Bear can dream and we will show it to each other through our actions and through our deeds Smith gave Morehouse one and a half $1000000.00 in January to fund a scholarship and build a park on campus he also received an honorary degree from the college for n.p.r. News I'm Sam Whitehead in Atlanta meteorologist are predicting some severe weather across portions of the Southern Plains Monday including wind hail and heavy rain there might be tornadoes in Oklahoma several school districts have already canceled classes I'm nor Rahm n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Carnegie Corporation of New York supporting innovations in education democratic and Gage ments and the advancements of international peace and security more information is available online at Carnegie dot org And Americans for the Arts The Splendid Table is supported by United States Postal Service offering us postage stamps for purchase a checkout and more than 40000 participating supermarkets drugstores office suppliers banks and wholesale clubs. And by context travel privately guided have to multi day tours in 60 cities worldwide led by local experts an art cuisine architecture and more context travel is dedicated to uncovering the d.n.a. Of that special place more at Radio dot com text Travel dot com. I'm Francis lamb and this is The Splendid Table from 8 pm the show for curious cooks in. May is mental health awareness March and our colleagues at American Public Media have created call to mind an initiative to help foster new conversations about mental health. When they talk with us and are doing an episode on mental health issues and food. I'll be honest I I was assured on I was afraid I'd say something wrong or. I don't want to offend anyone living with a mental illness or just make things worse you know and. And then I realize. And that's. If we were just avoiding the conversation because of the hard or frankly because I was afraid of talking about it. We just before the problem we'd be helping to keep these issues in the dark. So here we are with this episode we shied to put it together with humility we might make some mistakes we know we don't know how to fix things though we will point the way to some information or counseling resources for people who want them but. What we really felt was important was just to listen. To and hear from people telling their own stories we want to respect those stories and just be grateful to our guests for sharing a piece of themselves and they give us a lot to think about. They show us a pain and their hope and doesn't laugh a little too. So in the show we'll listen to Stephanie Cutter intern Armstrong tell us about living with eating disorders and the particular experience of living with them as a black woman in the Verjee Tovar who tells us the mental health implications of fat phobia and diet culture go well beyond those of us with this order. And we start with a conversation about substance use this order and excess something that affects so many people but especially in the restaurant and hospitality industry it's an industry we hold dear because it's where we celebrate our good times and it's where we indulge to release our stress but it's also one that's filled with people who deal with anxiety and substance use David Millan is one of the owners of job before Estrada in Montreal a legendary palace of food and drink. He realized after years running the place that he was dealing with something serious himself and he's here to talk with us about his journey to sobriety. Day Thanks so much for talking with us thank you for having me so for pretty much as long as I can remember in the food world the story has always been hey if you want to go party if you really want to go to a party going to Montreal get a job beef right like the reputation you guys have had for good times is legendary So maybe let's start there what do you feel guests saw or still see when they come to the restaurant Well you know 1st it's kind of like a way that we practice the restaurant business in Montreal there's a very cold climate cabin culture and a certain French Canadian hospitality that is of. Quarterback right that we are brought up in that we understand to practice the restaurant business in right. So yeah Joe Beef is a special occasion festive restaurant. That doesn't take itself too seriously where we cook very good food and we like to celebrate life so that means a Perry teef that means champagne that means white wine out of magnums that means of red wine out of magnums it means cheese before dessert it means dishes for 2 or 4 duck for 4 rabbit for 2 and shared appetizers just cover the table with food while God truffles all of those things at the end of your meal before we send you home all of those things right and I mean that sounds amazing I'm fundamentally not it is we practice be strong French cooking and you know in a celebratory way yeah but you also say that you built the restaurant on your letter and that you know you at some point. Took in that scene were part of the scene made that seem but that start affect you in a way maybe different than some of the guest Tell me about that everything was fine for many many years of course I apprenticed under you know great great shafts of that lived the wine and food lifestyle I live the wine and food lifestyle when I traveled it was to go to other restaurants when I wasn't in restaurants I was visiting vineyards and wineries and. Distilleries. And it went really well till it didn't I just felt like alcohol was a constant my life being David McMillan of Joe Beef. The social pressure of having chefs from all over the world visiting the restaurant and wanting to partake in this legendary you know job if experience became daily for me it became it when I went to the lake up north with my neighbors have became that way when I received family over at that I might cry in my private home it became that way every night at the restaurant so that I would realize that I lived in a grandiose eating and drinking lifestyle 7 days a week you know $28.00 days a month 364 days a year I drank wine and ate rich every day to the point where I was no longer interested somewhat in the rich foods of the world through the there there wasn't a line that could that I had that I found interesting anymore right. And I'd been drinking some of the finest wines in the world and I got to a place where I was no longer happy where I had trouble breaking away from my daily . Life of being David McMillan of job Eve Yeah so it's you know suddenly you weren't a person you were a persona and her on the right I said turn the show on I lived somewhat of a very private life I'm an introvert during the day you know I focus on business I spend a lot of time alone in the office. I spend quality time with my family my children but then they're on 4 o'clock you know one of my wine bars opens at 3 and it's quite busy so you know 3 o'clock all the wine kids show up at the wine bar and the tasting of wine would begin at 3 and then at 6 o'clock more people show up at the restaurant next door Joe Beef and my other restaurant fills up at 630 Liverpool house next door so then I'm hopping from one restaurant to the other I've got glasses of wine on 20 tables I'm telling stories I'm entertaining and there's always someone there's always a chef from New York is always a wine maker from from from the our valley there's always another chef from Chicago tech coming tomorrow there is always one of my peers coming right it's there's always someone to entertain there's always someone that I have to put the show on even if I didn't feel like it it just became like this is how I earn my living and I get paid by being this legendary tavern keeper who celebrates life with every one right and I was you know I was getting to a point where I I'd assumed that role that I was going to be this unhealthy Orson Welles' type chef who eats and drinks himself to death I was going to be carried out on my shield like back yes you know but it just became unsustainable I I didn't enjoy the restaurant business any more I didn't enjoy the act of cooking I didn't enjoy it wines I didn't enjoy. You know I've built a kind of a cool company with my socio it's and I did I blamed the company you know for my misery I just got into a dark place that I could no longer. See joy in you know right at some point you thought you really had a problem yeah I'd seen a friend of mine Ryan Gray who owns a restaurant called Elaine who'd worked with me for a decade we drank together famously running the restaurants right and he got sober a couple of years before I did and you know at 1st I was like he scared me right he knew something I didn't know he had information that I should get but I wasn't ready to get yet sure. But you know one thing led to another. I felt that the people around me just started realizing that I was kind of caught in a trap but I was that I was going out like on the shield for the for the people and a couple of the managers in the restaurants got together and they called a friend of mine who actually was like you know a famous interventionist. And they just intervened me one day one morning they said listen we feel like you're not happy we found you this help it's a local we'd love you to go there. You seem unhappy you seem in a rut. Will you take the help that we're offering you and I said Yeah you know what I absolutely because I'd been to the point right kind of Googled stop drinking a few times or I'd try to make changes in my life but I could never string together more than 4 days sobriety like I'd literally have to isolate myself at the lake with no friends and white knuckle it like you know. I was always very high functioning like I always got my work done I worked a lot I did restaurant work you know 1214 hours a day but always under the haze of the depressant called alcohol right so a steady stream of depressant day and day out month after month year after year. I ended up at 4747 years old inside of a beautiful company serving terrific food surrounded by terrific people the most miserable person sitting at the top of the Pyramid of the restaurant. So I took the help that was offered to me I learned to nor Miss amount of things in rehab I went to Chatsworth rehabilitation center locally here in Montreal I learned about alcoholism I learned about the 12 steps which I knew nothing about I learnt about codependency I learned about traumatic events in my life that might have you know put me in an area that might be sensitive to you know abusing alcohol or abusing a Medicaid or Social. So once I figured all of these things it was just clear to me you know very clear to me that I could work you know that I had a problem and that I could get through it and I took a little bit of time off I so I sought counsel with my friend Ryan Gray who worked in the restaurant and is a symbol Yeah who buys wine sober. And I spent a little bit of time with him in his restaurant to restaurant not not one of mine his you know just to get my legs back right I did the pass I put on an apron I dispatched food all night you know for about a month I did my 12 hours of hard kitchen labor I drank bottled water I went home exhausted 11 pm I found the bottom of Netflix. And I got my confidence back to be able to go back to my restaurants right once I was in and I went back to my restaurants and today I can say that you edit people can come and I encourage overeating and I encourage celebrate Tory drinking I just realize that I'm one of the people that historically does not drink alcohol responsibly right so now that I know that and now that I'm surrounded by you know people and I go you know I partake in meetings and I have a tight knit group of sober people around me I can participate and and enjoy this this gift I've been given really. Will be back with more from respiratory date McMillin of Joe Beef about how he learned to be back in his restaurants after he became sober and if you're dealing with substance use disorder please know it's not about willpower it's an illness and if you're in crisis we just need someone to talk with you can find train counselors 24 hours a day at the Crisis Text Line text message 274-1741 or call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 180273 talk they're there to text or talk for free whenever you need. To slam and this is The Splendid Table from. Unemployment in the United States is at a near 50 year low people who once struggled to get work are finding new opportunities I don't care what your background is anchored where you came from and what color you are I don't care as long as you come to work every single day and give me everything that you can give me but is this strong job market really a win for everyone I have 2 jobs and I'm still trying to make it that's on the next Morning Edition from n.p.r. News weekday mornings on 89.3 p.c. See. I'm. An l.a. County black babies are 3 times more likely than white babies to die before turning one and there's very little awareness of the problem and I had any of this information I would have done so many things differently and I would have 2 children or not to so many women came to our 1st event on this topic that we're holding a 2nd one focusing on wellness for black moms to be it's Saturday May 25th in South l.a. . Black babies. The Splendid Table is supported by one drop the all in one solution for people with diabetes supplies or home delivered and personal coaches help lower blood sugars more get one drop dot com And by babble a language of the teaches real life conversations in a new language like Spanish French or German battles 10 to 15 minute lessons are available in the app store or online be a b b e l dot com. I'm Francis lamb and this is The Splendid Table to show for curious cokes and eaters we're hearing personal stories today about mental health and food and we've been talking to Dave McMillan chef owner of in Montreal about his journey to sobriety. Left off Dave had gotten help to deal with his substance abuse and now he talks to us about how his restaurant community responded to his sobriety and the challenges of supporting mental health in the industry. One of the most interesting things that happened. I'd say after my participation in sobriety I would say maybe 16 weeks into it people around me and inside my peer group and inside the restaurant started seeking me out I started getting direct messages from my peers I started having people text me wanting to have a coffee with me started realizing that a lot of people in the industry were kind of living what I was living in a parallel way. So I notice that if I was the Viking leader of Joe b. For restaurants and I drank out of magnums every night and I ate and I drank with people and I celebrated daily that I was setting that President in that example inside of my business to the young cooks that look up to me follow me and work for me for sure and as I walked away from that and as I walked back to the fish market as I walked back to the farms as I walked back into the forest to go before a gene for mushrooms again starting to do sober man's activities as I started loving the restaurant industry again and these beautiful businesses that I've built there was a general come to the light across the company I noticed staff drinking went down and all the restaurants across the board like noticeably You know just people started operating out of the glass of wine at the end of their shift or the beer or come or nothing at all then people were texting me they wanted to go fishing with me now they wanted to go mushroom picking with me they wanted to know information that I had they would go home early as I did they would wake up early as I did and I asked Can I go to the fish market with You Can I go to the airport and pick up mushrooms with You Can I come to the lake with you and can you show me which mushrooms are good deed and which art can I go picking ramps with You Can I go to the Lamb farm with you this weekend can I go see the beef guy let you know all of this started happening so as the as the leader at the top of the pyramid get sober it seems that there was a general feeling of wellness across the company and if you look at it and other people have reached out to me you could apply it to many other businesses right the culture of a business not just the restaurant business but any other business might be defined might just be defined by he who is the appointed leader right yeah. I do want to ask though in what ways has it been hard to be back in the industry and back in the restaurant because I think about it too because you have a new book that's out came a few months ago you guys are hilarious the job you guys are known to be hilarious the fact that it's a cookbook called Surviving the apocalypse you know and I thought it was just a joke but so much of the book now knowing this is about getting away from the restaurant Absolutely I look back at that book somehow and. It was you know it's a funny book it's interesting. It was put together possibly in the height of my darkest alcoholism. And there's a pleat in that book somewhere just in the name of the title and the direction or how we even pitched the book was somehow like a scape ism we were already when we were pitching that book exhausted fed up. The book was about not being at the restaurant it was about everything against the restaurant it was about the and is coming it was about let's go to the cottage let's be close with our families it was like an auntie restaurant book that we pitched we made damn sure that every If we're going to work on this book that it's going to be all stuff that. Doesn't chain us to a 6 burner stove next to a deep fryer underneath me on lights right in a white tiled room kitchen is going to feel like insane asylums really quickly. I don't know if I'd write or if I'd pitch surviving the apocalypse right now in my right pitch something more. Joyous Yeah. More salads Yeah yeah exactly have a cot otos. But what has been hard about staying sober where there are people who you know push back on you for changing who want quote the old Dave back in the how do you deal with that kind of thing you know I have to say that people are amazing. I think that my friends who drink you know well are fine with it as long as I don't preach to them or try to recruit them into my program they're all good with that I can sit at the table with anybody and they can drink as much as they want I just don't drink eventually it's strange for 2 minutes I thought beginning because people don't know if they should be drinking around me or not I'm saying like please you know I just break the ice I go listen drink your face off make sure you get home Ok you know the jokes are just as funny if anything I'm just sharper and I don't repeat myself so I enjoy it but I do feel. When it comes to my peers when it comes to line cooks like myself right I kind of sometimes wish that I could have. Drank a bottle of Jarrar wine with with a line. That came all the way from San Francisco that came all the way from Florida or Paris or London right but I get over it quickly because I look back at it and I say I've had more years not sober than sober and this year has been a just a wonderful year in very content and happy attained all the goals that I wanted to in this year and I feel that I'm in love with you know food and wine again right now I thought I drank wine but I'm in love with the geography of wine the history of wine the organic video culture of wine we have a couple of wine businesses as well which I'm excited about the sales aspect of the why right I'm excited about it inventory management. I have excited about the wellness actually the happiness of the kitchen crews that we oversee when I was selfish in my addiction and my alcoholism I didn't I paid less attention to the mental health of the 10 boys and girls working in and he said kitchen right because I was selfish I was more about me and my drinking and what am I doing whereas today when that taken away from me that selfishness is gone I am more concerned about how is the kitchen doing how are the boys and girls doing on the line tonight was it a difficult service so the same vigor and work that I put into drinking. And celebrating I had put into other things now right I put into running that restaurant well yeah right and I've had a lot of fun doing it and to be in love with the restaurant business again something that I thought was killing me Yeah actually in fact find out. That it was a disease alcoholism that was killing me. Has made it so much more fun to actually realize to walk out of rehab and realize that I have this wonderful company of 6 restaurants that are just fun places to be at full of dynamic amazing people yeah what thoughts do you have for someone who might still be struggling with it's you know it's so dark. We've set up inside the restaurant now I'm eating on Sunday nights at one of our restaurants that is kind of like in a meeting it's for people in the restaurant industry in our peer group that want to become sober or are sober to talk really about restaurant experiences and trigger the night life and how to navigate you know the marketing of alcohol the marketer of alcohol right all of those things but I'm very very aware that there are more a lot of people that have issues see you know and when I look back at how unhappy I was. I really really want to help you know people you know it's a slippery slope it's hard to help people unless they want to help themselves so you know it's like I have a list of people that I have an eye on you know and that that know that when they're done and then they want to come in from the cold all have a warm jacket for them. I also understand one thing which is like. Well you know because of who I am now I had a rehabilitation of privilege Right right and you know I had many managers on my payroll helped me to go to a very good very expensive rehabilitation program spending money on therapy on a weekly basis to see good therapists who understand addiction counseling is not an expensive also because I have no fixed job I'm not holding a salad station or in charge of a hollow bit tonight I can take the time to do the work that I need to do to stay sober so when I see young people struggling in the kitchen that are not paid very much money that can't take a week off to seek therapy they can't afford therapy and can't even afford rehab and then once they actually go to rehab they can't even afford to. Pay the month rent their cell phone bill their electricity bill you know just you taking 30 days off from your life has lost legal implications exactly for a lot of people it's impossible especially young line cooks. You know so that something that's been bothering me a lot. I've spoken inside of my peer group of my restaurant friends I said it's funny because we raise so much money for so many different charities but I said when it came time to actually having to help employees not only of my own restaurants but my friends' restaurants there's no funds available 0 right but I you know we probably participated in raising over $2000000.00 for various charities last year but I can't scrape together you know 3000 bucks to send like you know. 30 kids for one hour therapy right so we're working on that we're working on setting up a big dinner and a charity and. Having money available to be able to assist young people yeah. Thank you so much Dave. Thank you kindly for having me. Dave McMillan is a chef owner of Joe Beef of Montreal and the author with Frederick Moran and Meredith Erickson of Joe Beef surviving the apocalypse and if you are experiencing substance use disorder or another mental health condition and want help you can find resources at Splendid Table that word slash mental health. My. Eating disorders are profoundly hard to deal with for people who experience them eating disorders can and feel like they're taking over their lives and the pain is compounded by the fact that all the while people often feel judged and shamed for having them. I'll be honest I used to think they were basically just diets gone wrong until I learned that someone I loved have Alenia. And then she taught me that her world was filled with people telling her what to do demanding that she fix herself and I saw that no one ever really tried to listen to her and it was as if people thought this illness was something she could just snap out which is not at all how it works. A little while back the d.v.c. Show the food chain had a powerful episode on eating disorders specifically and how they affect black communities we wanted to share this piece from the show where the host and least Thomas interviews the writer Stephanie coming to an Armstrong and living with Boomer. I was had kind of a wonky relationship with food is your girl poor and food insecure and there wasn't always enough to eat. Inside a lot of guilt around over eating Stephanie Covington Armstrong is a pay rights and screenwriter and author of Not all black hats ate an account of how she suffered from. Is off to being right when she was 12. Kind of became its own. Kind of devil high could not. And I couldn't it's like a treadmill I couldn't get off I would just gorge and bend and throw up and go to the gym I would do that until I was exhausted and my eyes were bloodshot. For years Stephanie kept trying to soothe the secret. I mean I had from my family finally found out I was throwing up and they can stay with my sister. She confronted me. And rather than talk about my eating disorder I started talking about my childhood rape. Like that was less. Provocative and upsetting and less I was that made me feel less vulnerable then talking about my eating disorder. You know I always I always heard things like well you know black women don't have eating disorders black women are incredibly comfortable with with being large black women are you know so I just felt like I was failing all the way around failing at being the archetype strong black woman. Stephanie suffered in silence until one day on the New York subway she spotted an ad in the back of a. And it said if you have an eating disorder we can help you. And I just remember clutching on to this magazine and thinking this had to be the answer and so I went to this guinea pig program it was at one of the larger hospitals. And I felt like a freak people were just staring at me and. You know because what I've since learned is that women of color don't tend to come forward and. You know it just didn't work I felt it was another experience where I just felt isolated and I felt like the only black woman in the world who didn't know how to eventually Stephanie found a support program which helped to recover but she says accepting help didn't come easily I come from a very proud very proud community who like to keep our secrets and our issues to ourselves it's it's like you don't share what's happening in your household with the outside world and you certainly don't share it with white people you know that's kind of a broad trail and so you learn how to cope on your own I always say why are we one of the only communities that have to struggle in silence that have to you know suffer as if it's some badge of courage when it does this attitude to mental health come from do you think I mean it's just like a holdover from slavery it's like you're going to go out into the world and trust white people you know when you look at these people of color who have trusted the system and and been burnt I think it's well deserved this lack of trust do you think that eating disorders is still seen as a white woman's problem or do you think perceptions have changed eating disorders are seen as a white woman's problem they're seen as a gateway to wanting to be white they're seen as black women who want to be mainstream or who want to be skinny they're not seen as a mental health issue they're not seen as a coping mechanism. And I thought if I wrote a book and helped one person understand all people men women who deal with should dress may develop an unhealthy relationship with food so I wrote my book The response was not what I expected when I found the Nischelle e was it was lesbian women why poor women and all kinds of ethnic women but it took a while for the black community to kind of embrace me in the same way I'm one of those that you think. You know it's it's a shameful thing we don't want to talk about the molester uncle we don't want to talk about things in our community that don't bring us pride like we still have one or 2 or 3 black women speaking for the entire community and that is problematical except somebody has to speak why are there so few women speaking. I mean it's certainly not sexy Right like. Like yeah I want to talk about throwing up like you know you can lose all your all your black magic when that's where your conversation. It's just less people are less interested. Stephanie coming in Armstrong is a playwright screenwriter and author of Not all black girls know how to that piece was from the B.B.C.'s food chain with Emily Thomas and if you are someone you know is living with an eating disorder there is help and support you can find resources at Splendid Table dot org slash mental health. Coming up body image activist Verjee Tovar I'm Frances lamb and this is The Splendid Table from a.p.m. Oh boy Kristy Lee host of Live From here today this week for our broadcast from Kansas City Missouri with our guests My Brightest Diamond. Mandolin Ornish and Judy Gold it's way more fun than we're supposed to have a public great Sunday nights at 10.3 k p c c. There is a lot of complex news to keep up with these days that's why you listen to k.p.c. See you trust reporters from k b c c An n.p.r. To take the time to dig for facts and hold our elected official. Accountable this kind of independent trustworthy news coverage relies on your support to make it possible to donate to k. P.c.c. To ensure that honest journalism continues to thrive in your community give now. Thanks. The Splendid Table supported by Alfred a Knopf to eat like a fish by Bren Smith part memoir apartment a festive Smith a commercial fisherman turned restaurant of ocean farmer shares a bold new vision for the future of food and protection of our planet seaweed eat like a fish available now wherever books are sold. I'm Francis lamb and this is the show for curious cooks in the leaders we've devoted our entire episode today to food and mental health people have generously shared their stories over the hour and now we're turning to Verjee Tovar she's a body image activist who says a lot she does isn't about food but about human rights as he's here with us to talk about what that means for mental health. Reasons and. Thank you so much for talking with us I'm really excited talk with you and I want to start actually with tell you a bit about like my happy place right yes so I love going to restaurants my wife and daughter are going away in a couple weeks and I'm going to be sad to miss them but honestly I just keep thinking like where am I going to go for dinner by myself like I can't wait to tell it. Like it really is like for me like restaurant like warm and they're inviting and I really feel like happy when I'm in a restaurant I'll just be sitting in a bar having an appetizer and just feeling like this is great. So who's really eye opening for me when you made me realize that. For a lot of people going to restaurants is not that it's you know actually a really stressful experience so you tell us about that yeah yeah I mean so I think a lot about restaurants in terms of access because I a bigger person and so there's a lot of dimensions and thought that go into a regular experience like going into a restaurant which for many people really enjoy is just kind of a joyful experience for me sort of starts even before I even got to the restaurant so I'm thinking about how much space is there in the waiting area where the line is and am I going to be in the way I think about my favorite coffee place and there is this very narrow area and it always gives me this little hint of anxiety and then I think about what am I going to order and I'm going to have to worry about the people within earshot judging me am I going to have to worry about the cashier thinking some kind of way and I'm going to for instance get the Web cream on the coffee that I like so much because they make it in-house am I going to get that hit of or will she's bigger so she shouldn't be getting whipped cream on her coffee and then there's kind of this other dimension of I'm going to sit and eat the thing or drink the thing because eating in public is really vulnerable when you're a bigger bodied person I think especially if you're a woman and then there's the dimension of the seating am I going to be able to fit in the chair a number one and more importantly perhaps my going to be able to set their comfortably it actually enjoy the thing and so there's kind of all of you has different components that go into it that are sort of hidden that are very real and very layered in the mind of someone like me that's interesting. Even in the food industry want to talk about like it's welcoming it's about bringing people to the table and it's like oh no you literally. Not make a table that many many people who would otherwise be happy to come there you know feel comfortable sitting in yeah I live in San Francisco and it's a very design conscious city and minimalism is kind of the height of design here and this and this moment and I don't know a lot I think a lot of people find minimalist seating for instance to be quite uncomfortable but for me either it's physical discomfort but it's also there's like a mental health hit that happens because I'm used to sort of watch you know restaurant and thinking Oh especially in a city like San Diego this place is not for me this place is for a very thin foodies. And so that tiny chair feeds into a narrative that I don't belong in that's a narrative that I've been taught for a very long time ever since I was a child yeah what other like basic things do thin people or this interview told me straight size people take for granted Yeah I've been thinking so much about this I've always been fat so it's hard for me to have perspective there are moments of realization where it just blows my mind like for instance someone had to explain to me that thin people think that fat people are fat because we we have this rich obscene Lee different lifestyle than 10 people do that we just significantly more and move significantly less than 10 people and essentially this is I mean this is not data supported. You know I can say is on his research this for a decade this is not supported by data and I said she sort of had to sit and explain it about 5 or 6 times for me to be able to understand that oh the data don't matter what matters is that you know this is a discriminatory belief this is like a victim blaming belief and it doesn't make any sense because it doesn't make any sense. But you know a lot of thin people have been taught not to be friends with people so if you don't have any friends you don't know how what our life looks like and then. Up of that there's kind of this confirmation bias where we kind of discard information that goes against whatever deep seated belief we have and we know we kind of lean in very hard to information that confirms what we believe and so there's multiple facts going on there are multiple things that are creating the reality and perception of others but that was a big one I think another one that I'm thinking of this is sort of a more recent sort of area of research that I've been looking into the efficacy of important medications is not tested above a certain weight and this sort of made really international news I think it was last year when they found out that a very popular form of emergency contraception in Europe last efficacy and I think it was 165 pounds and was completely useless I think about 170 pounds and to give context mean this is Europe for sure but like to give context in the United States 68 percent of American women are a size 14 or above meaning that they're sort of at that level. And I think like another example is. Access to even fashion you know like having clothing available to you that makes you feel good that makes you feel seen and for a lot of people lot of people going into a store is a very stressful experience it's a very stigmatizing experience a very shameful experience and so there's this real disempowerment that's built into that feel that discrimination to me with the kind of stress does that yes so there is this phenomenon known as minority stress and it's actually a body of research that looks at the cumulative effect of discrimination and and sort of quantified the physiological effects of stress among people who are marginalized and that includes people you know stress especially ongoing stress affects the function of. The heart it affects the immune system. These are the issues that are connected with higher weight and what minority stress theory is kind of attempting to posit is that it's actually typically the experience of discrimination leads to negative health outcomes in people who are discriminated against and marginalised people so a people actually came out in 2015 that I thought pretty firmly positive that way discrimination could leave to shorten life expectancy and higher weight people and stress manifests a lot of different ways I want to talk about this thing called hyper vigilance sort of this constant state of awareness of how others are perceiving you of attempting to kind of offset those things it's about doing a lot of mental work around a really mental Olympics to try and prevent experiences of discrimination or always being prepared for those moments so when you're a fat person in our culture where it is still socially acceptable to overtly express that negative views I certainly think that that is changing rapidly. We are constantly anticipating cruelty and negativity and you know I think again increasingly there is there's less overt happening in media and maybe even in social interactions in certain places but there are still happening and you never quite know when it's going to hit and when that moment hits it is so utterly dehumanizing and so she 1000000 and I think that it's that humiliation component that can be so deeply painful bigotry and humiliation comes from the fact that you know you're living in a culture that corroborates this cruelty you know it's so interesting because I. This is about a culture society so. What do you say to the arguments that. You know even if you're being pressured be thin will isn't the better to be that way because it's quote healthier for you. There's so much to say to that I mean I want to talk about you know the way that fat phobia taxes all of us but the way isn't white chick kind of really does as you get larger in this culture the way that that tax gets bigger and bigger and bigger Do we have time to talk about this for a 2nd Sure let's do it Ok and then I'm going to address this concern about health. So it's useful to look at type of discrimination like that phobia with a 3 dimensional lens so the 1st dimension I often talk about is the end tribe personal dimension so this is how a person feels about themselves and their body and when we're talking about this level this is where we are seeing a lot of suffering and anguish regardless of size that moment in the mirror that accumulates into hundreds of thousands of moments over a lifetime and then we look at the 2nd dimension which is the inter-personal this is the relational and social dimension so we know for instance that many employers have bias against plus size candidates we know that doctors tend to judge fat patients more harshly and we know that dating is harder for fat people so that those are all things that are happening between people and that's the interpersonal and then there's the 3rd dimension which is the institutional dimension and this is sort of be outside of human exchange dimension it has to do with institutions industry is the world in which you are living an r.v. Systems are institutions accessible to you or not and this includes something like . Education rate like the size of seating in classrooms the size of seating in lecture halls this includes access to fashion what I was talking about earlier so the fashion industry has long neglected the 68 percent of American women who are a size 14 or above and then again not efficacy of medication not being tested above a certain weight are all things that are above the intra and the Inter and make up the world that we're. Gating sure and so when we're talking about the 2nd and 3rd dimension the higher your weight the more you're getting hit on both of those and so this is how we create dimensionality around understanding how this issue affects people across the size spectrum and in terms of health I mean this is really interesting right like in our culture there is a false correlation between food exercise and body size most people who are thin are genetically predisposed towards having a smaller body there are many many many fat people who exercise and eat any number of you know vegetable based diets or what we would consider like nutritious diet and are still fat and I think you know the fact that we don't see this speaks to a lot of things that really speaks to confirmation bias the lack of representation of fat people it speaks to the ways in which then people aren't having meaningful relationships with people generally speaking because of the fear of being stigmatized their proximity. I mean really our attitudes and I can say this with complete confidence our attitudes towards body size are chaotic and they're not data informed and discrimination really does become the area where we as a culture and any culture begins to have blindspots begins to cherry pick data begin of like you know delete certain things and and lean into other is and the truth is we need to accept that the current paradigm around how we understand healthy. We understand food how we understand size is not working. And we need to stop worrying and wondering and questioning why people are the size that they are because at the end of the day every single person deserves respect care a lot of proper medical care for humanity no matter what size they are or why they are that size. Thank you so much heard. Of course. That is activist and author Verjee. Latest book is you have the right to remain fat she's working on a new one called flawless you'll find a whole lot more about Verjee at her numerous projects at Splendid Table dot org And there's also a resource list she created for anyone interested in a positive body image wanting help and support. That as a show for the week thank you so much for listening if you found something here that helps you or help you understand someone else's experience in a new way before we go I also want to tell you about the latest episode of our podcast on the table selects it's another conversation that's part of our mental health programming this month and it's with Dr Drew Ramsey nutritional psychiatry and farmer who talks about the connections between what and how we eat brain function and mental health years ago as I was giving more public speeches about food a surprise myself that I'd use the word suicide and use the word depression and if you talk it's really nervous about that back then and what I found is that everybody meets my gaze in those moments that everybody knows we're talking about every everybody is having this conversation is concerned about their mental health so I do believe it's a way for us to start thinking about mental health as brain health that we're feeding your brain and as we think about brain health and what we can all do to improve our brain health and improve our emotional health I feel that we begin to take on the mental health epidemic together and that's really the only way that we're going to defeat it is if we. We talk about these conditions if we properly diagnose him properly treat them and I believe this new part is we empower patients one of things I like about food is the fun that it brings into the clinical room for me I mean it's really a gas to hear what people eat how they eat their favorite foods the little habits they don't tell people and then it's such a intimate way to know someone and influence them to partner with them and think about really how they nurse themselves in the most granular way with the eat. You can find that conversation with Dr Drew Ramsey in your spine that it will podcast you or it's on the table. As Mental Health Awareness Month and this episode is part of a collaborative partnership with our colleagues a call to mind an initiative from the American Public Media to foster new conversations about mental health you can learn more call to mind now dot org. Was produced by American Public Media and is supported by little passports subscription service for kids with hands on activities souvenirs experiments all designed to spark a child curiosity in the world around learn more a little passports dot com slash radio. By context privately guided have to multi-day tours in 60 cities worldwide led by local experts an art to Xen architecture and more contacts travel is dedicated to uncovering the d.n.a. Of that special place more at Radio dot context Travel dot com. Production team includes senior producer Jennifer Jenni leukemias are editor and technical director Erika Romero is our associate producer is a digital producer Sally Swift is our managing producer special thanks this week to the B.B.C.'s food chain thank you for tonight I'm Francis lamb and this is American Public Media. Good evening everybody it's almost 10 o'clock here at 89.3 k. P.c.c. On a Sunday night hope you're ready for the work week and ready for live from here coming up next followed by the b.b.c. At midnight. With more middle aged women onscreen and behind the camera actor Laura Dern says this is just the start I just think we're breaking this down and we're not going anywhere so there's going to have to get used to us on women in Hollywood and her new film trial by fire that's next time on the takeaway from. The takeaway now on weekday mornings at $9.00. 3. Hours community service or Pasadena City College you can claim your place in the future with over $100.00 special certificates. From American Public Media. Hello and welcome to live from here this week the show is coming to you from the common center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City Missouri with Gaz mandolin orange My Brightest Diamond and Tom Papa Judy Gold joins the radio players Greg has Mike yard and Serena broad and Gabby Marino joined the band Mike Elizondo Tyler Chester Alex Hargraves Chris Eldridge and Trevor Lawrence Jr live from years supported by context travel offering privately guided tours in 60 cities around the world led by local experts in art cuisine architecture and more information at Radio dot context Travel dot com And by new offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology of small goals to help lose weight and keep it off for good to learn more at Newman and the o.m. Dot com. Owned by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company standing up for independent voices and beers since 1008. This is. The city here how many Again I say. I. Happy 2019 everyone we made it. We made it. Through the holidays I'm so happy to be back to work especially here in Kansas City a town The knows a thing or 2 about hard work this is the home of Count Basie the sweat of whose brow you've just heard via his arrangement of the song Kansas City it's the home of the chiefs. This is something I don't know are there people here. In regards to the Chiefs cult bands.