Diet Noise is sneaky, it permeate every aspect of our lives if we are not careful. The challenge is that it is not always as obvious to recognize as harmful, as it is often wrapped up as "healthy". Keep reading to learn how to identify toxic diet noise.
**Trigger Warning: this post includes words or phrases that may be triggering to some individuals
DETOX:
This is mostly a marketing expression, and there’s little consistency in what products mean when they make claims about removing “toxins” from the body. Besides, the liver and kidneys manage to effectively detox most people’s bodies. A balanced approach to WHOLE HEALTH, including nutrition, sleep, stress management etc. is the best and most sustainable way to ensure your body is performing at its best.
SUPERFOODS:
While it’s true that humans thrive when eating a balanced diet that includes all the food groups, most foods touted as “super” or a “miracle” are simply … food. Many expensive and rare fad ingredients contain the same nutrients as the produce on sale at your local supermarket. The best approach is to ensure your meal plan includes variety from every food group.
POISON/TOXIC/BAD:
Some foods are not particularly healthy when eaten in disproportionately large quantities, or to people with specific allergies, but the fear-mongering language of referring to particular nutrients as “poison” or “toxic” is incorrect and counter-productive. Again, unless it’s truly poisonous, it’s probably just food. Categorizing foods into groups with such negative language only creates fear and anxiety. ALL FOODS HAVE SPACE in a balanced nutrition plan.
JUNK FOOD/PROCESSED FOOD:
It’s accurate and sometimes useful to identify high-calorie foods with low nutritional value—soda, candy, chips, etc.—as foods that shouldn’t comprise your entire diet. But which foods are “junk” is a moving target. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss all processed food out of hand, and these terms can also be a class-based way of shaming certain food choices. Also, demonizing certain foods without acknowledging that they are delicious reinforces the idea that food is ONLY fuel, and that is simply not true. Food is pleasure, it is comfort, it is culture, it is socializing, it is experience. We are allowed to eat for pleasure, not simply for function. And even “junk food” can have a place in a varied, balanced diet.
CHEAT DAY:
The concept of a “cheat day” comes directly from diet culture. The language assumes everyone is dieting—and suggests that restrictive eating is normal, and a “cheat day” where you eat what you feel like eating is the exception. This mindset reinforces “good” food versus “bad” food, making your nutrition choices a moral issue. Food has no morality, it simply is. The concept of the “cheat day/meal” also strengthens black and white, all or nothing thinking, which can quickly morph into a poor relationship with food, riddled with guilt and extreme behaviours.
DECADENT/NAUGHTY/SINFUL:
There is nothing sinful about eating for pleasure. This is why we have taste buds, and the ability to enjoy food. Again, categorizing food into moral choices only serves to promote feelings of guilt and shame when we “give in” to our desire to eat for pleasure. It reinforces the idea that deriving pleasure from food is a weakness, or character flaw.
CLEANSE:
Subsisting on juices or broths or herbal infusions or some other single category of foods for short periods of time may not necessarily be harmful (though it certainly can be for some). In most cases, however, a more accurate way to describe it is a “crash diet”—not some life-giving salve. It is a surefire way to set oneself up for feeling out of control due to extreme hunger, promotes extreme and unsustainable behaviours, and comes directly from diet culture.
CLEAN EATING:
The rise of clean eating has made bland, unadorned food appear more moral, but the use of “clean” to describe some foods is problematic and judgmental. It also has a role in the rise of the eating disorder known as orthorexia. And of course, if some foods are “clean,” others have to be “dirty.”
WELLNESS:
Sometimes it’s just a nice way to talk about getting a massage or going to yoga; other times it’s a way of re-packaging diet culture into a friendlier-seeming, but still highly profitable, business. The “wellness” industry has managed to successfully promote “health” as one dimensional, and anyone who does not fall neatly into their very limited and potentially dangerous ideal feels as though they are failing at “wellness”.
True wellness is much broader than just nutrition and exercise.
YOU LOOK GREAT!/HAVE YOU LOST WEIGHT?:
This common piece of body-shaming small talk efficiently conveys that you think a person should be trying to lose weight. This is especially awkward if the person hasn’t lost weight, or has lost weight for a less-than-cheerful reason, such as depression, an eating disorder, or an illness. As a general rule of thumb, it’s not polite to comment on the shape of people’s bodies.
BEACH BODY:
This phrase assumes every person is trying to get thinner. Not everyone is trying to lose weight. And, as food writer Mark Bittman and doctor David L. Katz recently wrote: “Not everything that causes weight loss or apparent metabolic improvement in the short term is a good idea. Besides, all bodies are beach bodies.
ATONE/DO PENANCE:
Typically these ideas are used in conjunction with exercise or restriction. When we consider foods bad or sinful, it’s natural to think that there should be a penance to pay for eating them, and exercise/restriction is often framed as the way to exact that punishment. This punitive approach isn’t the best way to sustain a healthy level of movement in daily life. Instead, consider what forms of movement and exercise make you feel great while you’re in the act of doing them.
EARN MY FOOD:
This is a kind of pre-atonement, suggesting that you must punish yourself with exercise to justify enjoying food—not because it’s delicious or your body is craving its nutrients, but because you earned it.
SITUATIONAL WEIGHT GAIN:
The panicked onslaught of advice about how to stave off weight gain during the holidays/pregnancy/period etc. is based on a persistent myth that tends to dramatically overestimate the amount of weight people gain, on average, during any given change in routine. The broad preoccupation with this weight gain is a kind of societal dysfunction.
For example, “The holidays are the way that the culture normalizes dieting and binging and restricting behaviour on a grand scale. It’s okay to indulge during socially sanctioned, culturally approved moments, and then it’s quickly followed up by an expectation of restriction”, and that has become normalized.
I’M JUST CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR HEALTH/ CONCERN-TROLLING:
This can manifest as over-emphasizing or invasively inquiring about health metrics such as weight or cholesterol levels, and it can be a way to fat-shame while maintaining a veneer of polite concern. Once again, health looks different on everyone, and as a general rule of thumb, you have no business in another person’s health.
content adapted from: https://bit.ly/2EmhGA9
