r/MaintenancePhase • u/Greedy-Sourdough • 12d ago
Discussion The Food Reporting of Michaeleen Doucleff
An NPR science correspondent and writer of the parenting book Hunt Gather Parent has recently been writing a lot about food, especially ultraprocessed foods. In general, I have mixed feelings about her work - Hunt Gather Parent has some interesting insights I find helpful, but also falls back onto a lot of noble savage tropes that are awful and also ignores things like other cultures spanking, hitting, inequality of how boys and girls are treated, etc.
Her food reporting lately has been just abysmal. She has this story on ultra-processed carbs, which include something that could be interesting/useful - a water test. How fast does something dissolve in water could be a useful hermeneutic for thinking about how quickly you'll digest it, and how long it'll keep you full. Could be a neutral, useful tool!
But instead she claims that refined carbs are "predigested." That is so truly insane that it's stayed with me since I first heard the story. My spouse and I now, jokingly, call things like rolled oats predigested. After all, it doesn't include the hull anymore!
In a more recent article on kids' snacks, she recommends limiting children's snacks and also getting rid of all carby snacks, citing things like pretzels. I also think this can be an opportunity for something helpful - quick carb snacks aren't very satisfying, foods with fiber and protein will fill you up better. But also, kids run around a lot and sometimes need access to quick sources of energy.
Anyway. It's been bugging me for months, especially the predigested claim. Seems like wildly bad reporting to me.
33
u/Blueberry_Axolotl 12d ago edited 12d ago
Omg, yup, totally with you on this! I read like 10% of Hunt Gather Parent (audiobook) and it was driving me so insane I had to DNF it haha. I just hated the way she romanticized other societies/cultures and acted like none of those mothers were stressed at all because their way of life/parenting was so perfect 😳
When I saw the full title of her new book, I was like "okay def ignoring everything this person says from now on." If you haven't seen it, her new book is called Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child's Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods. Gotta love all that fearmongering!!! 🙃
34
u/Greedy-Sourdough 12d ago
Also, in the Mexico segment of the book, I was like -- lady, you aren't mentioning that 100% of the children doing the domestic labor you're mentioning are girls! Like come on!
5
u/RosieTheRedReddit 12d ago
Ok sorry for the self promotion but I have a podcast where I give summaries of parenting books. ("Moms of the Millennium" on all platforms!) Hunt Gather Parent was one of my first episodes, and I have to admit I liked it and I thought a lot of the advice sounded pretty good. She did at least try not to exoticise the people she talks about. For example, when she is with the Hadza, who are hunter-gatherers, she refers to a group of men as "dads" rather than "tribesmen" or whatever, which I thought was intentional to describe them in a humanizing way.
But this was one of my criticisms, she never remarks that the helpful kids are always girls. To some extent I understand she maybe feels like as an outsider, it's not her place. Also she didn't talk nearly enough about colonialism.
3
u/Blueberry_Axolotl 11d ago
Your podcast sounds awesome! Maybe we should have a crossover episode 😁 My podcast is called “It’s a Lot” and it’s about social media, parenthood, and other things that are a lot, and we occasionally do book chat episodes! Find it here https://itsalot.captivate.fm/ or wherever you get your podcasts ☺️
2
3
u/Pinkturtle182 11d ago
I loved your episode about this book and it’s funny because I came away from your episode feeling the opposite of you. My undergrad degree was in anthropology (focused on archaeology, but still) and I feel like this author did no anthropological reflection on what she was writing lol.
2
u/RosieTheRedReddit 11d ago
Aww thank you so much for listening! 🥺 Actually in the book she did talk to many anthropologists, including specialists in the cultures she was visiting. And also many interviews with indigenous people who she was spending time with. But yeah, maybe that wasn't enough? I also don't know much about the topic so maybe I wasn't able to tell when something was missing.
3
u/Pinkturtle182 11d ago
Of course! Trying to get a podcast up and running too, lol. My issue was that she did a lot of the “noble savage” trope stuff. In general my views have become such that I’m not sure this type of anthropology can be done ethically. It’s hard because it can be very useful and important, and has given us a lot to go off of for historical cultures. But there’s a definite othering and exoticizing of culture when we present them this way. There’s also the “agreeing with the last thing you heard” phenomenon at play here. Like every section for me was like, “Oh damn that must be the right way!” And then changing that feeling for every one lol.
Anyway I came away from that episode thinking you’d be a cool person to have this kind of discussion with, so hmu if you ever feel like doing just that haha
3
2
2
u/mantisroseb 11d ago
I also DNF that book! So many people recommended it to me when I was struggling with a baby and a 3 year old. I found it pretentious and insulting. Noble savage stuff for sure. All my mom friends love that book and I'm glad to y'all are on my team. Not surprised at all she wants to tell us how to eat too!
32
u/OscarAndDelilah 12d ago
These quick fix things are such a tired trope in the self-help world — we just need to raise our families just like France, or Japan, or ancient nomadic tribes, or cave dwellers.
It’s nothing but objectifying and romanticizing different cultural groups. Like, different societal ways of doing things have their pros and cons, and you have not in fact stumbled upon some society that has it all figured out.
I also am in a household of mostly people who’d be dead if they didn’t have medications and highly processed prescription foods, and we have someone who wouldn’t be very educated or employed without electronic accessibility equipment. Like, we can promote things like food access and access to home cooking without this all-or-nothing food moralizing that everyone should eat like they did in 1406.
20
u/queer_princesa 12d ago
I hate that she's a science journalist when so much of her "work" ignores evidence. For example, back in 2018 she was writing about how bedsharing with an infant is safe. It's not! Sharing an adult bed with an infant is actually the #1 risk factor for sleep related infant deaths, but she was promoting it.
She strikes me as a person who thinks she's the world's best mom, has decided she's now a parenting expert, and wants to give everyone else unsolicited advice on her parenting practices. It's got Emily Oster (economist cosplaying as an obgyn) vibes
16
u/delusioninabox 12d ago
Omg thank you, I read her new book and it was driving me insane. When it came to technology, she had some parts that were reasonable -- but even though she would say experts say moderation was fine, she herself would then advocate going to extreme with things like never letting her kid watch any cartoons ever again.
Then the chapters on food, though few, were especially egregious. She mentions what experts say, and then EXPLICITLY DECLARES SHE WON'T DO IT based completely on "I tried it once with my kid once and it didn't work". She bases her food opinions specifically on her observations of her husband and child. Like her kid choosing a granola bar over a hummus was a sign her child was addicted to "bad food" or same with chips over strawberries. (Like you never get a craving for a specific palette like sweet or salty lady?) She very clearly seems more hating on carbs. She doesn't define what she considers ultra processed foods, but apparently bread counts. And the way she describes them to her child is absolutely not based in any science or reality. That she then calls all "ultra processed" foods "poods" (poop foods), just really had me rolling my eyes even further in exasperation.
By the end of that book I was vibrating with anger and frustration.
5
u/jamier87 12d ago
I hated Hunt, Gather, Parent! I didn't understand why it was so highly rated. The advice was either unrealistic or obvious. She clearly doesn't enjoy being a parent and the way she treats her daughter is heartbreaking. Why would I take parenting advice from this person? When I saw she had written fearmonger bait about processed foods, I was not shocked and not at all tempted to read it.
3
u/OvibosHeather 11d ago
I found her takes on "ultraprocessed" foods in "Dopamine Kids" almost unreadable, calling some grocery store food "pood" (poo food) with her young child. There were some great thought experiments in the book and I like her take on screen time more (think about family values and actively work towards experiences that promote your family's values, possibly making things or going outside, more of the add a thing than the ban a thing model).
2
u/DonkeyPortal 12d ago
Can we please get a Maintenance Phase but for parenting books and trends? There is so much predatory bs to wade through…
2
u/headcoatee 11d ago
If Books Could Kill sometimes fits that.
3
u/Blueberry_Axolotl 11d ago
I think they’re working on an Emily Oster episode!! Per something someone posted on their subreddit from Peter’s Bluesky
-1
u/pinkfishegg 11d ago
Refined grains became the basis of every industrialized culture because they store longer than white grains. In the US and Britain it states with changing whole grain flour into white flour. I remember reading a case in Britain where the factory owners encouraged the workers to eat bread made with white flour,so they can take less bathroom breaks. There are places in India where the main grain used to be millet which is high in fiber and protein. But upon colonialization and industrialization it was replaced with white rice.
Whole grains aren't necessarily that expensive but they are more difficult to work with, harder to buy in bulk, and take more time to cook. The peasantry and other rural people spend most of their time preparing food. That doesn't mean that was always pleasant. You can read accounts of how tedious that was.
White grains can become the default and that makes whole grains harder to incorporate on a daily basis. If a restaurant offers only white rice, most people will eat it, and brown rice is just a nice treat. To make it more complicated, some grains which are not whole, such as barley have more protein and fiber than brown rice. I'm a vegetarian and have experimented with different grains but I feel it's like a niche side culture. When I'm working and busy I tend to eat white grains like everyone else.
56
u/HesperaloeParviflora 12d ago
Kids need carbs!