Everything Is Political series

What Ozempic, Food Deserts, and Diet Culture Have in Common (Hint: It’s White Supremacy)

June 22, 2026

This episode is for you if you’ve ever felt ashamed of what’s in your grocery cart — or want language for why “just eat healthy” ignores where healthy food is, and isn’t, actually available.

Becky and Taina talk with registered dietitian Shana Spence — known online as The Nutrition Tea — about how deeply political food really is. They start with food deserts: the technical definitions (a mile without a grocery store in cities, ten miles in rural areas), the redlining that shaped which neighborhoods have real grocery stores versus corner bodegas, and all the barriers — disability, cost, land, time, generational knowledge — that “just eat better” completely ignores.

From there, the conversation turns to GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic — the real medical need for people managing diabetes, versus the explosion of celebrity-driven cosmetic use and the malnourishment risk nobody’s talking about — and how Eurocentric beauty standards have shaped, decade by decade, which bodies get celebrated and which get pathologized. Shana’s core question threads through all of it: are you in pursuit of thinness, or are you in pursuit of health?

About our guest

Shana Spence is a registered dietitian and nutritionist working in public health in New York City, known online as The Nutrition Tea for her Instagram and Threads presence calling out diet culture misinformation. She’s the author of Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame and Reclaim Joy.

In This Episode, We Get Into:

• What actually counts as a food desert — a mile without a grocery store in cities, ten miles in rural areas — and why even that measure ignores mobility, disability, and public transit access
• Redlining’s fingerprint on which neighborhoods have real grocery stores and which have only corner stores and bodegas
• Why “just grow your own food” ignores land, space, cost, and generational knowledge most people were never handed down
• The shame spiral around “convenience foods” — canned and frozen food as legitimate nourishment, not a moral failing
• GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic: the real medical need for people managing diabetes, versus the explosion of celebrity-driven cosmetic use
• Shana’s core question: are you in pursuit of thinness, or are you in pursuit of health?
• The malnourishment risk nobody’s talking about when GLP-1s suppress hunger in people who don’t medically need them
• How Eurocentric, white-supremacist beauty standards have shaped which bodies get celebrated and which get pathologized, decade by decade
• Government subsidies flowing to large factory farms instead of the small, local growers actually feeding communities
• Book recommendations: Shana’s own Live Nourished, plus Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison, Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, and The Body Liberation Project by Chrissy King