Now with new material, including a new foreword by Kate Manne, a reading guide, and an afterword from the author.

By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids believe that “fat” is bad. By middle school, more than a quarter of them have gone on a diet. What are parents supposed to do?

Kids learn, as we’ve all learned, that thinness is a survival strategy in a world that equates body size and value. Parents worry if their kids care too much about being thin, but even more about the consequences if they aren’t. And multibillion-dollar industries thrive on this fear of fatness. We’ve fought the “war on obesity” for over forty years and Americans aren’t thinner or happier with their bodies. But it’s not our kids―or their weight―who need fixing.

In this illuminating narrative, journalist Virginia Sole-Smith exposes the daily onslaught of fatphobia and body shaming that kids face from school, sports, doctors, diet culture, and parents themselves―and offers strategies for how families can change the conversation around weight, health, and self-worth.

Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and groundbreaking book that will help parents learn to reckon with their own body biases, identify diet culture, and empower their kids to navigate this challenging landscape. Sole-Smith draws on her extensive reporting and interviews with dozens of parents and kids to offer a provocative new approach for thinking about food and bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive world.

We live in a world designed to make us hate our bodies. By the time children start school, most have learned that 'fat' is bad. As they get older, many pursue thinness to survive in a society that ties their value to their size. Parents worry both about the risks of their kids fixating on unrealistic beauty standards - and about them becoming fat. Meanwhile, multibillion-dollar industries thrive on our insecurities, and the medical system pushes weight loss at almost any cost. Talking to researchers, doctors, and activists, as well as parents and young people, Virginia Sole-Smith lays bare how diet culture has perpetuated a crisis of disordered eating and body hatred. She exposes our internalised fatphobia and shows why we need to let go of shame and start supporting young people in the bodies they have. Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and ground-breaking book that will transform the conversation about health and size. Praise for Virginia Sole-Smith: 'Sole-Smith writes with warmth and insight about the sheer complexity of eating today'. - Bee Wilson, author of First Bite: How We Learn to Eat