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11 Key Understanding About Diet Culture
Written by: Megrette Fletcher MEd RDN CDCES
- Diet culture amplifies myths surrounding what it means to be healthy, specifically, that thinness equates to health.
- Diet culture categorizes foods as good and bad. For example:
- You don’t allow yourself to eat certain foods
- You have eliminated whole food groups from your diet
- You aren’t on a specific diet, but you are limiting, restricting, or avoiding food groups/ingredients
- The belief that people (and those with fem identities) should aspire to be thin. For example:
- There is a specific body ideal that is attractive.
- Diet culture amplifies that exercise isn’t a choice but a requirement.
- Diet culture demonizes larger bodies, especially with diabetes.
- Diet culture assumes that having a higher-weight body results from poor eating choices and lack of exercise.
- Diet culture amplifies quick fixes from unqualified individuals.
- Diet culture creates an obsession with food and exercise. This can be described as “Food Noise” or the preoccupation with food, eating, calories, and dieting. For example:
- You seek praise from family and friends over what you did or didn’t eat.
- Diet culture amplifies the belief that you should avoid and/or stigmatize fatness,
- Diet culture amplifies your anxiety about the social, physical, and romantic consequences of failing to look a specific way.
- Diet culture creates a warped image of health by using technology, filters, and deceptive practices, which is not achievable without engaging in disordered eating practices.