Pictures of 'Health' - with Niki Bezzant

Selfie Reflective

Niki Bezzant is a multi-award-winning food writer, speaker and commentator ~

These days, where do you get your information about food and health? Do you go to the doctor? A nutritionist? Buy a magazine? A book? Do a Google search? Click through to your favourite influencer who looks amazing, cooks amazing and works out for 19 hours per week? And of those options, whose opinion, guidance or recommendations are you likely to trust the most?

In this episode, we're joined by multi-award-winning writer, speaker, thinker and commentator, Niki Bezzant. In 2005, Niki was given the opportunity to be the founding editor of former print magazine, the Healthy Food Guide, and remained in that role up until 2016. Despite being New Zealand's most popular magazine in the food space, the Healthy Food Guide stopped being a physical publication in 2019. Although it's impossible to point the finger at social media as being the exclusive reason for this print magazine's demise, there's no doubt that it played a part.

Having been involved with food media for twenty years and nutrition for fifteen, Niki has seen huge shifts in the landscape over that time - and not necessarily for the better. Today, Niki muses on her time at Healthy Food Guide, and gives us insight about why she thinks social media can be a dangerous medium when it comes to highly personalised subjects like health. She speaks about why we must foster expert advice, and voices some refreshingly strong opinions about influencer culture. Niki also discusses why we need to look at the pictures of 'health' that we see on our feeds through a far more critical lens.

It's a great listen that's packed with critical thoughts around the subjects of health, wellness, fitness and food on social media. Once you've had a listen, as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Topics include: the challenges that traditional media faces, why we need experts, influencer culture, privilege, diet fads and more.

Shownotes:

You can discover more about Niki on her website, and find her on Instagram. Niki also did a Ted Talk about social media in relation to food and health, which you can check out here.

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