Oprah Admits She Was a ‘Major Contributor’ to Toxic Diet Culture
Oprah Winfrey had some new thoughts to share about weight loss this week, just a few months after she embraced Ozempic and stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers, a weight loss brand she’d worked with for nearly a decade.
In a live event streamed on Thursday, the talk show host took a few moments to address her history covering weight loss on television, saying she wants “to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, the talk show for 25 years, [and] online—I’ve been a major contributor to it.”
“I’ve shared how that famous ‘wagon of fat’ moment on The Oprah Show is one of my biggest regrets,” she added, recalling the famous 1988 episode where she pulled a red wagon with 67 pounds of animal fat in it to show her audience how much weight she’d lost with a liquid diet. The episode, which became the highest rated one in The Oprah Show’s history, drew plenty of criticism in the years that followed, with some calling it one of her worst TV moments.