Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

A big part of EatingWell's mission is to explore cuisines from all over the world and to celebrate fresh ingredients and the people—farmers, artisans, chefs, restaurant workers, producers and purveyors—who bring them to our table. We'd only be telling half the story if we shared recipes without giving the context, the cultural attribution and the origins and evolution of a dish. It's impossible to cover food systems, health and sustainable living—and to encourage healthy lifestyles—without addressing the systemic racism and biases that prevent some communities from having access to culturally appropriate, nutrient-dense foods and health care. We embrace the responsibility we have as a national media brand to cover all of these topics from a place of inclusion and representation. We are putting our resources and budgets behind this by working with diverse writers, recipe developers and testers, editors, expert sources, illustrators, photographers and more to create our content.

These are the goals we are focusing on this year:

Content:

In June 2022, we conducted an anti-bias review of the top 500 pages in our library with a team of independent reviewers. By the end of 2022, we will have a plan in place for remediation of all articles identified during this review, and we will have begun addressing these concerns.
By the end of 2022, we will establish a clear process for identifying, reporting and addressing bias and cultural appropriation in our content archive. We will also establish a clear process to vet new content for bias and cultural appropriation, where applicable, before it is published. This will include:
Ensuring that nutrition advice is covered with a perspective of cultural inclusion and diversity and is free from harmful diet-culture language and imagery.
Reporting on nutrition studies in a way that is inclusive of all gender identities, when possible.
Note: Many studies are based on a gender binary, and some of the information may not apply to transgender and nonbinary individuals in the most comprehensive way it should. We recognize this and will work to adjust the language in our content to be as inclusive, accurate and transparent as possible when referencing research and scientific studies.

Creating an anti-bias best practices document for our recipe and food content, which can be referenced by editorial teams, writers, recipe developers, testers, stylists and photographers.
Creating photo guidelines and review processes for cuisine-specific recipes to ensure the cultural accuracy of these photos (including food styling and plating recommendations from developers when possible).
By the end of 2022, we will conduct an audit of our hands-in-pans recipe videos in order to establish a baseline and set budgeted goals for the coming year to ensure we have appropriate representation among our talent as well as with the recipe selections and cuisines showcased in our videos.
By the end of 2022, we will conduct an audit of our celebrity news coverage with the ultimate goal of diversifying our portfolio of celebrity news and striving to report on celebrities, chefs, food bloggers, cookbook authors and other personalities from various racial and ethnic backgrounds in order attract a more diverse audience for EatingWell and ensure that our entire audience feels seen and reflected in our content.

We will use our social media platforms to amplify diverse voices and representation. By the end of 2022, we will conduct an audit of the content we are publishing on our Instagram account. Based on the results and recommendations from that audit, we will then set goals to ensure that the content we promote reflects our values for diversity and inclusion (both in the subject matter and in the content creators we are tagging on our posts).
We will represent voices from diverse backgrounds and experiences in our stories—whether it's about nutrition or weeknight cooking—and ensure that at least 40% of our expert sources reflect diverse representation—including race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliations and nationalities—as applicable, when that information is publicly available.
We will conduct an audit of visuals on site and in social media where people are represented in photos and illustrations. With those results, we will work with our visual team and anti-bias experts to establish goals and parameters to ensure diversity of race, genders, body types and sizes and abilities.

People:

We pledge to establish concrete hiring goals to help us maintain or increase the diversity of our full-time and part-time teams. The first course of action will be to implement a survey to establish a baseline and then work with HR to set a goal of maintaining or increasing the diversity of our team, depending on the survey results. We will actively recruit racially diverse candidates for every open role and follow anti-bias best practices when interviewing.
We will ensure that our full-time team has taken comprehensive training courses covering diversity in the workplace and unconscious bias.
Editorially, we will establish a process to regularly recruit and hire writers, recipe developers, photographers and other contributors from racially diverse backgrounds and underrepresented communities, with the goal of at least 40% of budgeted assignments being created by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ contributors—when that information is available—by the end of 2022. In this work, we will take care to avoid race-matching or culturally pigeonholing contributors into certain content areas (for example, only assigning Korean recipes to Korean cooks).

Community:

By the end of 2022, we commit to identifying a nonprofit or community-driven organization that is aligned with our commitment toward fighting bias in the food space, and planning to use our platform to further the work that they do, either through partnership, content coverage or monetary support.

We will provide regular updates on the progress of these goals.

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