This book is a vital read for everyone. With the increasing prevalence of eating disorders, particularly among young people, the influence of social media in promoting extreme body ideals cannot be ignored.

Many readers may find that this book confronts their long-held beliefs regarding food, weight, and the impact of parental influence on children's eating behaviors and self-image. For others, it may feel like a return to familiar truths—insights they've always sensed but have never encountered in such a powerful and articulate manner.

If the word "Fat" in the title makes you uneasy, this book is especially relevant for you. Despite its striking cover, the content is filled with empathy and is accessible to all. Sole-Smith encourages readers to explore the effects of diet culture on children and to challenge its damaging narratives, reflecting on her journey of understanding food and body image throughout her career as a journalist and her experiences as a mother.

Fat Talk is a deeply insightful and empathetic examination of how diet culture affects children and their relationship with their bodies. Sole-Smith draws on extensive research, interviews, and personal anecdotes to shed light on the pervasive and often harmful messages about body image and food that children encounter. The book is not only informative but also provides practical advice for parents on fostering a healthier, more positive environment. I think this book is essential reading for all parents, and I have used these approaches in my own parenting, in order to create a healthy relationship with food for my kids.

As someone who grew up as a fat child, this is a book that I wish my parents would have read. It helped me heal my own inner child and relationship with the word fat. Now a mother myself, it gave me great insights on ways to help raise my daughter to have a healthy relationship with food, her body, and others with different body types than hers.

I have been reading Sole-Smith's blog for a while and so was excited to read her book. She does an excellent job of outlining all the ways fatphobia hurts our kids. She debunks so many of the myths and assumptions of diet culture that permeate parenting advice, medical community, and mainstream media. A must read for parents!

This book is such an important contribution to the conversation around anti-fat bias. I could relate on many levels and felt seen. I recommend this book to anyone on a journey toward self love and body neutrality, especially parents who want to undo the damage done to them.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

This is such an important book about the impact diet culture and anti-fat bias can have on children and teenagers. It's a book that both educates on the topic and offers some suggestions for how to combat the anti-fat bias kids are being exposed to.

Content warning: eating disorders, fat phobia

One of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I felt so loved and strong as I read this. I learned a lot and reinforced my therapy from five years ago when I was in disordered eating recovery. Things I felt I had forgotten or felt crazy for thinking were backed up by doctors, dietitians, and others in this book. It’s well-researched and many additional resources are provided in the back.
As soon as I get paid, I’m buying a copy for myself so I can reference it all the time. There is so much wonderful content in here, especially as a person who frequently works with kids.

Read it! Fat Talk is urgently needed. As a psychologist and mother of three daughters, I found Fat Talk compelling and eye-opening; Virginia Sole-Smith helped me challenge biases I did not even know that I had! I encourage anyone--but especially parents, educators, and pediatricians--to read this vital book.

FAT TALK was the only nonfiction book I wanted to read this year and it is absolutely everything I thought it would be.

Thanks to @henryholtbooks for the advance copy, out April 25.

I believe this is a book that all parents, educators, and anyone who interacts with children should read.

There’s so much about the impact of diet culture, what a changing body means in the world we live, and the complicated way we all interact with food + bodies + wellness + weight.

Just as Virginia Sole-Smith says, teaching “kids to be curious and critical thinkers…means helping them learn to identify these problems and start advocating for change themselves”.

As a frequent reader of anti-diet books, this one stands out. It does provide the standard science to convince you that thin does not equal healthy, but it also does much more. It walks you through fostering kids' body autonomy, it encourages you to rethink what family mealtime is actually about, it demonstrates how vital intersectional fat liberation is. Sole-Smith's willingness to approach all of this complexity with compassion for those of us muddling through the unlearning process is of note. She presents stories of parenting choices that align with mine, and ones in direct opposition to mine--but she guides the reader through these stories with a theme: most of us are doing what we think is best. And what we each think is best has been manipulated by bad science and damaging stigma. Sole-Smith is a breath of parenting content fresh air.

I have two girls, and I felt that there were many tips and tricks that I could immediately implement in my life and with my family. A must read for anyone with daughters.

This book is good a flipping the script on obesity. As a parent of an overweight child, we have put a lot of pressure on ourselves and gotten one narrative from health professionals. This is a game change and recognizes my child's right to dignity in a way the dominant narratives of US cultures do not.

I was only a couple of chapters into this book when I started actively using it in my parenting life. If you're hoping to destroy pervasive anti-fat bias, impossible beauty standards, and diet culture with and for your kid's generation, you need this book. Even if you don't have a young person in your life, Fat Talk will help you think differently about your own body and biases. I can't recommend it highly enough. All bodies are good bodies! All hail Virginia Sole-Smith and everyone else fighting this good fight.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

Gosh this book is incredible. It was simultaneously triggering as hell as a fat person who grew up absolutely steeped in diet culture, but also revolutionary in giving me concrete tools for parenting my own children. It’s an incredible mix of interviews and research, impeccably sourced and cited, and also a practical and accessible read. This book will stay with me for a long time.

I voluntarily reviewed an early copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Informative, well-researched, interesting, fast-paced. Really appreciated how the book is divided and the clear heading structure. It is extremely comprehensive for being so short, and it leads with compassion for parents trying to do the best for kids.

It is going to take me awhile to fully digest what I learned from this book. It’s hard to be forced to see the anti-fat bias I unconsciously hold but I’m so glad I read this so that I can try to raise my kids with a different mindset.

This is painstakingly researched and the author has data to back up all her points. I think this is an important book for both fat and straight-sized parents to read regardless of what size your children are.

I can freely admit that, having grown up part of the “clean plate club” generation, some of the recommendations around feeding your children felt a little too radical for me. But I definitely learned some things that will reshape how we talk about different kinds of foods in our house. And I love that the author acknowledges the difficulty in changing a mindset that you’ve grown up with…it’s a journey and you don’t have to get there all at once.

Very interesting read and I highly recommend!

Every parent should read this book. Virginia Sole-Smith does a masterful job of challenging the reader to confront their own beliefs and anti-fat bias. It’s a challenging read but there is hope sprinkled throughout. There is a mix of scientific research and case studies that makes this book accessible and readable. I highly recommend this book.

I had a very hard time getting through this book it took me months to get through and I ended up skimming a lot. While it was very researched and had a lot of examples, it felt very one sided and seemed to ignore other research that has been done regarding health concerns.

If you have ever taken a public health or nutrition class, or you have ever seen a Chloe Ting or blogilates workout video on your YouTube, I urge you to read this book. If you are raising a child, or will soon, I also urge you to read this. Everyone should have to read the first three chapters, as the false equivalence between weight and health is unpacked really well. The book also has a strong ending, seems well-researched, and for the most part, incorporates good cases of the topic at hand. The social media chapter doesn’t always flow and is the most surface level, which is disappointing. The chapter about athletics loses its thread from the rest of the book, in my opinion. Still—this book is an important and timely work of nonfiction, and I recommend it highly to all.