All too often diet culture becomes synonymous with health and nutrition. Unfortunately, we learn a lot about food, eating, nutrition, health and weight through the lens of diet culture. There’s a lot of passive programming that happens to all of us, and it’s important that we work to intentionally separate that for ourselves… and for our kids.
Your kids are already being exposed to diet culture, and they may not realize that’s what it is unless it’s pointed out to them. They will be indoctrinated by diet culture unless they are intentionally taught about health, nutrition, food, eating and weight in accurate ways rather than through the lens of diet culture.
Hopefully it goes without saying that the best way to teach your kids about the difference between diet culture and nutrition is for you to live it yourself. By knowing the difference, you’ll be able to recognize diet culture, call it out, and reject it while setting an example of how to engage in healthy and supportive behaviors around food and body image.
So what is diet culture? Here are a few ways to spot it:
Diet culture is a black and white, all or nothing, dichotomous way of thinking and behaving.
In diet culture, there are only two options. Right/wrong, good/bad, healthy/unhealthy. It puts labels on food without considering context, circumstance or additional applicable information in making food decisions.
You may have seen your kids bring home assignments from school where they are tasked with putting food in different columns labeled as “healthy” or “unhealthy”. Or maybe you’ve used those labels yourself in the past.
In reality, nutrition is much more nuanced and dynamic. It’s far more flexible and inclusive. I like to say that the “right” choice is always circumstantial. There’s a lot of information to gather and process when making food decisions – what sounds good, what you have access to, how your body feels, what would match what your body is asking for, combinations and/or amounts of food that will fuel you best, your schedule, what the people you are with are wanting to eat (if applicable), possible health conditions or medical concerns, and more.
This is an important distinction for you to teach your kids. Diet culture only cares about two things: whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong. On the other hand, health and wellbeing is far more personal and individualized. It’s bigger than what they eat or how they look. It can include the self-care behaviors they engage in with food and exercise for example, but it also includes how they talk to and about themselves, how they treat other people, their ability to name and process emotions, and more. Our kids are at risk for not having the skills to truly care for themselves if they are only taught to see health and nutrition as a list of things to do or not to.
Diet culture pathologizes body shape and size
One of the roots of diet culture are the BMI charts, which were actually never meant to measure anything other than gathering statistical data on a small group of men. I’d encourage you to read this blog post for more on that: What is a healthy weight? Drawbacks to using BMI for measuring health.
BMI assigns health risk to body size when it was never meant to measure health in the first place. Recognition of this fact isn’t to ignore the evidence we have that weight is correlated with health risk. However, correlation isn’t causation. When studies control for lifestyle factors, the correlation with weight is dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Not only that, there’s no empirically sound way to lose weight and keep it off. The majority of individuals will regain the weight they lost and more within 2-5 years. Recommendations to engage in intentional weight loss as a way to improve health are unfounded. In fact, interventions aimed at weight loss are only positively correlated with weight cycling, weight gain, increased set point, increased inflammation and disturbance of metabolic profiles.
It doesn’t mean you won’t meet someone who’s the statistic. It also doesn’t mean that we need to be anti-weight loss. It means that you can assess and evaluate how fixation on weight impacts your health, your food behaviors and the relationship you have with yourself.
All of this to say, BMI pathologizes body size. Instead, consider identifying what meaningful changes you can make to improve your health regardless of what happens to your weight.
So, when talking to your kids about health, don’t use stigmatizing language to describe body size such as: “normal”, “overweight”, or “obese”… like the BMI charts do. That’s pathologizing body size and assigning health only based on a number or someone’s appearance with no regard for what else is going on for them.
Side note: it’s for this reason that I continually remind clients and group coaching members that setting aside weight makes us better problem solvers. We are far better able to care for our health and wellbeing when we see it as more than just a number on a scale.
Your kids will internalize stigmatizing language. They will recognize that there is such a thing as a “right” body and a “wrong” body. They will believe their body is something to control or fix instead of take care of. Instead of pathologizing body size, let’s celebrate body diversity and encourage health promoting behaviors regardless of body size.
That doesn’t mean you need to shy away from taking about bodies. You can use neutral, descriptive language like smaller body or larger body, thin, tall, short, and yes, even fat (when judgment isn’t attached, it’s just a descriptor like short or tall).
Think about how things may have been different for you if you were taught as a child that your body wasn’t wrong and didn’t need to be fixed. This could have completely changed the whole trajectory of your life, particularly your relationship with food, your body and yourself. Give your kids that gift!
Diet culture uses external rules and guidelines for how, when and what to eat
This is a pretty easy one to spot! Anytime there are external rules or guidelines for when, where or what to eat, it’s diet culture. Period. Where health and nutrition is about eating in a connected and attuned way to yourself and your food, diet culture wants you to disconnect from yourself and just follow the rules.
I encourage you to help your kids understand that outside rules are diet culture and they don’t need them. They can listen to, connect with and trust their bodies. They will always be the best expert of their own food choices, and the best way to care for their body is to rely on and trust it by responding in appropriate ways when it asks for something.
I hope this is helpful at helping you identify diet culture, for you and your kids!
If you want more support for Raising Confident Eaters, you can check out my online course. Let me know if you have any questions about it!
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