Diet culture is the widespread assumption that appearance and body shape are more important than physical, psychological, and general well-being. It’s the notion that regulating your body, particularly your diet, is acceptable by limiting what and how much you eat. Diet culture also normalizes identifying things as good or bad and thinking of food as transactional—something you either earn or don’t deserve based on how you’ve eaten and worked out. Not only is food labeled, but people can identify themselves as good or evil for eating certain things.
People who have been conditioned to accept diet culture as a usual way of life may have a negative self-image, engage in negative self-talk on a regular basis, and believe that being thin makes a person superior to someone who is not. They may also have an all-or-nothing mentality.
Diet Culture and Disordered Eating
Diet culture is one element that contributes to disordered eating patterns. This is usually caused by a lack of focus on nutrition while prioritizing low-calorie items. However, it can also influence how someone views exercise because it can be perceived as a way to work off so-called bad meals or as a way to earn food.
Food Is More Than Just An Energy Source
The belief that food is merely fuel and must be earned is a toxic one that can lead to disordered eating and eating disorders. Food is much more than just fuel. It is a social and cultural aspect of our life. Focusing on food as fuel—or good vs. bad—keeps you from appreciating and accepting food as a deeper and more significant aspect of your life. After the holidays, this effect is frequently noticed when advertising and publications promote detoxes or cleanse to “reset” or purge your body of “poor” eating choices. Of course, these methods are incorrect and even harmful, but they also promote the notion that eating should have a cost.
Furthermore, not all physically valuable components of food give fuel. Food contains minerals, phytochemicals, water, antioxidants, and other necessary components that contribute to a healthy body but deliver little in actual energy. While the components of foods like —carbohydrates, fats, and proteins that provide us with energy are essential, they constitute just a small part of the overall nutritional picture.
Avoiding nutrient-dense foods in favor of low-calorie foods or reducing your food intake so that you do not acquire the necessary quantity of nutrients for optimal functioning causes you to miss out on crucial aspects that food has to offer. This can be harmful to your health or contribute to bad health. There is no professional definition for disordered eating. However, it is most commonly described as a pattern of abnormal eating behaviors and cognitive habits around food that do not yet meet the criteria for an eating disorder. This includes excessive dieting.
Diet Culture as an Unhealthy Obsession
Labeling oneself as good or bad based on your foods can exacerbate disordered eating behaviors and lead to an eating disorder.
As noble as it seems, trying to consume only delicious food might be considered orthorexia, an eating disorder.
Orthorexia is considered an extreme form of clean eating—an obsessive emphasis on what the person believes to be the “proper” healthy diet. This preoccupation causes interference with daily life, including social, emotional, and other issues.
The following are some orthorexia characteristics:
• A limited diet
• Eating rituals
• Avoidance of items not considered “good” or “healthy”
Diet culture contributes to orthorexia since it encourages avoiding foods or restricting one’s diet. Avoiding gluten when you do not have an intolerance or allergy, extreme variants of veganism, strict low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets, detoxes, cleanses, and avoiding any GMOs or non-organic foods are some examples.
Orthorexia can develop into other conditions such as anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorders, including body dysmorphic disorder. Eating disorders and disordered eating behavior can directly originate from poor body image caused by diet culture and the celebration of thinness. In addition, body dysmorphic disorder causes persons to become fascinated and obsessed with their external appearance and defects. It can be evident in those who have eating disorders.
Diet Culture and Body Image
Diet culture belief systems equate thinness with health and provide the idea that body forms outside a narrow range are unhealthy. While losing weight is sometimes a good choice, the methods utilized to achieve weight loss are not always healthy. News reports and social media frequently glamorize celebrity weight reduction stories without asking whether the methods utilized were healthful or sustainable. This practice instills the notion that thinness and the pursuit of weight loss is the way to acceptance, happiness, and health. Bodies that fall outside the slender, recognized norm can be perfectly healthy. Appearance alone does not convey a complete picture of a person’s health. A poor diet and lack of exercise increase health risks regardless of body size.
How to Fight Diet Culture
While avoiding diet culture altogether is impossible due to its pervasiveness in all sectors of society, there are strategies to limit your exposure to it and protest against it.
Avoid Certain Media Types
Avoid any social media, forums, online communities, or programming that makes you feel like you’re not good enough the way you are. Media use has been shown to boost emotions of low self-image, which is a key element of diet culture.
Practice Body Neutrality
Body neutrality is the idea that you should focus on what your body can do right now rather than what you want it to look like. It diverts your attention away from attempting to manage or control your appearance. Instead, it alters your thinking to be ambivalent about your appearance and focuses on honoring the things you can do today.
Body neutrality can help you move away from diet culture and food labeling and toward honoring your body as it is now.
Health Education
Reading and educating yourself on the concept of comprehensive health may help you understand how focusing simply on thinness and food restriction can be damaging to your health. It also enables you to understand the various approaches to staying healthy, such as different body types and eating habits.
Kim’s Final Thoughts…
Diet culture might feel like an unavoidable pressure that everyone must endure. However, it is critical to understand that dieting is not the only approach to achieving health and that being slim does not imply being healthy. Speak with a skilled health care practitioner if you are struggling with disordered eating, an eating disorder, or are concerned about your health, body image, or eating habits.
