CW: This article contains weight, diet, and eating disorder based content.
Did we not leave diet culture and food shaming in the past?
It’s 2025, and companies like Poppi and Hers are still making us feel bad about our bodies and eating habits. But what’s more shocking— the Super Bowl chose to air their harmful commercials during game time. This leads us to question: Why are we still marketing dangerous diet culture rhetoric?
Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand, has already been receiving some backlash for the Poppi vending machines they gifted to influencers and for the lack of actual health benefits. See, according to researchers for an article in Healthline, “Poppi soda only contains two grams of prebiotic fiber, an amount too low to cause meaningful gut health benefits for the consumer from just one can.”
In the Poppi commercial we mentioned, the main character is conflicted while sitting in a drive-through. She wants a soda, but as our narrator points out, that’s, “feels like a whole lot of sugar for broad daylight.” So obviously, she should just a get Poppi.
There’s a problem with what this rhetoric is promoting. We can allow ourselves to have sugar… but only if we’re alone in the middle of the night and hiding our sugar consumption. The notion of not being able to consume sugar on weekdays or in broad daylight is what contributes to binge eating. We find ourselves curbing our sugar cravings, putting them off, and forcing ourselves to only consume sugar when we are hidden. Then when we finally do give into our cravings, it can get out of hand.
People not only had comments on the harmful diet marketing tactics of Poppi, but they were also turned off of the product due to the sheer amount of influencers in one commercial. These commercials starred Alix Earle, Jake Shane, and Rob Rausch. Reactions from one X user included outrage over the influencers in the commercial, stating “now I’m a Poppi hater.”
And then there was the Hims & Hers commercials, promoting weight loss injections like Ozempic. This specific weight loss drug is special, because instead of utilizing this injection due to specific health conditions and still needing the prescription from your primary care provider to move forward, Hims & Hers matches you with a healthcare provider to directly prescribe you their drug.
This commercial was harmful. The idea that you can be dissatisfied with your weight, despite the reality of your health, and just go onto the Hims & Hers website to be prescribed medicine is dangerous. So many young people watch the Super Bowl and are absorbing this harmful diet culture speak; that will do a number on their self image.
However, some commercials did use this huge platform for good.
Dove ran a commercial that promoted body positivity. “These Legs,” showed a young girl running on her unstoppable legs. Context later says, “At 14, she’ll think they’re unbearable.” This commercial is aware of the harmful messages society sends to people about their bodies. The whole message is to, “change the way we talk to our girls,” leaving us with the hashtag: #KeepHerConfident.
It’s important for brands to play a role in the pushback against other companies taking people down and harming our body images. It’s also important to find people who promote food freedom and taking care of our bodies by focusing on how we’re feeling.
Colleen Christensen is a registered dietician and content creator focusing on food freedom. Food freedom means fueling your body with no food rules.
It’s hard to clear the noise surrounding diets, weight loss, body image, and food that’s pushed on us by society, however it’s important to know there are people on our side. Despite the disturbing messaging received in Super Bowl commercials, other commercials luckily counter-balanced. It’s hard to learn how to take care of ourselves, especially because we hear specific rules from other voices. But, we don’t have to listen to these big commercials— they just have enough money to make their voices loud enough for us to hear them.
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