⭐️ Book Review: The Myth of Normal

By Gabor Mate

[if you are curious about what im currently reading or interested in some briefer thoughts about various books ive read, head over to Storygraph and check out my reviews!]

This book has been on my shelf and TBR pile since it was released. I finally read it (and finished it)…and I have VERY mixed feelings.

This was a big book. Like, unnecessarily lengthy at times. There were entire sections where I found myself thinking: this could have been edited down significantly and still made the same point.

And yet — there were parts I genuinely appreciated.

Some chapters were thoughtful, compelling, and well researched, especially when discussing trauma, chronic stress, emotional suppression, disconnection, capitalism, and the ways modern systems impact health and wellbeing.

At its best, the book asks important questions about what happens to humans when we are chronically disconnected from ourselves, our communities, and our bodies.

But then there were other sections where I found myself literally cringing.

The anti-fat bias problem

One of the biggest issues for me was the repeated framing of “obesity” as a public health condition/problem in and of itself.

Even before Chapter 21, I was already in that space of:“okay… I’m tolerating this antifat bias, barely.”

Like the kind of reading where you keep wincing and sighing and hoping the author is will stop referencing obesity to prove his point when he clearly has some strongly internalized anti fat bias he is unaware of and I wish he would just leave the topic of weight alone… and then he didn't.

There was no meaningful engagement with:

• weight stigma

• anti-fat bias in healthcare

• the harms of diet culture

• or the reality that body size itself is not a behaviour

Instead, body size kept getting subtly (and sometimes not subtly) positioned as pathology, which ultimately undermined a lot of the otherwise thoughtful arguments in the book.

The “sugar addiction” section fully lost me 😡

Then Chapter 21 arrived and we got the “sugar addiction” discussion and I was DONE.

No thank you. Absolutely not.

Saying this again here, because it seems to constantly need to be said:

Food is necessary for survival.

We cannot be “addicted” to things we biologically require to live in the same way substances are framed within addiction discourse.

What does happen is that restriction, deprivation, food scarcity, chronic dieting, shame, and moralization around food can create obsession, urgency, binge/restrict cycles, and feelings of loss of control around eating.

That is not the same thing as food being inherently addictive.

And honestly, this is exactly where so many otherwise intelligent conversations around trauma and health completely fall apart for me. A book can spend hundreds of pages critiquing capitalism, disconnection, and systemic harm… only to suddenly reproduce extremely mainstream diet culture rhetoric the moment body size or food enters the conversation.

Like… congratulations, we circled right back to anti-fat bias.

What frustrated me most is that the book almost gets there.

It critiques systems. It critiques disconnection. It critiques profit-driven healthcare and modern societal pressures.

But then it repeatedly falls into simplistic narratives around weight and “healthy lifestyles” that are themselves deeply shaped by capitalism, healthism, and anti-fat bias.

Other references that raised concerns for me

Later in the book, Maté praises The Body Keeps the Score, which immediately raised another red flag for me.

I’ve already written previously about why I chose not to cover that book in book club, despite how often it gets treated as the trauma text. It continues to be heavily recommended in clinical spaces — it was even repeatedly referenced during a recent health authority training I attended last week — despite years of substantial critique surrounding both the author and aspects of the framework itself.

The near-canonical status that book has achieved in trauma discourse honestly continues to concern me.

Maté also references Maslow, whose work has been critiqued for appropriating Indigenous knowledge systems and reshaping them into the individualistic hierarchy model called “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” Could he have many done a smidge more research into this and ventured to promote some folks in the mental health field that are not just old white men?

Aside from all that, he also references the documentary The Wisdom of Trauma (available via thewisdomoftrauma.com). I watched it years ago and remember finding it impactful at the time, though I genuinely don’t know how I would feel revisiting it now, do let me know if you watch it and have any thoughts!

TLDR; Final thoughts

Overall, I think this is a book that contains meaningful insights and significant blind spots.

There were moments where I deeply appreciated the conversations around trauma, stress, emotional survival, and systemic harm.

But there were also repeated moments where the book made me frustrated enough to want to put it down entirely.

For me, the anti-fat bias, “sugar addiction” rhetoric, uncritical references, and overconfident health claims repeatedly weakened what could have otherwise been a much stronger and more nuanced book.

So… not a full recommendation from me.

More like:“there are useful ideas in here, AND please read critically.”