I left saddened and shocked after reading Yves Baril’s text “The all-inclusive travel package must change” 1 published on July 8.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
If the primary concern of the author was to raise awareness against waste and to submit solutions, he has more than lost his way by targeting fat people2 and their children. The words are contemptuous and hurtful.
Contrary to what you may think, Mr. Baril, it is not possible to “know” what people’s eating habits are simply by looking at them. Nor even to judge their relationship to food or the body, their state of health, their personality and their values.
Over 40 different factors contribute to weight management. Food being only one of these factors.
It is not an all-inclusive week that will permanently influence a person’s weight. And you can’t know with certainty a person’s eating habits by looking at what they eat on vacation.
To denigrate and insult is never, in my opinion, a good strategy to make people evolve. Fat people live with stigma every day, and suffer a lot from reading comments like yours. Weren’t there also thin people who wasted and left half-full plates? Weren’t there fat people who didn’t have these behaviors? Why feel the need to make a connection between questionable wasteful behavior and a person’s weight? Because the image is more striking and shocking?
The pressure to lose weight
Did you know that pressure to lose weight and dieting are excellent predictors of excessive eating behaviors and even a troubled relationship with food? You read me correctly. The more a person tries to go on a diet, the more likely they are to have blackouts later on. For example, on vacation. This is true for people with ALL body types.
Telling you that fat people are under constant pressure to lose weight (often since childhood) is obvious. Words like yours only contribute to the stigma and the problem.
Believe me, I share your opinion on waste. Coming myself from a trip to an all-inclusive, I unfortunately came to the same conclusion as you: waste is present and is trivialized. And it is important to denounce it. But nothing justifies the use of grossophobic remarks to illustrate this point.
Hoteliers have their share of responsibilities, as do users. All users, regardless of weight.
Why serve such huge plates in à la carte restaurants? Why encourage customers to take ALL the services AND the salad bar? Why not offer half portions and stop offering six courses for a meal?
On the first morning of our trip, my 7 year old son got carried away when he saw the buffet and, despite my questioning whether he was hungry, he wanted to take way more food than he could eat. As a result, there was a lot left on his plate and he was very sad to waste it. Rather than making him feel guilty and forcing him to finish his plate (which is also wasteful, in my opinion), we agreed on a strategy for the next few meals that would allow him to both respect his hunger cues and satiation, to be satisfied with their choices AND to reduce waste. Do you know what? It functioned.
It happened several times afterwards that my little dessert lover skipped this entire service or even used a small portion of the meal to still be hungry for dessert. Yes, it happened to him despite that to leave a little on his plate. It is impossible, even for someone who recognizes their hunger and satiation signals well, to always serve themselves a plate that corresponds exactly to their needs. On the other hand, we are not talking about leaving whole plates of food, but a few bites. Learning to listen to the signals of the body is, in my opinion, a great way to teach our children to respect their bodies, their needs AND to reduce food waste.
I think the all-inclusive formula should be reviewed. That all players in this system must do their part to reduce waste. I don’t claim to have the solutions. But I know that no cause, however laudable, justifies stigmatizing and denigrating a group of individuals to achieve its goal.
2. The adjective “big” is used here as a neutral descriptor, in the same way as small, large, blue or white.