Why Beauty Culture is a Cousin of Diet Culture with Elise Hu

Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS

Health & Fitness, Nutrition, Mental Health

4.7 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Journalist, podcaster, and author Elise Hu joins us to discuss her background with modeling and disordered eating, why beauty culture is a cousin of diet culture, Elise’s experience with intense beauty standards in Korea, and the realities of pushing back against performances of femininity.

Behind the paywall, Christy and Elise discuss the rise of K-Beauty globally, problematic K-Pop body ideals, the lack of mental health support in many Asian countries, and how the technological gaze is reshaping beauty standards online and around the world.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Elise Hu is a journalist, podcaster, author and most recently, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Currently she’s the host of TED Talks Daily, the flagship podcast from TED conferences. You can also hear her as the co-host of Forever 35 and the host of Raising Us. Her book, FLAWLESS, came out in 2023. It’s a non-fiction exploration of beauty, consumerism, and womanhood.

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod.

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and
0:07.5	intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free
0:13.5	and finally, breathe. Welcome to Food Psych, a podcast dedicated to critiquing diet and wellness
0:18.8	culture and answering your questions about intuitive
0:21.2	eating and the anti-diet approach. I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian,
0:26.5	certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist and author of the book's anti-diet, the wellness
0:31.1	trap, and the new emotional eating, chronic dieting, binge eating, and body image workbook,
0:36.0	which are all available wherever you get
0:37.5	your books or at Christy Harrison.com slash books. That's Christyharrison.com slash books.
0:43.8	And by the way, on this show, we avoid diet culture details like weight and calorie numbers,
0:48.2	but we don't censor swear words or other adult language, so listener discretion is advised.
1:13.6	Yeah. adult language, so listener discretion is advised. Hey there. Hey there. Welcome back to Food Psych. This episode is a crosspost from my other podcast, Rethinking Wellness, that I think you'll really enjoy. It deals with themes of
1:28.0	disordered eating and recovery from diet and wellness culture, and my guest has a lot of
1:32.3	great insight to offer. Check out the show notes for their bio and all their links, and I can't
1:37.3	wait to share the conversation with you in just a moment. Intuitive Eating Fundamentals, the online
1:42.4	course I created to help you make peace with food,
1:44.8	is now available as an evergreen, self-paced course with lifetime access.
1:49.5	It teaches you how to recognize and reject diet culture, take pleasure in food and stop
1:54.1	fighting your desires, tune back into your body's signals of hunger and fullness,
1:58.8	end the restrict binge or restrict rebound cycle, navigate emotional
2:02.7	eating and learn new coping skills, and most importantly, I think, avoid turning intuitive eating
2:07.8	into a sneaky diet. Sign up now for instant access to hundreds of hours of supportive content,
	...

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