The Krispy Kreme row is out of control and so exhausting

Is this really the hill a load of medical professionals want to die on?

Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts (Getty Images)

On Monday, to support those who have received a Covid-19 vaccination and encourage others to do the same, Krispy Kreme will offer one free glazed donut to anyone who shows their vaccination card at a participating location for the rest of the year. The “Be Sweet to your Community Covid-19 Vaccine Offer,” as it’s called, was an immediate small but significant bright spot among the ongoing pandemic, a rise in hate crimes against the Asian community, and the re-emergence of near-daily mass shootings. Mainly, of course, it was a harmless PR stunt.

But not everyone was thrilled by the incentive. Emergency physician and CNN contributor Dr Leana Wen took to Twitter to air her grievances over the campaign and stress the so-called “health implications” of eating leavened fried dough shaped in a circle. 

“Hey @KrispyKreme, I love that you want to thank people for getting the #covid19 #vaccine! Every incentive helps and free donuts may help move the needle,” the tweet began. “However, donuts are a treat that’s not good for health if eaten every day. Here’s my suggestion for what to do instead.” Wen went on to claim that if someone ate a Krispy Kreme donut every day, they’d “gain approximately 15 pounds by the end of 2021”— surely not the company’s intent, Wen declared. Instead, perhaps they should offer a single box of donuts for a person to donate to an organization of their choice.

That a forward-facing physician would weigh into such a trivial debate at a time of crisis is troubling, to say the least. That a public health professor would seemingly position weight gain as a threat akin to contracting Covid feels dangerous. And that, in the midst of so much profound loss and anguish, anyone would deter people from enjoying anything, let alone a free donut, is frankly exhausting. Is this really why we can’t have nice things?

Studies have clearly shown a rise in eating disorders and an increase in disordered eating habits during the ongoing pandemic. From the isolation and loss of daily routines to endless jokes about the “Covid 15” and public lamentations about pandemic weight gain, many have found themselves at risk or developing or relapsing into previously unhealthy behavior. Anxiety, stress, and the need to control a single aspect of one’s life when everything around them — be it work, parenting, the pandemic, mass shootings, racial unrest — feels uncontrollable only adds to the increased risk. 

“Krispy Kreme offering free donuts for getting vaccinated is like Marlboro offering free cigarettes for getting a flu shot,” physician and social justice personality Eugene Gu tweeted, in a similar vein. “We have an obesity epidemic in this country that is killing us. Corporations that ride the COVID-19 vaccine as a marketing ploy for junk food is [sic] terrible.”

Positioning fatness as a sickness? In the middle of an actual plague? That’s truly the hill these medical professionals want to die on? I’m not even going to bother elaborating on the fact that there is no such thing as one healthy cigarette while sweet treats can easily make up part of a balanced diet, nor will I devote much time to reminding people that smoking is a bad, addictive habit whereas eating is a daily necessity. In this kind of environment, what’s the point?

It is not fatness, but rather fatphobia that is actually killing fat people. One 2009 study found that 40 percent of doctors had a “negative reaction” towards obese patients, and a 2015 study found that doctors spend less time caring for their fat patients. Another 2013 study found that relationships between doctors and fat patients is often categorized as “weak”,  meaning that serious health problems not linked to the patients’ weight were liable to be overlooked and left untreated. A 2009 study found yo-yo dieting to be linked to an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

No one— whatever weight they are — should be denied the simple pleasure of a free donut. No one should be made to feel that, during a time when the news cycle is relentlessly bleak and traumatic, enjoying food — and not just eating food — is wrong.

Jessi Gold, MD, a psychiatrist and assistant professor for the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis, said it best when she tweeted in response to Wen, Gu and their compatriots. 

“So, donuts give you dopamine and dopamine makes you happy,” she posted. “Happy people don’t deserve to be judged for eating a donut… in a time when we have… systemic racism, massive grief, widespread trauma, two mass shootings, a global pandemic, rising rates of depression and anxiety, work from home, school from home, job loss, vacations, cancelled graduations, cancelled weddings, people who haven’t slept, high rates of burnout, political division, among other things… for over a year.”

“They just don’t,” the tweet ended. “Have a MFDONUT.”

So eat your free glazed donut with unabashed happiness and not a single you-know-what given. Don’t buy into the notion that a type of food has some sort of moral value— that food is “good” or “bad” and therefore, depending on what we eat, we’re either “good” or “bad” ourselves. Don’t position weight gain as a failure or fatness as anything other than one of many body types, as worthy of respect, admiration, adoration, and care as any other.

Simply treat food for what it is: a way for us to sustain and enjoy ourselves. In other words, it’s just a donut. Get your priorities straight. And after last year and the beginning of this one, I say to those who would like to see us deprive ourselves of even a second of joy: shut up and let us eat our freaking donuts in peace.

This article was amended on 25 March, 2021, to include references to Dr Wen being a public health professor and an emergency physician.