Is Mary Beth Albright Food’s Best Hope?

The Austin Chronicle, By A. Richmond

Food and emotional eating panel packed to the omega-3 soaked gills

Mary Beth Albright – culture, food, and mental health writer for the Washington Post and public health lawyer – sparkled as she discussed the subject of her latest book to an absolutely packed room at SXSW on March 11.

Eat & Flourish: How Food Supports Emotional Well-Being (Countryman Press) combines her engaging voice with science and research, some from the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry, which suggests diet may be associated with disorders like schizophrenia, psychosis, and dementia. Albright seeks to redefine emotional eating, emphasizes getting pleasure from food, and wants to subvert “diet” “culture.”

Albright spoke of the emotional eating cycle we all have the potential to fall into, and how we may make the cycle vicious, or virtuous. Regarding getting more pleasure from food, Albright said that science shows that when people eat communally, they may eat a larger portion than when dining alone, but people who eat communally often have better health outcomes than those who don’t. But in diet culture, eating more is always seen as worse. Not so in science. Albright calls this phenomenon “the feast paradox.”