The substance of absence: Exploring eating and anorexia

Both Critical Dietetics and a health at every size (HAES) philosophy actively encourage involvement from people beyond the boundaries traditionally set by professional/academic affiliations. A HAES approach encourages people to use their personal eating narratives as valuable knowledge and to take this embodied experience seriously. It invites them to build a new relationship with food through reconsidering nutrition science, obesity discourses, a role for their own body knowledge and size equality. Preparing the grounds for this shift means engaging people in fresh thinking about the complex inter-relationships and indeed, separations between health, body size and eating. In theorizing HAES we build on work from the HAES community and fat activists that develops a coherent framework for enhancing effective understanding of the problems that surface around anti-obesity discourse, problems of privilege, body-hatred, eating distress, health disparities and hierarchy. These issues have their roots in philosophies of individualism and domination not in calories in and out.