Last week I was trying to find something on the newsletter using my phone and instead of typing the URL, I Googled 'can i have another snack'. On my laptop I have Google's AI generated overview blocked; I am not chill about AI for reasons that we don't need to get into right now. But I haven't figured out how to block it on my phone yet. So instead of taking me to the site, it spat out this garbage:
Let's unpack:
Yes you can have another snack, if your body is genuinely hungry between meals.
Ok fine, I'm glad it led with yes, have the snack. But do we really need the judgy qualifier? I don't think so.
And then in terms of the when to snack, it's demonising eating for any reason other than hunger, which as dietitian and friend of the pod Jessica Wilson often says, is like only having sex for procreation. I've talked before about the complicated reasons we might eat our feelings and how we can sense into our appetite if we've been feeling disconnected.
I feel whatever about balancing meals if that feels supportive to you, but feel confident that they don't need to be perfectly balanced all the time; like you're not going to die if you don't have a veggie with lunch.
But holee shitsticks what are these snack suggestions? I mean, of course AI defaults to 'healthy' snacks. Of course it's an almond mom. Of course it doesn't encourage pleasure or joy or satisfaction. Just boring, cold, diet-y snacks.
We know that AI is biased towards Western ways of knowing and seeing the world, which is to say it's racist as hell. So it would make sense that AI has a diet-y, fatphobic lilt to it too. Look, none of these snacks are inherently fatphobic. I love apple slices dipped in peanut butter (preferably sweet and salty Pip and Nut). But this is so sad, surely we can do better than this?
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