The Gilmore Girls Diet and Food Obsession: A Deep Dive

As per many (many!) requests from your comments, I spent two months watching all the seasons of Gilmore Girls - plus the 2016 revival - to analyse and dissect the characters' diet, what it all may mean and if it reflects what the actresses really ate in real life.

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00:00 Intro
02:07 A brief intro to the Gilmore Girls
03:39 Gilmore Girls: The "Cool Girls"
11:06 Food as a Setting in GG
12:24 Food Acting in GG
17:38 Is the Gilmore Girls Diet Realistic?
25:00 What they ate in real life: Alexis Bledel
26:54 What they ate in real life: Lauren Graham
32:58 Food Obsession in the writing of GG
38:05 Product Placement in GG

Jessica Viana
#JessicaViana #GilmoreGirls #AYITL

[Okkkkkkk-olkz]

Sookie is the most balanced character in the show. She’s genuinely happy and passionate about her career. She has the healthiest and most stable romantic relationship in the show. She’s a good friend with good judgment. Team Sookie!

[mooble]

they would order fast food like it was water, never eat it, talk about their magical metabolism, and then fatshame people. absolutely 100% my least favourite part of the show

[danijane]

The thing is though, they always had PILES of food but only ever took one bite of pizza or 2 licks of ice cream and then discarded it. Most of the time when they ate out, they'd order and as soon as their food arrived they'd have to leave without even touching it. The fast food gorging was a massive illusion, but if you watch how much fast food they actually eat, it was minimal.

[cass]

Amy Dunne saying “I ate cold pizza and remained a size 2” sums up Gilmore girls.

[emilyagain]

I think the use of junk food in the show also helps show how Lorelei and Rory are more sisterly than mother and daughter. Lorelei had Rory when she was a teen and because of that, she eats like one. Rory eats that way because that's how she was raised. I don't want to sound insensitive but I wouldn't be surprised if Lorelei had an eating disorder, she was raised in a strict environment so her trying to gain control through food makes sense. She constantly drinks coffee as a main source of energy and while people around her say she eats a lot she could be binging. She's most likely in a binge/ restrict cycle a lot of the time, between having to raise a child by herself, maintain a job and stay active in her social life she doesn't have much time to eat by herself. Because of this, she's fully reliant on takeout and restaurant visits and ends up eating a majority of her calories around friends and family.

There's a really strong tie between food and socializing in the show, there are barely any scenes of her eating by herself and when she is it's stuff like the bag of lettuce with dressing. Lorelei's relationship with food is really interesting because of this, it's one of the things that makes her seem not fully "adult". Cooking a proper meal for yourself and your family multiple times a day on a regular basis is one of those things that make people seem more "grown-up", Lorelei's dependency on fast food shows that even though she's in her 30s she's still enough like a teenager to be on the same level as Rory.

EDIT:
There's a lot of comments along the lines of "that wasn't intended by the writers" and "the show isn't about that". I'm not saying that Lorelei does or does not have an eating disorder or was written to have one, I'm just reading into her actions for fun! Sometimes the curtains are just blue, but isn't it fun to see if there's an extra layer of meaning? The beauty of stories is personal interpretation, if you don't agree with mine that's great! if you do that's also great!

[CassisLifeOnCamera]

It´s also evident that Rory views others as ¨below¨ her and I think this is because of her being told shes ¨special¨ her whole life by adults so she´s grown up automatically thinking she is better/above others.

[kaitlynbentley]

I think the food acting makes the “quirkiness” of them loving food more realistic… throughout high school and college I’ve met tons and tons of girls who claim to love food and “eat so much”, but when I’d watch them eat they would take a few bites of the junk food. I remember this distinctly in high school- I was a size 10 and was the biggest one out of all of the girls I knew. We had a sleepover where all the girls were SO excited to “eat junk food” all night. Night of the sleepover came and a few of them had ONE Oreo each. I think it’s this complex with young women to make themselves sound like they eat a ton and they’re unhealthy to make you notice how skinny they are and wonder, but it’s not true.

[rosietownsend]

I also feel like it’s worth considering that they’re supposed to be struggling for money and saving up for things like Lorelai and Sookie’s new inn and Rory’s college, yet they’re constantly eating out, which is quite expensive over time… It’s also an interesting issue when thinking about Rory’s younger years when Lorelai would have simultaneously been struggling to learn to manage a household (cook and budget) on her own while also learning to live without her family’s wealth.

[Kaybemr]

Also the fact that there never seems to be other stereotypically "beautiful" women in that town. So no wonder Lorelai was seen as this gorgeous Unicorn. Cause there was never any competition. The lengths this show went to to make sure that we always saw Lorelai and Rory as the prettiest in town.

[jdizzle]

I always assumed Rory and Lorelei both ate basically nothing most of the day and then binged at certain times, usually around people. It's unhealthy but it's also something some people genuinely do. It's easy to eat a 1200 calorie meal and stay thin if you don't eat the rest of the day

[megzee]

Something that occured to me recently is that Luke is constantly portrayed as a stick-in-the-mud and a killjoy because he eats healthily and tries to get the Gilmores to do the same, but no-one ever considers that it's likely coming from a place of fear. Both of Luke's parents died young, and he clearly has a lot of unresolved trauma because of that, as we see from things like his aversion to hospitals and his 'dark day'. So his obsession with being healthy could very well be his way of trying to take control in a way he couldn't when his parents died, and trying to prevent himself and the two people he cares about most from suffering the same health problems and early death that his parents faced. But as far as I can remember, nothing like that is ever explored on the show. Maybe I'm just thinking too deeply about something that was probably meant to be meaningless (and thereby doing exactly what ASP doesn't want viewers to do), but I just feel like this could have been a good opportunity to further explore and develop Luke's character, and instead it was just left as more fuel for the show's 'healthy people are so annoying' jokes.

[noorjehan]

i would argue that lorelai and rory can only be friends with girls who they think are less beautiful than they are, or have less social power than they do (sookie, an overweight woman, lane, an asian american girl with a strict mother, or paris a girl who's very insecure about her looks and has fewer social skills) because they don't view them as a threat, they are nice to them because they think of themselves as above them, even if they don't overtly say it. Every time a new character enters that rivals them in brains, beauty and social skills or possess some talent or skill that they don't have (luke's girlfriend rachel in season 1, or Lucy and olivia from season 7) they are an immediate threat to the girls social status and they cannot establish a good relationship with them no matter how hard they try, which either leads to jealousy, rivalry, or judgement of appearence or actions because the show requires them to be the most desirable women in any setting. rachel is an immediate threat to lorelai and lukes relationship AND highlights how much luke is in love with lorelai because of how similar they are in looks. Lucy is revealed to be dating Marty who was into rory, but even though rory rejected him, she cannot fathom him getting over her AND THE SHOW DOESN"T EITHER BECAUSE HE'S STILL IN LOVE WITH HER. They can be happy for their friends successes in finding love because they don't see those successes as a detriment to their social status. As much as this show made strides in representation for different kinds of women being loved, it's impossible to ignore how rory and lorelai treat the women around them as only existing for their benefit.

[greenbox]

fun fact: they speak very fast bc the writer and creator of the show always wrote a lot of dialogue she wanted her characters to say but there's only so much time in a show, so they spoke faster to be able to fit everything

[EmmaPalmaVelasquez]

I remember watching this as a teenager and being flabbergasted by how much unhealthy food they seemed to eat while still being so slim. Granted, some people have an unbelievable metabolism, but Rory's and Lorelai's eating habits and even some personality traits were considered as quirky by most of the other characters and not as potentially dangerous.The show still holds a very special place in my heart, but willing suspension of disbelief is just impossible as a 30-something adult. Thank you for taking time to talk about this!

[ixmay]

So good! The contrast between what Lorelei eats and Lauren being on a diet since 11 is heartbreaking. I’m curious about the science behind how much fast and slow metabolisms are a ‘thing’ and can affect your weight!

[isabellatucker]

I used to eat whatever i wanted candy for meals, fast food, coffee, and junk food. I was skinny and looked fit. Around 19, i started being larthargic. Greezy, sugary, and extremely processed food made me sick/ throw up. It messed up my stomach. Had to learn nutrition and have a healthy relationship with food. Even now, i can' t eat at most fast food and still have stomach problems.

[catyatzee]

I never watched Gilmore girls (I was too young at the time), but I did watch iCarly as a kid. There’s a character Sam who eats a lot but is always beautiful and skinny, and I was trying to figure out how to be like her in real life. Later the actress said that it was damaging to her to be portrayed as a huge eater on TV while she basically had an eating disorder in real life to keep her figure. This “skinny girl eats a lot consistently” does seem to be bad overall

[Stephy]

The Gilmore girls are fictional but the “regular degular super thin girl who just LOVES to gorge on junk food” thing was incredibly common among celebs at this point too

[jessjessbrooks]

The person with the healthiest red relationship with food was Suki. She was my favorite character.

[corkaczarownicy]

I love Melissa and I just finished GG for the first time. I am very happy that her weight was never ever a story point. Her body was never commented on and there was never a plot where she would want to lose weight or anything like that. I love how we saw the gorgeous beautiful Sookie through the prism of her being great friend, loving and positive person, amazing cook and my favourite character in the show.