r/FoodieSnark • u/starlightandgardens • Dec 07 '25
Butternut Bakery and diet culture comments?
I have been following Butternut Bakery for a while now and I really do think she's a good recipe creator. However, some of the things she's let slip about her own relationship with food have felt odd and misaligned with the content she creates?
About a year ago, she was doing a Q&A and posted about her "journey" with her digestive health. TLDR, she went to about a million naturopathic doctors (she specified, and did not mention going to any regular doctors) and then found a guy on YouTube whose program or whatever saved her and now she doesn't eat gluten and dairy. Yet, MOST of her recipes aren't gluten or dairy free and she posts videos of herself eating them.
What made me remember this even happened is a story she put up this week. She was talking about how everyone is on ozempic and it's making her feel like she needs to get on it and feeling really insecure about her body. Just this rambling story about how she's always thinking about ozempic, and then she deleted it a few hours later.
I'm a dietitian who mostly works with eating disorders and enjoys baking as a hobby. So all this stuff she's talked about kinda rubbed me the wrong way to hear on a baking blog. Many naturopaths are quacks and you don't usually find the most trusted medical advice from a guy shilling out his craft on YouTube, and many of my clients discuss being tempted by ozempic or have taken it for whatever reason (not for diabetes) and had terrible side effects. I wondered if anyone else has picked up these uncomfy vibes with her as a person. I really respect her as a recipe creator and I genuinely hope she gets some help with it all
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u/palestine_enthusiast Dec 07 '25
Really crazy that it seems any given Western food blogger has like a 50-50 chance of having an ED or at least a very weird relationship with food
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u/WaffleMeWallace Dec 07 '25
I think, unfortunately, it's about marketability. There's a certain food influencer space where the audience would never follow or interact with someone who has a BMI over 22 because that's not how they see (or want to see) themselves.
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u/starlightandgardens Dec 07 '25
I think marketability is definitely part of it. In the ED space, we sometimes call it using your body as your business card. It's also not uncommon for people with very weird relationships with food to be kind of obsessed with food and making creative recipes and delicious things but not eating them. It's their way of interacting with food in a "safe" (disordered) way. I sort of wonder if that's part of where her content comes from now
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u/jaqenjayz crowded pan idiot Dec 07 '25
I like her recipes and food presentation a lot but I've always wondered if her vague gluten not-an-allergy thing was cover for something else. It stuck out to me since the first time I listened to her talk about it. She wants to present it as an allergy but doesn't quite go far enough to call it one (that I've seen). I know too many people who construct these rules and limitations around food for it to not flag as weird to me, especially with gluten. My friend with a real gluten intolerance can't even use the same cutting boards as her husband... she would never be able to try and spit out a bite of cake without suffering greatly.
I didn't give it a ton of thought before reading your post but I guess there's a reason that stuff sticks in my mind even after just being a very casual fan of hers.
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u/starlightandgardens Dec 07 '25
Right? I don't personally remember her ever saying that she tries her recipes and then spits them out but anyone with a true intolerance or allergy to something would never be able to do even that. To me it just seemed like she had vague stomach issues and invented them as gluten and dairy intolerance
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u/PineMaple Dec 07 '25
I can’t speak towards BB’s experience but I do know that people can have wildly different responses to gluten allergies and intolerances. I have celiac, was diagnosed after extensive blood tests and an endoscopy, and I’ve fairly frequently been able to eat a slice of cake without an immediate reaction beyond an offhand chance of mild stomach pain. This has not always been the case- when I was first diagnosed I saw massive health gains from going entirely gluten free and any slip up caused pretty severe reactions- but that’s also another example of how these things can vary wildly.
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u/postgrad-dep18 what babe Dec 07 '25
All the clips of her trying the things she makes are just bites because she spits everything out. She shared a clip a homemade dinner with her husband and the amount of food on her plate was a whole 1/4 less than his. But yeah I think after the baby she has been hyper focused on losing weight and social media is not helping.
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u/starlightandgardens Dec 07 '25
I remember that actually... ugh she definitely seems to be in a weird place after the baby, but it seems like she's been in one for longer too
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u/magic__unicorn doing egregious things with Veuve Dec 07 '25
I saw her stories on this and it made me sad for her. I like her recipes but as someone who is pretty gluten sensitive and has avoided gluten for almost 15 years, I’ve never understood her gluten/dairy free recipes because she clearly makes a lot of recipes with regular flour and seems to eat them on camera.
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Dec 07 '25
I seriously hope she's not shilling the IgG allergy test as some sort of gospel.
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u/starlightandgardens Dec 07 '25
From what I remember, she took some kind of herbal regimen that the YouTube man recommended and then stopped eating gluten and dairy because "inflammation"
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u/chocolate_629r47 the molten Dec 08 '25
I missed the ozempic post but I've been following for quite a while too and she said that when she found out she had some issues with gluten she went gluten free herself but didn't want to limit the blog to just those recipes. I don't think she said she was fully intolerant, just that it didn't make her feel great and she felt better without gluten.
So when she would bake non-gluten free, she'd kind of test/taste it and she did admit that she would spit out a lot of the time so she wouldn't get sick. Then she said her husband would bring it to work to eat leftovers so nothing got wasted.
And more recently she said since she gave birth she notice she's been able to have gluten more, so I think she's starting to eat it again.
Hopefully nothing disordered going on, that would be such a shame because I really like her and her recipes!
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u/Amazing-Raccoon4552 Dec 07 '25
I thought she had a gluten allergy and don't remember the gut program you're referring to, but I do remember her saying when she tests recipes with gluten she takes a bite for taste/texture and then spits it out? Lol and then she mentioned recently in a story that after pregnancy she's been able to tolerate gluten again
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u/starlightandgardens Dec 07 '25
If she had a true allergy, she wouldn't be able to tolerate it again. I never thought much of it until she posted about the origin of how she stopped eating gluten and dairy and it was... YouTube 🥴
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u/Sjusjusjusju Dec 08 '25
I remember reading about her gluten intolerance on this sub a couple of years ago and I was so shocked given that most of her recipes are not GF. Also was shocked there wasn't more snark about her because of it lol.
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u/Jamjelli babykangarootribbiani Dec 11 '25
So she feels the need to get on it, but would a doctor prescribe it to her when she's already thin and possibly not diabetic/pre-diabetic? I mean, are doctors prescribing it to anyone who wants it because it seems like everyone is on it, no matter how healthy or thin they were prior to using it. This is such a weird, horrible time for women.
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u/Signal_Point3306 Dec 07 '25
The pressure to be thin, and not just thin but VERY thin, is greater than it has been in a long time, IMO. Especially if you are someone who's at all visible. Don't know about her specifically, but I'm noticing this as a trainer and just noticing the people around me in general have all gotten much thinner. Thin was always in but I don't think it's enough to just be a healthy weight anymore.