master Debbane 
• The Population Cost‐Effectiveness of Weight Watchers with General Practitioner Referral Compared with Standard Care 
• Weight Watchers on prescription: An observational study of weight change among adults referred to Weight Watchers by the NHS 
• The Problem With 'Fat Talk' 
• 'Fat Talk' Compels but Carries a Cost 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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Are your moods too stable? Is your face free of cold sores? Get your lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper ready, because this week we're talking about celebrity favorite THE MASTER CLEANSE!

Along the way we roast New Atheism, praise Gwyneth Paltrow (!) and endorse garbanzo bean salads. Mike wishes to clarify that he adores Kate Bush and quips with the utmost affection.

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Links!:

• The Master Cleanser by Stanley Burroughs
• I Heard It Through the Diet Grapevine (New York Times)
• Improving Ourselves to Death (The New Yorker)
• Cleansing's Dirty Secret (Marie Claire)
• Mr. Clean: Jeffrey Steingarten Puts the Master Cleanse to the Test (Vogue)
• The Dubious Practice of Detox (Harvard Health)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week we're dissecting "America's Doctor." How did a smart, hardworking surgeon become one of TV's leading purveyors of junk science?  Along the way we debunk green coffee bean extract, raspberry ketones, conversion therapy (!) and a salad dressing skincare regimen.

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•  Subscribe on Patreon
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• Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links:

• Transcript of the infamous Congressional hearing
• The Making of Dr. Oz
• Columbia and the Problem of Dr. Oz
• The FTC lawsuit against green coffee bean extract sellers
• The Oz craze: The effect of pop culture media on health care
• The BMJ content analysis of the Dr. Oz show
• Ageing, fitness and neurocognitive function
• Real-world doctors fact-check Dr. Oz, and the results aren't pretty 
• Dr. Oz may be America's most influential — and controversial — physician 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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The world of dieting and wellness is full of so-called snake oil salesmen—but what IS snake oil? This week, we take a wild ride through the history of health scams and discover a startling twist about an everyday idiom. Along the way, Aubrey delivers fun facts about sanitation from memory and Mike roasts the state where most of his family lives. 

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Links:

• Snake Oil, Hustlers & Hambones by Mary Anderson
• A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen' : Code Switch (NPR)
• How Snake Oil Got a Bad Rap (Hint: It Wasn’t The Snakes’ Fault) (Collectors Weekly)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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This week we dissect the content and impact of one of America's most harmful TV experiments.  
 
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Links! 

• Aubrey’s article on The Biggest Loser
•  That's not reality for me': Australian audiences respond to the Biggest Loser 
• "Cheapening the struggle:" obese people's attitudes towards the Biggest Loser 
• The Effects of Reality Television on Weight Bias: An Examination of The Biggest Loser
• 'It's a miracle no one has died yet': The Biggest Loser returns, despite critics' warnings
• The Retrograde Shame of The Biggest Loser
• Analysis of all contestants
• Neoliberalism And The Realities Of Reality Television
• The “Reality” of Health: Reality Television and the Public Health
• Life after NBC's "The Biggest Loser": The Experiences and Perspectives of Former Reality TV Contestants 

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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WE’RE BACK! A new diet ice cream is taking your grocery store by storm. But what even is it? This week, Mike and Aubrey talk biohacking, dieting for straight dudes and the extremely ill-advised "Halo Top diet."

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!

• What is biohacking? The new “science” of optimizing your brain and body. (Vox) 
• Halo Top Is Now the Most Popular Pint of Ice Cream in America (Food and Wine) 
• What It's Like to Eat Nothing but This Magical, Healthy Ice Cream for 10 Days (GQ) 
• Is Halo Top Good For You? The Truth About Low-Calorie, Low-Fat Ice Creams (HuffPost)
• Seven in 10 young people would eat whole tub of low-cal ice cream (The Grocer UK)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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To celebrate the release of her new book, Aubrey takes Mike on a tour through the statistics and debates surrounding weight bias. Anyone interested in body positivity, airline seats, 'skinny shaming' or the sugar content of melons is legally obligated to join us.

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Get Aubrey's book in the U.S.:

• Powell's Books
• Bookshop.org
• Beacon Press
• Buy from your local bookstore on Indiebound

Get Aubrey's book outside the U.S.

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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The Twinkie Defense has become a shorthand for disingenuous legal defense strategies. But was it disingenuous? (Yes, but not in the way you think!)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
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Links!

• Mike's "Victim's Rights" episode on his other show!
• The Trial of Dan White: The Diminished Capacity ("Twinkie") Defense
• Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death
• The Myth of the Twinkie Defense: The Verdict in the Dan White Case Wasn’t Based on His Ingestion of Junk Food
• Psychiatric Testimony and the Insanity Defense
• California’s Proposition 8 (1982)

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What's that Gwyneth Paltrow's drinking? It's MOON JUICE! This week, we're talking adaptogens, brain dust, hot sex milk and the wellness company that's taken L.A. by storm. Be sure to take your quinton shots before you listen to this one.

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links!:

• How Hollywood's Favorite Juice Bar Owner Eats Every Day (Elle)
• How Amanda Chantal Bacon Perfected the Celebrity Wellness Business (NYT)
• What Are Adaptogens? (NYT)
• Wellness Brand Moon Juice Has Plenty of Haters - And Its Founder is Cool With That (Entrepreneur)
• The Moon Juice Gospel of Self (The New Yorker)
• How Wellness Got Whitewashed (Glamour)

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They hit the market in 1992. Three years later, they were the best-selling cookie in America. This week, Mike and Aubrey dive into the low-fat craze of the 1990s and sample the snack that became the symbol of its rise and fall.  

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Links! 

• How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America 
• “Eat More, They’re Healthy”
• Anthology of “Cookie Man” ads
• “What if It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie?”
• “Ending the War on Fat”

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Fen-Phen & Redux were "the next miracle drugs" in the '90s, claiming to help people lose dramatic amounts of weight in just three months.  But within a few short years, they'd been pulled from the market.  They were just too effective! (Just kidding, they killed some people.)

Support us:

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Links! 

• Dispensing with the Truth by Alicia Mundy
• The New Miracle Drug (Time Magazine)
• How Fen-Phen, A Diet 'Miracle,' Rose and Fell (the New York Times)
• Blowing the Whistle on Fen-Phen (Journal of Business Communication)
• Purdue OxyContin settlement would rank among largest in pharma history (Reuters)
• National Trends in Antiobesity Medication Use (JAMA Network)
• The Fen-Phen Finale: A Study of Weight Loss and Valvular Heart Disease (Obesity Research)

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

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The shuttle run! The flexed arm hang! The v-sit reach! These terms are seared into the memories of an entire generation of American schoolchildren. But did the President's Physical Fitness Test actually make us fitter?  (Spoiler: lol no)

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Support us:

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Links! 

• The Report That Shocked The President
• JFK’s Sports Illustrated article, “The Soft American”
• 1958–2008: 50 Years of Youth Fitness Tests in the United States
• The President's Council on Physical Fitness and the Systematisation of Children's Play in America
• Why is there so little critical physical education scholarship in the United States? The case of Fitnessgram
• The Modern Era: Blossoming of the Olympic Movement and the Conquest of Acute Disease
• The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports: The First 50 Years
• Do Fitness Test Performances Predict Students’ Attitudes And Emotions Toward Physical Education?

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Welcome to Maintenance Phase! In our first episode, we tell our origin stories and talk about some of the basic ideas behind the show.

Here's where to find us:
Aubrey: https://www.yourfatfriend.com/
Mike: https://rottenindenmark.org/

Thanks to Ashley Smith for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Support us:

•  Subscribe on Patreon
• Donate on PayPal
•  Get Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and more

Support the show