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Food Blogs and Food Shaming
When niching down turns from promoting a way of eating to vilifying everyone who doesn’t
Whenever I recommend the food blog Nom Nom Paleo, I find myself saying, “She’s funny, draws cute cartoons, is pretty rational about incorporating the whole Paleo thing into real life, and she doesn’t do the food shaming thing.”
Too often, food bloggers go on and on and on about how eating certain kind of foods is bad. Awful. Shameful. To be avoided at all costs.
Generally, you’re going to a food blog to find a recipe for the ingredients you have on hand. Instead you get a whopping dose of guilt that you might have ever dared to feed your child a Cheerio. Store-bought refined grains — gasp! — you’re poisoning your offspring with the tears of the devil! Etc., etc.
Don’t even get me started on the misapplied science — like when food bloggers tell you that their recipe is good for colds because it has honey instead of sugar in it. Yes, honey has antibacterial properties … when slathered on a wound, but not when ingested. Some kinds of honey can help with a cough when taken by the spoonful … but not when baked into a muffin.
The problem with niching down in the world of food blogging is that you get so focused on a certain type of eating — and…
