Maintenance Phase - The Instagram Fiber Feud

00:00:00.000 What is going on outside? Sorry, there's like, is that a car alarm or is just someone honking

00:00:03.900 rhythmically? Sometimes there's a pedestrian that bothers you and you just do it like in

00:00:08.840 time to the music or whatever. God damn it, I have a joke and I can't do it because it's beeping. 0.98

00:00:25.340 You are tagging us in, yeah? 0.98

00:00:27.100 Yes, but it's another surprise episode. So what can I do?

00:00:29.480 it's about a diet that's your hint welcome to maintenance phase the podcast where the only

00:00:35.420 thing that's thin is the research wait it was it sounded really good and then i was like wait a

00:00:41.260 minute check for content i did i did a bad one fat research that's what we traffic in

00:00:46.120 uh i'm aubrey gordon i'm michael hopps if you would like to support the podcast you can do

00:00:53.980 that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase you can also get t-shirts mugs tote bags all kinds

00:00:59.060 and stuff at T public. And you can subscribe on Apple podcasts. It's the same audio as the

00:01:05.220 Patreon. All of that is linked for you in the show notes. Michael Aubrey, over the last couple of

00:01:12.180 episodes, we have had some rough content. It's been dark. I thought today we had a little change

00:01:17.700 of topic. My other topic was also going to be more intense stuff. And I wanted something that

00:01:23.480 wasn't a full existential bummer. I don't believe you that this one won't be a bummer. But you know

00:01:27.560 what i'll let you take me there i mean it's not gonna be not a bummer but it's not gonna make you

00:01:32.480 like hopeless for the state of the world level four hopeless we need like a level four level

00:01:37.960 five hopeless episode so today we are talking about the f factor diet the f factor i take it

00:01:44.100 from that that you have not heard of the f factor nothing my mind is empty so you don't know what

00:01:49.800 the f in f factor sounds like is it fit oh keep going keep guessing things let's actually just

00:01:55.560 do this for a little while. The first 15 minutes of the show are Mike going through

00:02:00.420 the dictionary. Mike guesses F words.

00:02:05.840 Pharoah powder? No. No, the F in F Factor is for fiber. The diet was first introduced

00:02:12.540 in 2006. That's when the diet book came out initially. It was created by a registered

00:02:19.780 dietician named Tanya Zuckerbrot. And I'm actually going to just let her introduce the

00:02:25.440 diet we've got a little ad clippy clip thing oh okay to watch f-factor is like no other diet out

00:02:32.560 there is based on four disruptive principles that are counterintuitive to everything that we believe

00:02:38.680 about the weight loss space we're told to cut out carbs don't drink alcohol don't dine out and work

00:02:44.140 out harder and where that leave us we are fatter than ever as a nation fast forward 15 years tens

00:02:50.020 of thousands of clients have benefited from our F-Factor method. If something your life feels

00:02:55.200 mediocre, you don't have to accept that if you're willing to do the work. Why is the music so loud?

00:03:02.020 It's like watching Dawson's Creek. So this is a very thin, very conventionally attractive woman 0.99

00:03:10.280 with like long black hair. And halfway through the clip, we get a graphic that says four disruptive

00:03:18.840 principles and they are eat carbs, dine out, drink alcohol, work out less. These are disruptive

00:03:28.460 principles. I got to say, if she's going for counterintuitive, like freakonomics style,

00:03:35.140 you thought it was this, but it's actually that she nailed it. I mean, these are, these are things

00:03:39.940 people tell you not to do if you're trying to lose weight. Yeah. I mean, it sounds wild. She

00:03:45.160 has a bunch of these little sayings like these are four disruptive principles. She says fiber 0.77

00:03:50.760 and protein at every meal makes losing weight no big deal. If the glove doesn't fit. She's saying

00:03:56.780 all these things about disruptive principles and you don't work out and you do drink and you do go

00:04:00.740 out to eat and then you get into the diet wherein you are supposed to get a minimum of 35 grams of

00:04:07.960 fiber per day. Is that a lot? I don't know grams. In the USDA's gendered categories they say that

00:04:14.040 women should get 25 grams of fiber a day and men should get 38 grams of fiber.

00:04:19.460 So this diet is 10 grams over USDA recommendations. That's a 40% increase in daily fiber

00:04:28.240 for women if you're getting the recommended amount already, which most of us aren't, right?

00:04:35.260 Should we talk about what fiber is?

00:04:37.180 So fiber is, uh, also known as inulin, um, is sort of its nutrition name. Okay. Fiber slows down

00:04:46.040 your digestion, which helps manage blood sugar. That's especially important for people who have

00:04:51.540 elevated blood sugar, like people with diabetes or sometimes people with polycystic ovarian

00:04:56.640 syndrome or insulin insensitivity, all of that kind of stuff. Fiber also famously sort of keeps

00:05:02.520 you regular. That's all I know about it. Okay. It's just the pooping part. You just know the

00:05:06.740 All I know is the poop stuff, which is why I've never learned anything more than that about fiber.

00:05:10.360 Good, good, good.

00:05:10.980 It's like genuinely very good for you.

00:05:13.280 My understanding is that like, yeah, try to get more fiber.

00:05:15.640 It's like genuinely good advice because lots of things have fiber.

00:05:19.120 You're not like starving yourself or doing any like weird diet behavior.

00:05:23.100 It's just like, oh, try to eat stuff that isn't like broken down and reconstituted.

00:05:27.180 Totally.

00:05:28.120 Most of us have sort of wrong ideas about where there is and is not fiber in foods.

00:05:34.100 This was going to be my next question because I have no idea.

00:05:36.040 If I was going to get more fiber, I don't know what I would start doing.

00:05:39.240 I have run headlong into this because some of my favorite foods in general are very high

00:05:44.460 in fiber.

00:05:45.140 Oh, okay.

00:05:45.600 And I have absolutely had instances where I have overdone it on fiber.

00:05:49.840 I will not be asking you for any further specifics about that.

00:05:52.480 No one needs details.

00:05:54.440 What are the foods?

00:05:55.560 I eat a lot of pecans.

00:05:56.980 Pecans are super high in fiber.

00:05:59.060 Most berries, raspberries in particular, and blackberries are super duper high in fiber.

00:06:04.740 Oh, yeah.

00:06:05.280 beans and seeds high in fiber with fiber as with so many other things the dose makes the poison

00:06:11.280 right to quote every toxicologist ever yes too much fiber is known to cause abdominal pain

00:06:17.400 bloating and gas pain constipation or diarrhea roll the dice and dehydration if you're eating

00:06:25.400 a lot of fiber you have to drink more water because fiber really is sort of a sponge right

00:06:29.780 huh that's the lowdown on fiber it's a good thing to have most of us get way way way not enough

00:06:35.900 and this diet recommends way more than the usda right the thing that this diet has that other

00:06:44.100 diets don't reliably have is it is hella fucking confusing the diet is clear that you shouldn't

00:06:53.300 track calories. This is repeated in the book multiple times, just macronutrients plus fiber. 0.83

00:07:00.720 And you're also instructed to keep a food journal and track your protein and fiber and carbs and

00:07:07.260 make sure that all of those are staying where they need to stay. Right. But the reason they

00:07:12.200 say you shouldn't count calories is that there is quote, an inherent calorie cap built into the

00:07:18.260 diet. They're telling you essentially the levels that you should be operating at each day in terms

00:07:25.320 of your macronutrients. Oh, so basically if you're eating X grams of fat and carbs and protein,

00:07:33.600 you kind of naturally will be eating a set level of calories. Yes, absolutely. So for a couple of

00:07:39.960 reasons, one fiber is indigestible. You can't, your body doesn't absorb it, right? It just moves

00:07:45.000 straight through you. So the idea is you're filling up on fiber. So you feel full. And a

00:07:51.100 number of news stories cited this. I checked it on some of their recipes. It is very much so true

00:07:56.700 that if you eat three meals a day, like the ones listed on their website, like the recipes that

00:08:03.880 they provide, you're eating around a thousand calories a day, maybe less. It is extremely low

00:08:12.100 calorie the way that they do it. But I can eat carbs, dine out, drink alcohol and work out less.

00:08:18.200 That sounds much more appealing. It does then 1000 calories a day and you have to eat more fiber

00:08:23.160 than you could even conceptualize. Yeah, I'm just sitting at a Denny's all day having pancakes and

00:08:29.220 IPA. Yeah, except those pancakes are being made with fiber plus protein powder. Oh, yeah.

00:08:35.580 Like there's definitely a lot of you can eat waffles and then they like have the recipe for

00:08:39.560 the waffles and it's just like protein powder and egg whites and you're like oh yeah so it's like

00:08:45.340 waffle shaped muscle fibers it's like waffle that's like chicken with an apostrophe n where

00:08:52.220 you're like okay so it's not chicken got it right like it's like w-a-f-f-y-l or something

00:08:58.720 by 2018 f factor launched its own line of high fiber diet foods they refer to these as fiber

00:09:09.400 supplements which will become important later on and they have like energy bars essentially with

00:09:16.160 20 grams of fiber per serving that's more than most americans get in a full day in one bar oh

00:09:23.220 wow it's worth noting this is not the first high fiber diet nor is it the first high fiber diet to

00:09:28.220 catch on there was the pritkin diet released in 1979 of course there's also the f plan which came

00:09:35.600 out in 1983 it also focused on increasing fiber intake it became a bestseller in the u.s okay

00:09:43.860 they published a reboot of that diet book called f2 in 2006 which is somehow not a vin diesel vehicle

00:09:51.960 and 2006 is the same year that the f factor came out and it just got totally trounced by the f

00:09:59.380 factor there was only room in this town for one high fiber diet and f factor absolutely took it

00:10:04.180 This is how I open all of my Grindr conversations.

00:10:06.280 What's your F plan?

00:10:07.540 And then they get a worksheet.

00:10:08.880 What's your F plan for us?

00:10:09.960 We're going to talk a tiny bit about the founder of this diet, Tanya Zuckerbrot. 0.99

00:10:14.440 She is currently in her 50s. 0.97

00:10:16.120 She's originally from Long Island.

00:10:17.660 She is a registered dietitian.

00:10:20.460 A 2010 piece in the New York Post said that at that time she was charging $4,500 for six meetings.

00:10:28.100 Whoa.

00:10:29.180 By 2013, it was $10,000 for 10 sessions.

00:10:33.520 what by 2016 that was up according to grub street that was up to fifteen thousand dollars for 10

00:10:42.460 sessions but at least she's giving the extremely unique advice of eat more fiber and try to eat

00:10:49.280 less food overall you're paying because you're getting something you can't get anywhere else

00:10:53.020 which is someone to tell you to drink more water and eat more fiber great she is also extremely 0.70

00:10:58.820 wealthy for much of this story a number of reporting outlets report that she lives in a 1.00

00:11:05.600 park avenue apartment in new york that is uh worth 22 and a half million dollars whoa where's her

00:11:13.360 money from she is uh you know i think from a wealthy family and also she married a dude who

00:11:21.020 is a real estate magnate kind of a guy she has sort of two origin stories for the creation of

00:11:28.380 the diet one of those origin stories is that she says it came out of her private practice treating

00:11:33.680 people with diabetes and heart disease that she's like i was just trying to manage their sugar i was

00:11:38.720 just trying to manage their cholesterol and then lo and behold they lost all this weight and i

00:11:44.220 thought what if other people could lose weight this way okay and then the other one is an origin

00:11:49.540 story where she talks about thinking that she might be the kind of person who could eat anything 0.97

00:11:54.700 and just stay thin like her first husband and she tries an experiment where she just eats what she

00:12:00.580 wants and she gains like 24 pounds and then she loses it by eating a bunch of fiber okay and

00:12:06.420 she's like so i get it guys this is your favorite thing where it's somebody who lost like an

00:12:11.400 extremely modest amount of weight that they only gained very temporarily yeah and then for the rest

00:12:17.760 of their lives yeah they're like i've been there believe me i had all the excuses

00:12:23.420 so the last thing to know about tanya is that she has been appearing on tv as sort of a talking

00:12:30.160 head dietician for well over a decade okay so when there are stories about the quote-unquote

00:12:37.340 teen obesity epidemic is one that i saw from her when there is like congress is coming for

00:12:43.960 our french fries and school meals oh yeah she'll show up around that kind of stuff many of her 0.62

00:12:50.380 appearances have been on fox news oh and this diet was written about in a memoir called settle for

00:12:59.400 more that's good about losing post baby weight by megan kelly oh oh man her first appearance on the

00:13:09.080 show. Yeah, it's amazing that it's taken this long. God, I just got such a chill up my spine.

00:13:14.780 Just remembering the existence of this person. My hands just got cold.

00:13:19.560 So the F factor has sort of a slow and steady rise for a solid 10 or 15 years, right? It gets

00:13:28.720 a good review in Publishers Weekly, which says, quote, decrying fad diets, board certified

00:13:34.200 dietician Zuckerbrot devised a diet that emphasizes fiber consumption without worrying

00:13:39.660 much about carbs, fats, or calories. To which I say, did we read the same book?

00:13:44.760 Yeah, decrying fad diets. This fad diet is totally different. 0.75

00:13:49.020 Yeah, totally.

00:13:50.200 What do people think fad diets are? It's very weird to me.

00:13:53.320 There is also a New York Post story in 2010. The headline is,

00:13:58.340 these women want to make you skinny and then it's just a picture of a bunch of the f-factor 0.90

00:14:04.300 dietitians in like skirts and stilettos like looking like hot thin ladies and the whole story 1.00

00:14:12.320 is basically like they're dietitians but conventionally attractive question mark

00:14:17.260 these librarians want to give you books like that's not like a counterintuitive this chef

00:14:23.540 wants to cook a meal like yeah i bet that's what i would expect them to be doing okay so the f

00:14:30.220 factor has this sort of steady rise over about 15 years it gets more and more popular particularly

00:14:36.300 it gets popular in new york many folks outside of new york that i have talked to about this don't

00:14:42.980 have any idea and then when i talk to people who are in new york they're like people won't shut up

00:14:47.780 about it it's like dale chihuly if you live in seattle yes i never get to say this aubrey but i'm

00:14:54.900 proud of my internet usage that i never came across this in 15 years it's incredible i took

00:15:01.920 a quiz at the end of last year that was like how extremely online were you this year okay and mine

00:15:08.840 was at like the medium level and i was like thank you for not sending that to me because i would

00:15:15.560 have taken it and would have scored like 100 out of 100 and felt bad about myself for like the

00:15:19.680 entire day. So Michael, we're getting to the point that we've all been waiting for, which is

00:15:24.280 the fall of this diet. In the spring of 2020, an Instagram account starts posting about F factor

00:15:34.520 and about negative reactions that people are having. The Instagram account is called Dumois.

00:15:39.640 have you heard about Dumois yes I was involved in the subreddit because of the Johnny Depp

00:15:47.020 Amber Heard stuff it was like the only subreddit it was like oh this seems to be like a very

00:15:52.140 obvious like misogynistic attack on a woman who is like very credibly alleging abuse and that was

00:15:58.900 a super controversial opinion for like six months last year and still is if you say it too loud now

00:16:06.700 Our inbox is already filling up with people mad about what I just said.

00:16:10.260 So, you know, then Dumois, for any listeners who don't know, is mostly an Instagram account.

00:16:15.220 That's sort of where it started, but it is branched out to be a podcast.

00:16:19.240 There's a subreddit.

00:16:20.160 There's like a lot more going on with Dumois than there used to be.

00:16:23.500 So Dumois starts posting stories from their users about very rough side effects that they're having when they use F-Factor products.

00:16:35.420 Oh, okay.

00:16:35.960 Many people are experiencing bloating, gas pains, constipation, diarrhea, plenty of the sort of gastrointestinal side effects that appear on lists of too much fiber all at once kind of side effects, right?

00:16:51.120 Ah, okay.

00:16:51.780 But some of them go a lot further than that. Some folks reported hair loss, like their hair was coming out in clumps. Some people reported rashes or hives. A couple of people reported that their tongues swelled or their eyes swelled up.

00:17:11.500 Oh, these are like witches hexes. 1.00

00:17:13.720 These are wild as fuck. 1.00

00:17:16.160 And amenorrhea, which is losing your period if you had one before and you stop getting it. 1.00

00:17:22.060 Oh, wow.

00:17:22.760 One of the more sensational claims that came out of that is someone who said that they miscarried while they were on the diet.

00:17:29.360 Oh, wow.

00:17:30.300 It is also worth noting that none of these have been verified or fact checked at this point.

00:17:35.220 It's just a flood of sort of personal experiences with the diet.

00:17:39.760 Or I should say, if Dumois is doing some vetting, I haven't heard about it or read about it, right?

00:17:44.880 It's like, we're getting reports.

00:17:45.940 We're publishing reports, basically.

00:17:47.440 Absolutely.

00:17:47.980 And Dumois is like a huge account with millions of followers, right?

00:17:51.460 Like, it's a big deal.

00:17:53.280 One of the people watching those Dumois stories is someone named Emily Gellis, now Emily Gellis Landy. 0.98

00:18:01.580 She is a fashion influencer. 0.99

00:18:04.320 She's currently in her late 30s.

00:18:06.280 she has about 230,000 Instagram followers. So a really significant following. She's not done 0.99

00:18:14.860 the F factor, but she's seeing these experiences and it really seems to be riling her up.

00:18:21.060 Okay. According to Wondery, she tells them her father is a lawyer. And I will say this,

00:18:27.500 she has extremely big, my father is a lawyer energy, right? Like you'll be hearing from my

00:18:34.560 dad about this is absolutely the vibe with that lady. Yeah, we had a kid like that in my Boy Scout 1.00

00:18:40.180 troop. He's always trying to sue people. She is also from Long Island, like Tanya Zuckerbrot.

00:18:46.460 She starts looking into this diet and finds two Instagram accounts that appear to be sort of

00:18:54.300 anonymous accounts making allegations about F Factor in April of 2020 is when she finds those

00:19:01.100 accounts. Shortly thereafter, she starts posting about F-Factor herself and asking people about

00:19:09.500 their experiences on the diet and starts sharing those out. In August, after months of sort of

00:19:16.540 posting about this, Emily goes on Dumois' podcast and talks about the allegations about F-Factor

00:19:24.360 so far. Two weeks later, F Factor releases a response statement on Instagram where they say

00:19:33.120 their customers are their top priority. They say they're going to release something called a

00:19:38.720 certificate of analysis. Is that something you've heard of before, Mike? No. It's usually delivered

00:19:43.900 with shipments of ingredients for supplements. So like a supplier sends something to someone who's

00:19:50.120 going to custom mix their supplements right okay and says we can verify that this pearl powder

00:19:56.760 we're sending to moon juice really is pearl powder and doesn't have these dangerous things in it and

00:20:04.300 we've analyzed the ingredients and it really is what it says it is and blah blah that is an industry

00:20:09.060 practice not a requirement because as a reminder the supplement industry is entirely unregulated

00:20:17.100 Right. They're just saying stuff.

00:20:18.900 They're just saying stuff. So this is like a courtesy that people provide.

00:20:22.920 Right.

00:20:23.080 But there's no state agency that's like, if you don't have a lab analysis of your supplements, you're done.

00:20:29.040 Are the protein bars supplements? Wouldn't they fall under the FDA's jurisdiction because they're food? Or are they not for some reason?

00:20:34.080 They are marketed as supplements.

00:20:35.760 What?

00:20:36.360 They are marketed as fiber supplements. Yes, yes.

00:20:39.200 Oh, my God.

00:20:39.880 F-Factor releases this statement, but within a couple of days, it seems like things were already in motion.

00:20:46.220 so two days after the Dumois podcast Perez Hilton posts about it oh god this is the most cursed

00:20:53.460 path for a diet story to take a yearbook of people I have not and do not want to think about

00:21:00.720 right for years on end the day after Perez Hilton posts about it page six has a story about it

00:21:07.740 Tanya Zuckerbrot gives them a quote and says quote in over two years we have received less

00:21:14.120 than 50 complaints asking for refunds. This rumor that somehow I created a product that's harming

00:21:20.220 people's health is so malicious and frankly unfounded. So she's fully like, this is all

00:21:25.800 lies. We haven't gotten complaints about this. It's bullshit. As press attention grows, that

00:21:33.560 really seems to fan the flames of the internet speculation about this. So people start advancing

00:21:40.340 theories about what's going on with f-factor products okay some people say there's got to

00:21:45.980 be a bunch of lead in them some people say the symptoms are probably the result of heavy metals

00:21:53.340 in the products yeah i honestly feel pretty uncomfortable with sort of the internet sleuth

00:21:59.980 culture around this kind of stuff too right that like you basically just have like a ton of

00:22:05.600 speculation based on what are fundamentally like anonymous internet accounts. Yeah. Anytime there's

00:22:10.900 internet users like solving mysteries, I just get like constitutionally uncomfortable. That was also

00:22:17.480 how I felt at this point in the story. And I will say my feelings changed multiple times. Okay. So

00:22:24.380 all this internet sleuthing is going on and F Factor sort of fast tracks releasing a certificate

00:22:31.260 analysis is what they say. And they sort of make another statement saying that they are blaming

00:22:37.700 sort of the whole thing on quote, misinformation generated by a handful of people on social media

00:22:43.280 and says it is quote, extraordinarily upsetting that some of you have been caused worry by false

00:22:49.300 and malicious assertions, most of them made anonymously. That's on August 22nd. Two days

00:22:56.140 after that, the New York Times picks up the story. Here is one of the stories that gets printed

00:23:04.120 in that Times piece. It says, one woman who said she was underweight paid $20,000 to become Ms. 0.94

00:23:12.680 Zuckerberg's client. The regimented nature of the program exacerbated her issues with food, 1.00

00:23:18.220 she said, and after eight months of drinking shakes made with the F-factor powder,

00:23:22.100 the woman developed excruciating red spots that required a biopsy. Both these women said their

00:23:28.240 symptoms disappeared when they stopped the diet. It is worth noting that Tanya Zuckerbrot, for her

00:23:32.920 point, says that she has only rarely accepted underweight clients and usually with the goal

00:23:38.200 of helping them gain weight. The biggest bombshell of the story is that in reaching out to verify

00:23:45.560 these claims, the first people to do what I would consider to be real shoe leather journalism

00:23:51.720 on this topic. They verify the majority of the claims that they are given. And there's one that

00:23:58.160 turns out to be a hoax. The one that turns out to be a hoax is the miscarriage claim. Oh, as it

00:24:04.940 turns out, after sending in that complaint, someone emails Tanya Zuckerbrot and an Instagram

00:24:12.780 executive to claim credit for that false claim. Okay. The email comes from a Gmail account

00:24:22.140 called crazy cancel culture at gmail.com. Oh, it's like a right wing troll. It is a former 0.89

00:24:29.840 Instagram influencer named Alison Brett Schneider. At the time she was 44. She happily talks to the

00:24:38.540 New York Times and says that she herself had been subject to what she considered an unfair

00:24:44.500 pile on on Instagram a couple of years earlier. Rachel Cargill, who is a public intellectual,

00:24:51.840 posted about Nia Wilson, who was a young black woman who was murdered at a BART station in 2018.

00:24:58.720 God. And in her post about it said, I'm waiting for your favorite white feminist to post about 1.00

00:25:05.220 nia wilson okay a bunch of white feminists responded and a number of them were like got it 1.00

00:25:10.360 on board but alice and brett schneider went fully off the rails so here is what happened next oh god

00:25:18.160 this is like a weird little like instagram nightmare turducken precursor scandals it really

00:25:25.320 is so this this synopsis that you're about to read from comes from the cut it says in messages later

00:25:31.260 shared by Cargill on Instagram. Brett Schneider called Cargill shameful and a clown, accusing her

00:25:37.480 of alienating women. She also threatened Cargill's followers and, according to some, reached out to 0.98

00:25:43.980 their employers to complain about them. Her Instagram account was subsequently suspended

00:25:49.080 for bullying and she is now suing Instagram. Brett Schneider told The Times that she planted

00:25:54.800 the false miscarriage story because she couldn't stand silently by and watch Zuckerbrot be attacked 0.97

00:26:00.940 by people on instagram wait okay yeah so this woman allison she is basically called out for 0.98

00:26:10.500 like only focusing on like the problems of white people on instagram instead of like responding to 1.00

00:26:16.680 this maturely she's like goes on the fucking war path against the person who called her out 0.97

00:26:22.440 and her followers and her followers and is eventually kicked off of instagram she then like 0.96

00:26:28.340 stews in her anger for some period of time she sees people writing on the internet about these

00:26:36.740 gastrointestinal symptoms of f-factor so she makes up yeah an even more extreme version of

00:26:44.660 this like food poisoning claim specifically so that it will be debunked and then discredit all

00:26:51.700 of the other people claiming to have problems yeah that appears to be the mechanics of this

00:26:57.780 decision she's doing the thing where like she wants to prove how easy it is to lie on the

00:27:03.720 internet so she lies on the internet this is like the instagram version of leopold and lobe but not

00:27:10.300 good at it yeah but she's like i'm gonna show how easy it is to pull off this thing and then you're

00:27:16.120 like no you didn't show that this time around in these follow-up pieces tanya seems significantly

00:27:22.560 less on message. She tells Insider that, quote, the accusations were an example of anti-diet

00:27:29.800 advocacy gone too far and a harassment campaign to ruin her career. This is where we get into

00:27:38.240 roni territory. Why don't you eat some bread, you beast? How dare you? It's my favorite thing. 1.00

00:27:44.940 I'm assuming these are all references to Real Housewives. You haven't seen that clip? I'm not

00:27:50.100 a part of the Real Housewives fan base. I'm sending you a clip immediately upon the ending

00:27:55.320 of this episode recording. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. She also starts defending in

00:28:03.060 this wave of stories against these sort of accusations about disordered eating. And her

00:28:07.960 response pretty continuously is like, well, if you have an eating disorder, you shouldn't be on

00:28:14.340 this diet. And it's like, well, Tanya, not everyone has a diagnosed eating disorder. That's

00:28:20.020 kind of a privilege, right? Like there are a lot more people who have 1599 in their pockets for a

00:28:26.360 diet book than have hundreds or thousands of dollars for diagnosis and treatment of an eating

00:28:31.940 disorder. Right. And also starting diets is how many people find out that they have an eating

00:28:37.720 disorder or develop one to begin with. Right. It's also it's a very difficult thing to define

00:28:43.260 too. There's not like a clear line. It's kind of like when does someone become an alcoholic?

00:28:46.480 Yeah. It's really a judgment call. This all culminates in this story getting so big that

00:28:52.300 Tanya goes on the Today Show to release the certificates of analysis and sort of address

00:28:59.520 this growing firestorm. This is normally when we would watch that clip. There's not a lot to see

00:29:04.620 there, honestly. It's clear that she has good PR help. It's clear that she has a good legal team.

00:29:10.780 They're sort of keeping her on track. It's really just like our products are totally safe. You can

00:29:15.740 see from the certificate of analysis, blah, blah, blah. So by September 4th, we're now like one

00:29:22.080 month, right? From the Dumois podcast is all of this has happened in one month. Insider reports

00:29:28.960 that the company appears to be threatening lawsuits against its critics, and that it is

00:29:34.880 deleting comments on Instagram. And when Insider asks them, are you doing this? Tanya Zuckerbrot

00:29:42.100 says, quote, we felt we were following community guidelines when it was slander. When people say

00:29:48.560 your products have lead and are poisoning people, or I lost my period. And we know that there's

00:29:53.560 absolutely zero correlation between our product and those claims. Why would you leave that there?

00:29:59.180 So they start sending cease and desist to people who were making comments on Instagram.

00:30:06.120 Wait, what? Really? You can do that?

00:30:08.440 Apparently, they did it.

00:30:10.000 Whoa.

00:30:10.560 You can tell people to knock it off by way of a lawyer on a lot of different things.

00:30:14.560 Can I do that to people who comment on my YouTube videos? 1.00

00:30:17.840 This guy sucks. 0.99

00:30:19.040 No, I don't. 1.00

00:30:20.020 Cease and desist.

00:30:21.180 My mom says I'm cool.

00:30:22.360 So like, not only are they sending them to people who are on Instagram,

00:30:25.240 they're sending them to former employees.

00:30:27.880 Running to the mods.

00:30:29.540 Incredible move.

00:30:30.480 And once again, we hear from people who were sort of on the diet and use the products.

00:30:38.680 There's one former dieter named Ann McCall. She's a 60 year old in California,

00:30:43.600 who had some of the wild side effects from using these products and doing this diet.

00:30:50.700 And she told Insider quote, it's like, hey, a lot of women are saying something's happening.

00:30:56.800 why don't you take some responsibility and at least look into it that's all i wanted i just

00:31:02.480 don't want anyone else to get hurt right we're like at the peak of this thing and people who've

00:31:07.980 been on the diet people who've used the products are still saying can you just acknowledge that

00:31:13.080 this is a thing yeah and maybe say you're sorry do you think that if she had gone on the today

00:31:19.180 show and been like super honest and like we're really concerned about these reports as well

00:31:23.540 were looking into it do you think that she could have like weathered this i think that had she done

00:31:28.180 that way earlier she could have i think by the time it got to the today show things were already

00:31:33.580 in motion yeah there is a point at which they set up a google form and they're like hey submit your

00:31:39.300 stories here we really do want to look into them blah blah blah blah but it's so far down the line

00:31:45.560 of this stuff right i think that you're right that they could have managed this at an earlier time

00:31:50.720 or they could do what they did do, which is that Tanya did a 40-minute Instagram live to read a

00:31:57.920 prepared statement. 40 minutes? Yep. That's a long statement. She says sort of toward the outset,

00:32:05.100 quote, at a later date, I will be able to provide the names of those behind this smear campaign.

00:32:12.120 The smear campaign began with personal attacks against me, my husband, my family. Then they

00:32:18.960 questioned the safety of the f-factor products then they questioned the safety of the f-factor

00:32:24.540 diet now they are questioning the culture of the company and she sort of previews that she knows

00:32:31.160 an insider piece is coming out about the work culture at f-factor dude i don't know that like

00:32:37.640 there's a conspiracy against me is ever the move no to my mind this is my interpretation

00:32:44.800 of what we have read and learned so far is that this is someone who's just been spending so much

00:32:51.500 time on the internet and is getting internet poisoned i was just gonna say this seems like

00:32:56.320 some internet brain rot many such cases this is too much time in the comments too much time on

00:33:01.980 the subreddit everyone's out to get me like i have absolutely like been there on like spending too

00:33:08.660 much time thinking about what the internet thinks of you yeah it doesn't lead to good or clear

00:33:13.800 thinking nor does it lead to sound strategy like it's not it once you reach a certain level of like

00:33:19.840 public figuredom the most important thing is to not seek out commentary about yourself i had a

00:33:29.680 friend at one point send me a celebrity net worth page that's one of those like celebrity facts

00:33:37.140 that was about me oh my god and when i tell you every single thing on it was like comically wrong

00:33:44.400 yeah yeah yeah she's worth three million dollars and she's five foot two and i was like no and no

00:33:50.980 my mom texted me to tell me that someone i guess wrote a wikipedia entry about me oh god i was like

00:33:57.300 i don't want this because then i'm gonna be tempted to fix it and then it's like michael 0.93

00:34:03.260 Hobbs is writing his own Wikipedia page, which is like the biggest fucking loser energy. But then 0.82

00:34:10.320 she then texted like another day later and she's like, someone deleted it. Good. Bless whoever was

00:34:16.080 like, this man is not famous enough to be on Wikipedia. Yes. Fully agree. So a couple days

00:34:23.340 after that, Insider releases their story on the work culture at F Factor. They spoke with 20

00:34:31.920 former employees of F Factor. One of the former employees was a registered dietitian who worked

00:34:38.900 for F Factor. She said that they were understood to be quote unquote selling skinniness and that

00:34:45.780 any foods you eat in the office should be part of step one. Like you should always be performing

00:34:52.620 that you are on the most restrictive step of this diet. You should be the most compliant.

00:34:57.860 Oh. Another employee said that they'd had a birthday celebration and they had had mini

00:35:03.280 cupcakes. And Tanya allegedly told them to, quote, take them home. We aren't eating these

00:35:10.060 in the office. Okay. So just like kind of like weird mean girl behavior. She is like

00:35:15.660 in this very sort of hard line 80s, 90s diet mindset. And this all feels like part and parcel

00:35:24.000 of that. Right. That's like, I'm doing you a favor by keeping you on track. Right. One of them was

00:35:30.140 from an early employee who alleges in this insider story that Tanya instructed her to come up with a

00:35:37.040 fake backstory about having been fat and lost weight so that clients would feel like she

00:35:43.020 understood what it was like to be fat and try to lose weight. This person was a lifelong thin

00:35:47.500 person. You should make up the fact that you were once 10 pounds heavier than you are now.

00:35:51.620 Yeah, be like me and say you weighed 24 pounds more once.

00:35:56.080 My willpower.

00:35:56.980 And then there is this last one.

00:35:59.060 It says,

00:35:59.640 Sarah, the former dietician who asked that we not include her real name,

00:36:03.180 told Zuckerbrot once jokingly told a male client that if he lost a certain amount of weight, 1.00

00:36:07.980 Sarah would perform oral sex on him. 0.99

00:36:10.320 Sarah said she was present when Zuckerbrot made the joke. 1.00

00:36:13.200 It was terribly embarrassing and it was so degrading, she said.

00:36:16.440 Another former employee, the one who worked at F-Factor for four years,

00:36:19.880 told Insider that she heard the joke and witnessed Sarah's mortified reaction.

00:36:24.540 Insider contacted the male client who denied ever hearing those words uttered by Zuckerberg. 0.94

00:36:28.820 So according to this allegation, Tanya basically said, like, if you lose enough weight, she'll blow 1.00

00:36:34.080 you. Yes, my employee. Two of the employees heard this and the client himself says he doesn't 0.93

00:36:38.480 remember it. So in this Insider piece, Tanya and F Factor pretty flatly deny almost every

00:36:44.980 experience that folks share every allegation that is made yeah at one point she says like

00:36:52.120 here's how much i didn't police what people ate one of the few times that i remember telling

00:36:57.860 someone to eat differently was actually because a staff member was too thin and it made a client

00:37:02.820 uncomfortable okay like i get that that's the product that you're selling but also like i don't

00:37:09.040 know man this is wild boundaryless behavior to have your boss tell you what size to be we didn't

00:37:14.960 do a biggest loser competition we did a biggest gainer competition okay congratulations you did

00:37:20.980 it in reverse and now it's like good i guess it's also sort of weird yeah around this same time

00:37:27.280 some instagram posts that have since been deleted from tanya's account start recirculating and i

00:37:36.700 just went ahead and sent you two of those screen grabs oh god they're like they're like really

00:37:43.980 ugly memes just like aesthetically ugly so one of them is just a square with text in it and it's

00:37:52.120 like a weird lime green and it says how to lose weight turn your head to the left and then turn

00:37:59.080 it to the right repeat this exercise whenever offered food yep hey i see what you did there

00:38:04.740 tanya it's just such a weird quippy dismissive way of talking about something that like many

00:38:10.540 many many people have deep hard feelings about it's just really shitty it's the kind of thing

00:38:15.300 where people say you know that their moms used to say these awful little aphorisms like a moment

00:38:20.840 on the lips a lifetime on the hips yeah or like the horrible kate moss thing of like nothing 0.98

00:38:26.460 tastes as good as being skinny feels totally all just like oh this is just dick stuff this is just 0.98

00:38:33.700 like a mean sort of like thing to put out into the world totally so that's the left hand one 0.91

00:38:39.500 and then the right hand one is a photo of like a very thin woman in a bikini and it's like her

00:38:45.920 head is cut off and it's kind of zoomed in on her torso and then the text again it's just so ugly

00:38:51.680 it looks like it's been screen grabbed like 50 million times it says so you'd really rather have

00:38:57.140 a bag of chips than look like this right i don't think like boomer memes are the are the most

00:39:03.840 productive way to have these conversations you don't think if they added a minion to these they'd

00:39:08.160 be more effective i just think like being skinny is cool memes are just always just kind of a cursed 0.98

00:39:15.900 genre so on october 8th 2020 tanya files suit against emily gellis landy oh wow her attorneys

00:39:24.880 say that before emily's claims f factor was making a million dollars a month and their revenue is now 0.51

00:39:31.680 less than $90,000 a month. Yeah, it makes sense. The ruling goes in Tanya's favor on this. Emily

00:39:38.640 was reposting a bunch of unverified stuff. And there is like some legal analysis out there on

00:39:46.020 this that is like, uh, we're not sure about this call that the court made. Oh yeah. So Emily is

00:39:50.360 now appealing that decision. Okay. About two years later on October 12th, 2022, a group of former F

00:39:57.340 factor dieters sue tanya specifically over damages they say were caused by f-factor products

00:40:04.960 these are all of the sort of like internal bleeding gastric distress intestinal blockage

00:40:11.260 all of that kind of stuff that lawsuit is ongoing depositions have taken place but it hasn't reached

00:40:17.120 a resolution and then in march of 2022 tanya sues emily again oh wow the rationale for that suit is

00:40:26.860 basically, she didn't stop making these claims. So we're suing her again. Okay, essentially, 0.74

00:40:32.240 all three of these lawsuits are ongoing. And I think that the thing that makes me sad about this

00:40:40.280 story is that in all of the who knows who in all of the back and forth and sort of like New York

00:40:47.320 high society du moi of it all. The thing that feels like it really got lost is anyone figuring

00:40:54.080 out why people had these reactions. Yeah, that's what I was just going to ask. Have we ever gotten

00:40:59.520 any like FDA, CDC, whoever investigation of this? Nobody's stepping in. It's supplements. Huh. So

00:41:06.760 what we know at this point is that a lot of the GI symptoms are likely potentially due to an

00:41:13.240 excess of fiber or a dramatic increase in fiber from where folks were. Some of the hives and

00:41:19.140 rashes stuff can be explained potentially if people are allergic to whey. The powders and

00:41:25.440 bars both use whey. But then there is this whole other category of like, why was someone losing

00:41:32.100 their hair? Did anyone call and check and make sure that that was happening? What do you think

00:41:37.040 happened? Do you have a sense of like what the actual truth is from all this? I don't. I don't

00:41:43.120 in part because there isn't quite enough grounding. Right. I mean, they've got their certificates of

00:41:48.080 analysis, but they are redacted. And those just say, here's what's in the ingredients that we put

00:41:54.760 into the powders. And here's what's in the powders themselves. F factor seems to have assumed that

00:42:00.380 like, it isn't that people were doing their diet that they are using their products that they had

00:42:04.920 these experiences. They're assuming that that's because they did the diet wrong or use the

00:42:09.200 products incorrectly. Right. Right. And dieters assumed that too. When people started having

00:42:14.420 these negative responses. They just assumed it was something else or couldn't be explained or

00:42:19.240 was an existing health issue or that they were doing the diet or using the products wrong,

00:42:24.500 right? The sort of start and finish of any stories like these about diets for weight loss is if it

00:42:32.180 didn't work, it's your fault. Right. And that's sort of everyone's assumption.

00:42:36.680 It's also kind of a dilemma to know how to cover stories like this because you have the central

00:42:42.400 a problem of essentially an unregulated space yeah that leans toward like believing whatever

00:42:48.100 claims that people make about like this this product harmed me but then you also really do

00:42:53.000 have like real dynamics of like internet pylons yes so it's sort of just like a bunch of internet

00:42:58.440 rumors but the internet rumors do seem to follow a pattern and then the response has been really bad

00:43:04.780 but that doesn't necessarily mean that the underlying claims are true right you know people

00:43:10.160 can respond very badly to false accusations they can also respond very badly to true accusations

00:43:15.040 there's basically no one refereeing this and being like we're looking into this and actually

00:43:19.820 trying to find out what happened totally that i was like actually i feel like the core story here

00:43:24.520 which has been like tanya versus emily whose side are you on is how a lot of it has gotten presented

00:43:30.620 and i'm like okay but what about the 60 year old lady from california whose eyes swelled up 0.93

00:43:36.380 right there are people who went through real shit who are not rich people in new york city 0.82

00:43:41.720 yeah it's it's a weird sort of like information age story because these things end up playing out 0.92

00:43:48.860 on social media you basically just have like people litigating things like this and quote

00:43:55.740 unquote investigating things like this online yeah which is just a really shitty way to find

00:44:02.740 out the truth yeah it is just like ultimately just like a bunch of people saying stuff at this point

00:44:08.700 yeah yeah and like no actual agency that's been able to establish like really basic facts about

00:44:14.880 like how many cases of these there are when it happened how they've resolved etc right did they

00:44:20.320 seek medical care if so what did their health care providers say yeah have we run any kind of test on

00:44:26.180 everyone or on batches of the product that they were using right left with no one to run point

00:44:32.120 on getting to the bottom of this people are sort of going to the company and being like why aren't 0.99

00:44:36.660 you getting to the bottom of it yeah i sort of understand being like well fuck man you're the 0.81

00:44:40.960 one who sold it to me yeah and also we do systemically need more regulatory muscle than 0.96

00:44:48.100 people just individually going to companies and being like can you please tell me and companies

00:44:52.480 going no i'm not gonna this is not the way to like reduce the incidence of food poisoning in

00:44:57.400 the population. Or whatever this was, right? Yeah, exactly. So the only real coda that I have

00:45:03.720 for this story is that Tanya Zuckerbrot and her husband have moved to Boca Raton, Florida,

00:45:12.760 which I learned from the Boca Observer in a post that was tagged La Vida Boca.

00:45:18.860 Okay, they must use that for like half their headlines a week. I'm sure they do. It really

00:45:22.940 tickled me. It was either that or almond bokeh. She has shifted and reduced her online presence

00:45:29.820 pretty significantly, particularly on Twitter, where she only really seems to post marketing

00:45:36.040 tweets when like F Factor stuff is on sale or whatever, and gets very few responses. And when

00:45:42.840 she does get responses, they are responses like the one I just sent you in the chat.

00:45:47.320 Oh, it just says, OMG, you're that woman from the Fiber podcast.

00:45:50.500 It is one of two responses to this post.

00:45:55.320 Yeah.

00:45:55.780 So basically at the end of all this, nobody knows anything.

00:45:59.960 We're no closer to knowing the truth, but one person is spending less time on Twitter.

00:46:05.680 That's a happy ending.

00:46:20.500 We'll see you next time.

Maintenance Phase - March 14, 2023

The Instagram Fiber Feud

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Transcript