Meme Roth: Rock Bottom

Hopefully you haven't heard of  Meredith aka "Meme" Roth yet.  She's the FOX TV regular, an "expert" in nutrition and founder of an anti-obesity group.  She honed her skills working in public relations for Fortune 500 companies...

She is known for telling the "truth," but seems more like an Ann Coulter PR machine looking for press and notoriety by saying outrageous and harmful things. She calls people fat, berates and shames in the name of health.

The Guardian did an article on her which exposes her own fraught relationship with food. She skips breakfast, has a strict rule that she doesn't eat until "after a workout" which might not happen until 4 pm, or not at all. Food is her enemy, and she wants to make it yours too.

Beware of advice from "experts." Meredith is a PR machine with a vengeance, and the Valerie Bertinelli clones survive on 1200 calories a day (the same amount acceptable and described as enhanced interrogation at Guantanamo...) Roth has at a minimum disordered eating, even if it "works for her."

More important than her own eating is her message. Shame and fear are not good motivators for positive change. In fact, shame and fear are well documented to make people exercise less and eat in ways that are less healthy and nurturing. I can only hope that Meme Roth and others like her are the harbingers of "rock bottom" with America's relationship to food- and it can only get better from there.