Aimeé
Popstar Demi Lovato is getting a combination of support, mockery, and confusion online for her current war against Los Angeles froyo shop The Bigg Chill, who offended her with some displays in their store.
She posted about her bad experience there on Instagram in a series of stories complaining about them being “diet culture vultures.”
It seems like Lovato had a problem with store items being labeled as “sugar-free” or other terms often used in diet speak.
“Finding it extremely hard to order froyo from @TheBiggChillOfficial,” she wrote, “when you have to walk past tons of sugar free cookies/other diet foods before you get to the counter. Do better please.”
She also shared some DMs she had in which she tries to brainstorm ideas for how to talk about frozen yogurt or cookies at The Bigg Chill without using the terms Lovato was offended by, to which they were basically like “no, this isn’t actually a problem.”
In her convo, she suggests labeling things as being for people with celiac, diabetes…or vegan. One of those things is not like the others!
While Lovato is right that eating disorders are a serious problem in a large swathe of the population and there should be some sensitivity in how food businesses promote themselves, I don’t know if she’s thinking through having food labeled by its disease compatibility.
A whole lot of people are dragging Lovato for her one-woman campaign against frozen yogurt, but what is getting lost is some of the packaging on items sold by The Bigg Chill. It describes their products as “guilt-free,” which is definitely a phrase we should not be using around eating in the year 2021:
Aside from that, though, sugar-free is a pretty normal thing to look for in a food item, especially if you have health concerns.
This one froyo shop is not perpetuating a great evil by having those options, and it’s weird someone with Demi Lovato’s platform would attack a small business for something to be seen in massive corporations everywhere:
It’s rough to be a world-famous celebrity, go up against a froyo shop, and lose, but here we are.
