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The New Food Fight: How the Weight Management and Eating Disorder Fields Became So Divided and What We Can Do About It
Eat this, not that. Enjoy all foods in moderation. Love yourself. Lose weight. These are just a few of the contradictory messages many of us face every day. No wonder we've never felt more confused about what to eat, how our bodies "should" look, and what it means to be "healthy."
Through personal narratives, clinical examples, extant research, as well as expert and stakeholder insights, The New Food Fight offers an incisive guide to the complex and increasingly polarized fields of eating disorders and weight management. Written with both expertise and empathy, the authors unpack common myths, address misinformation, and provide compelling recommendations to unite two fields that, as it turns out, may be more alike than they are different.
A must-read for anyone who has grappled with body image concerns, deliberated over what to eat, or found themselves torn between self-acceptance and wanting to change their body.
Through personal narratives, clinical examples, extant research, as well as expert and stakeholder insights, The New Food Fight offers an incisive guide to the complex and increasingly polarized fields of eating disorders and weight management. Written with both expertise and empathy, the authors unpack common myths, address misinformation, and provide compelling recommendations to unite two fields that, as it turns out, may be more alike than they are different.
A must-read for anyone who has grappled with body image concerns, deliberated over what to eat, or found themselves torn between self-acceptance and wanting to change their body.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published July 15, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 19, 2025
As a dietitian who considers herself pretty well-versed in weight and weight bias, I had no idea how much this book needed to be written - or that this book even COULD be written. An absolute must read for any healthcare professional who treats humans - and anyone interested in an unbelievably compassionate review of how weight impacts both physical and mental health - and how truly complicated the issue really is.
Also, impressive that my ONLY criticism as a dietitian of a book on this topic that did not include a dietitian as an author, is simply a couple slightly unfair criticisms of Intuitive Eating, and giving credit to a wretched Washington Post article! 😂 Kudos!
Also, impressive that my ONLY criticism as a dietitian of a book on this topic that did not include a dietitian as an author, is simply a couple slightly unfair criticisms of Intuitive Eating, and giving credit to a wretched Washington Post article! 😂 Kudos!
July 1, 2026
This is a long one: brace yourself😅
I was pretty excited to read this book because this is the topic I'll be grappling with as I do my PhD work, and I was hoping to latch onto some pieces of common ground between the fields to help me start thinking of research questions. I wholeheartedly agree that there's a huge divide between the weight management and eating disorder fields, and it's obviously doing real harm to patients. The authors deserve credit for trying to bridge this gap and hold both sides accountable. This matters, and parts of this book do it well, but, disappointingly, I finished with a lot more frustration than I expected because a lot of the book's arguments undercut themselves. I think it's important to write a critical review, even though pushing back like this runs a little against the book's own spirit of good-faith dialogue across the divide. But the weight management side already has far more funding, research infrastructure, and marketing behind it than the eating disorder field does, which is part of why I think this book leans on weight-management framing more than it realizes, without applying the same scrutiny to it that it applies elsewhere. Staying critical, even in a conversation meant to be productive, feels like part of the point.
What it does well:
The call for universal weight stigma training was one of the strongest parts of the book. The eating disorder screening recommendation (before, during, and after any treatment, whether it’s behavioral, pharmacological, or surgical) is exactly right and should be the standard of care everywhere. And I appreciated the moment of honesty surrounding GLP-1s, where the authors acknowledged their views might shift as more research comes in. This was written before GLP-1s really blew up, so it’s interesting to put those sections into perspective now, and I’d be curious to see what they think now.
Where it falls short:
As an (almost) dietitian, I have to point out that this is a book with an entire chapter on food and nutrition, written without a registered dietitian on the author team. The chapter brings up the Washington Post piece about RDs and food-industry funding and ultra-processed food research without ever engaging the real critique of that research. The NOVA classification system's definition of "ultra-processed" is notoriously loose and inconsistently applied. Additionally, “food addiction” is brought up without a real opposing view. And the traffic light system is offered as an alternative to intuitive eating without ever reckoning with the fact that it does the same thing intuitive eating is criticized for: it creates food rules. Telling someone "cut out junk food" is a restriction, full stop, whether or not you dress it up as flexible.
The intuitive eating chapter has a similar problem…the authors quote someone who tried intuitive eating and said it just felt like another diet, and treat that as evidence against the framework, when in reality, it's likely evidence that the person wasn't practicing it correctly. They do this a few times: raise a real edge case (bariatric surgery, severe insulin resistance, whatever) and use it to cast doubt on the whole framework rather than actually reckon with it as an edge case. And they clearly don't understand HAES as well as they think they do. At one point, they argue HAES principles should apply to patients of any body size, which is, verbatim, what HAES already says.
The part that bothered me most is the sleight of hand around what actually "works." The authors spend real energy on the point that weight loss interventions don't work long-term, pivot to criticizing diet culture, and then land on: some treatments work better than others, specifically behavioral lifestyle treatments. Yeah, do you think this might be because the ones that "work" are the ones built around health behaviors rather than the number on the scale??? Weight is not a behavior. They get right up to this insight and then walk past it. The GLP-1 section also has the same issue: the drugs are framed as the new frontier without grappling with what a growing body of research is now showing about weight regain after discontinuation. Granted, this is a gap that's much easier to spot from where we're sitting now than when this was written, but still a gap.
The bariatric surgery discussions were where I wanted the book to slow down the most, and it didn't. It's referenced repeatedly and favorably ("highly beneficial for most people") without ever sitting with the real complication and reoperation rates or the psychological toll surgery can carry, especially for people with disordered eating histories. Same with the "obesity is a chronic, relapsing condition, so we don't abandon treatment just because it's hard" argument late in the book. Earlier, the authors were also arguing that many people at higher weights are metabolically healthy. Those two claims don't sit comfortably next to each other, and the book doesn't reconcile them.
I also wanted more on patient autonomy and informed consent in the context of a weight loss industry that spends enormous money on marketing that makes truly informed consent hard to come by. The book raises patient-centered care as a value, but doesn't follow it all the way into how much of the "choice" here is manufactured. The one quote I did love was from a patient who described feeling shamed "from the middle,” being judged no matter what they chose to do with their own body. That's the tension the whole book should have been built around, in my opinion.
Bottom line:
I don't think this book should be dismissed by any means. I’m glad I read it. The effort to speak across the divide is worth something, and there are individual arguments here I fully agree with. But on the food and nutrition content specifically, the absence of a dietitian's voice is a real gap, and on the bigger picture, it didn’t seem very neutral to be.
I was pretty excited to read this book because this is the topic I'll be grappling with as I do my PhD work, and I was hoping to latch onto some pieces of common ground between the fields to help me start thinking of research questions. I wholeheartedly agree that there's a huge divide between the weight management and eating disorder fields, and it's obviously doing real harm to patients. The authors deserve credit for trying to bridge this gap and hold both sides accountable. This matters, and parts of this book do it well, but, disappointingly, I finished with a lot more frustration than I expected because a lot of the book's arguments undercut themselves. I think it's important to write a critical review, even though pushing back like this runs a little against the book's own spirit of good-faith dialogue across the divide. But the weight management side already has far more funding, research infrastructure, and marketing behind it than the eating disorder field does, which is part of why I think this book leans on weight-management framing more than it realizes, without applying the same scrutiny to it that it applies elsewhere. Staying critical, even in a conversation meant to be productive, feels like part of the point.
What it does well:
The call for universal weight stigma training was one of the strongest parts of the book. The eating disorder screening recommendation (before, during, and after any treatment, whether it’s behavioral, pharmacological, or surgical) is exactly right and should be the standard of care everywhere. And I appreciated the moment of honesty surrounding GLP-1s, where the authors acknowledged their views might shift as more research comes in. This was written before GLP-1s really blew up, so it’s interesting to put those sections into perspective now, and I’d be curious to see what they think now.
Where it falls short:
As an (almost) dietitian, I have to point out that this is a book with an entire chapter on food and nutrition, written without a registered dietitian on the author team. The chapter brings up the Washington Post piece about RDs and food-industry funding and ultra-processed food research without ever engaging the real critique of that research. The NOVA classification system's definition of "ultra-processed" is notoriously loose and inconsistently applied. Additionally, “food addiction” is brought up without a real opposing view. And the traffic light system is offered as an alternative to intuitive eating without ever reckoning with the fact that it does the same thing intuitive eating is criticized for: it creates food rules. Telling someone "cut out junk food" is a restriction, full stop, whether or not you dress it up as flexible.
The intuitive eating chapter has a similar problem…the authors quote someone who tried intuitive eating and said it just felt like another diet, and treat that as evidence against the framework, when in reality, it's likely evidence that the person wasn't practicing it correctly. They do this a few times: raise a real edge case (bariatric surgery, severe insulin resistance, whatever) and use it to cast doubt on the whole framework rather than actually reckon with it as an edge case. And they clearly don't understand HAES as well as they think they do. At one point, they argue HAES principles should apply to patients of any body size, which is, verbatim, what HAES already says.
The part that bothered me most is the sleight of hand around what actually "works." The authors spend real energy on the point that weight loss interventions don't work long-term, pivot to criticizing diet culture, and then land on: some treatments work better than others, specifically behavioral lifestyle treatments. Yeah, do you think this might be because the ones that "work" are the ones built around health behaviors rather than the number on the scale??? Weight is not a behavior. They get right up to this insight and then walk past it. The GLP-1 section also has the same issue: the drugs are framed as the new frontier without grappling with what a growing body of research is now showing about weight regain after discontinuation. Granted, this is a gap that's much easier to spot from where we're sitting now than when this was written, but still a gap.
The bariatric surgery discussions were where I wanted the book to slow down the most, and it didn't. It's referenced repeatedly and favorably ("highly beneficial for most people") without ever sitting with the real complication and reoperation rates or the psychological toll surgery can carry, especially for people with disordered eating histories. Same with the "obesity is a chronic, relapsing condition, so we don't abandon treatment just because it's hard" argument late in the book. Earlier, the authors were also arguing that many people at higher weights are metabolically healthy. Those two claims don't sit comfortably next to each other, and the book doesn't reconcile them.
I also wanted more on patient autonomy and informed consent in the context of a weight loss industry that spends enormous money on marketing that makes truly informed consent hard to come by. The book raises patient-centered care as a value, but doesn't follow it all the way into how much of the "choice" here is manufactured. The one quote I did love was from a patient who described feeling shamed "from the middle,” being judged no matter what they chose to do with their own body. That's the tension the whole book should have been built around, in my opinion.
Bottom line:
I don't think this book should be dismissed by any means. I’m glad I read it. The effort to speak across the divide is worth something, and there are individual arguments here I fully agree with. But on the food and nutrition content specifically, the absence of a dietitian's voice is a real gap, and on the bigger picture, it didn’t seem very neutral to be.
June 30, 2026
This book took a while for me to get through, as I found reading it to be incredibly frustrating. I’m glad I read it because the authors are addressing an important topic in the field. Yet as someone who identifies as a weight inclusive provider - I didn’t in any way feel the authors accomplished their goal of bridging the divide. I imagine if I attempted to write this book, they would be left feeling the same.
The issues I have with the book are too numerous to delineate here. But I do think a book which strives to accurately articulate “both sides” and find common ground has a greater likelihood of success if co-authored from “both sides.”
If I end up writing a blog series critiquing the book, I’ll post a link here.
The issues I have with the book are too numerous to delineate here. But I do think a book which strives to accurately articulate “both sides” and find common ground has a greater likelihood of success if co-authored from “both sides.”
If I end up writing a blog series critiquing the book, I’ll post a link here.
June 22, 2026
What an incredible, well-written book! I appreciated that the team of authors had diverse clinical, research, and academic experiences through which they used to produce this fantastic read. I feel like anyone, including scientists, clinicians, as well as anyone who would like to learn more personally, would benefit from this book. The authors did a great job acknowledging any potential trial biases, describing the rationale for language used, and integrating real world examples.
July 18, 2026
This book is wild. So much logic that then leads to mistaken conclusions. So much misinterpretation of data and clinical experiences. In one sentence they call out and decry weight stigma while the next sentence is completely weight stigmatizing. They say they want to listen to all voices and then they don’t listen to the voices who oppose their stance. What a sad blind book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews