What is Diet Culture and why is it harmful?

Unraveling and Challenging Diet Culture

In today’s world where our social media feeds are bombarded with messages about #cleaneating, #whatieatinaday, #detoxteas and #oatzempic, it’s easy to feel shame around food and question what it means to be healthy. It does not make it any easier that we are also constantly told what we should eat (and should not eat), how we should look and other unrealistic ideals that make us question our own self worth. Behind diet culture’s rose-colored lenses, its messages and behaviours can negatively impact our health and wellbeing. Before you dive into the next fad diet or start feeling guilt around food, let’s talk about what diet culture is, how you can spot it, its downsides and how we can reject the diet culture mentality so that we can move towards genuine wellbeing.

First, what is diet culture?

Diet culture is much more complex than dieting. Diet culture is a set of beliefs and attitudes around health and food which impacts people by supporting a culture of dieting. It can be fueled by multi-billion-dollar wellness industries who thrive on promising a ‘fix’ for our insecurities or through influencers who promote products and messages for life-changing effects, generally centered around weight loss. Diet culture is harmful to everyone of all weights and sizes and not just to those who don’t fit within culturally normalized body standards or ideals. Here are some examples of how diet culture and its effects show up:

• Associating thinness or Western beauty ideals with better health, happiness or success and that the only thing getting in the way of having a thinner body is not having enough “willpower”.

• Thinking thinness and our appearance is tied to our own self-worth. And by contrast, shaming those who do not fit the ideal weights or health standards.

• Giving moral value to foods and labelling them as “good” or “bad” foods or by using terms like “clean eating”, “detox diet” and “cheat days”. The language used may seem innocent at first but it can get so unconsciously embedded in our minds, that it eventually reinforces that we are not enough if we can’t find a way to have ‘control’ around food.

• Promoting excessive calorie and food restriction (ie. the sea of 1200-1300kcal meals plans on the internet)

Recognizing Diet Culture and Beyond

Diet culture is sneaky because it is often disguised as ‘wellness advice’ at first but can show up beyond direct messaging like the above. If you have every felt good for skipping a meal or guilty for missing a workout, that is likely a result of diet culture at play. Beyond these, diet culture can also be seen in:

·         Healthcare: Healthcare providers often treat people in larger bodies differently by prescribing weight loss instead of delivering the same health care they provide to thin-bodied people. Many providers also mistakenly overemphasize how someone’s health is mainly influenced by their own personal behaviours and choices. In reality our personal behaviours may actually account for a third of our health and factors like medical care access and the social determinants of health (ie. food access) are contributing influences of health (10). When healthcare providers do not recognize these connections, people in larger bodies feel the effects of the providers’ bias and become reluctant to seek out healthcare which drives poor health outcomes (3).

·         The weight loss industry: Would you believe that the weight loss industry is worth over $70 billion dollars and is only growing (6)? This shows up as directly promoting weight loss supplements and diet programs like Weight Watchers and MyFitnessPal.

·         Social media: Wellness influencers are a key part of the advertising industry, called influencer marketing. The products and “lifestyles” they sell tend to place high value on thin bodies and unrealistic diets.

·         The fashion industry: Buying clothes can be challenging for people in larger bodies. “Plus” size clothing is often not available in the same styles as other sized clothing, and are often in a separate section in department stores. Similarly, designer clothing is often limited to a selection of smaller sizes. Both of these create an ‘othering’ effect that promotes exclusion rather than inclusion.

The Downsides of Diet Culture

Unfortunately, there is no fun side to diet culture. Research shows that going on diets and chasing beauty ideals often results in diet failure rates being as high as 98% (2) and that 66% of individuals who go on diets will regain the weight they lost if not more within 2 to 3 years (7). Not to mention the negative consequences that dieting can have on one’s physical health as well as fuelling diet culture’s hallmark for weight prejudice (5).

Beyond that, diet culture promotes discrimination primarily to those in larger bodies. Such individuals also face barriers in healthcare and their school or employment environment when they come across multiple biases targeting their weight. This often leads to psychological distress, poor physical health and comprised social relationships which often go unaddressed.

With so much messaging around encouraging weight loss or fear of weight gain while demonizing consumption of food, disordered eating patterns are becoming more of a norm.  It is also very common for people who enter the dieting cycle to feel out of control around food, have a poor relationship with food, experience stress and be at higher risk of developing an eating disorder. In fact, as much as 75% of women from U.S. who are in their 20s to 40s agree that they have had disordered eating behaviours (8), which support just how invasive diet culture is.

During COVID when youth and teens were especially isolated and spending more time on social media, we saw eating disorder cases exploded in B.C. and across Canada (11). It is easy to see the correlation between access to diet culture and the rise of eating disorder numbers.

Let’s Challenge Diet Culture – What’s next?

Now that we can spot where diet culture exists and acknowledge the negative impact it is, the next step is to learn how to protect ourselves from its harm. In part 2 of this topic, we will discuss strategies and resources that challenge diet culture and advocate for a balanced and more productive view on health and nutrition.

Blog written by Sharon Sun, RD

Reviewed by Abby Hsiao, RD

Disclaimer: the information provided is not intended as medical advice or to diagnose or treat a medical disease. It is strictly for informational purposes. Consult with your medical provider such as a dietitian before implementing any dietary changes, the information provided does not replace medical advice provided by your healthcare provider.

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Work cited

References

1. Teich, Jessica (2021) "The Unbearable Weight of Diet Culture." Good Housekeeping. www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a35036808/what-is-diet-culture/.

2. Fildes, A., Charlton, J., Rudisill, C., Littlejohns, P., Prevost, A. T., & Gulliford, M. C. (2015). Probability of an obese person attaining normal body weight: cohort study using electronic health records. American journal of public health, 105(9), e54-e59.

3. About Health at Every Size (HAES) (n.d.). Association for Size Diversity and Health. https://asdah.org/health-at-every-size-haes-approach/

4. Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition journal, 10, 1-13.

5. Puhl, R. M., & Heuer, C. A. (2010). Obesity stigma: important considerations for public health. American journal of public health, 100(6), 1019-1028.

6. LaRosa, J. (2019). Top 9 Things to Know About the Weight Loss Industry. Market Research. https://blog.marketresearch.com/u.s.-weight-loss-industry-grows-to-72-billion

7. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A. M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220.

8. Gillings School of Global Public Health (n.d) Survey finds disordered eating behaviors among three out of four American women. https://sph.unc.edu/cphm/carolina-public-health-magazine-accelerate-fall-2008/survey-finds-disordered-eating-behaviors-among-three-out-of-four-american-women-fall-2008/

9. Erhardt, G. A. (2021). Intuitive eating as a counter-cultural process towards self-actualisation: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of experiences of learning to eat intuitively. Health Psychology Open, 8(1), 20551029211000957.

10. Whitman, A., Lew, N. D., Chappel, A., Aysola, V., Zuckerman, R., Sommers, B. D. (2022). Addressing Social Determinants of Health: Examples of Successful Evidence-Based Strategies and Current Federal Efforts. Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation Office of Health Policy.  https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/e2b650cd64cf84aae8ff0fae7474af82/SDOH-Evidence-Review.pdf

11. Alphonso, C. (2021). “Shadow pandemic” of young people with eating disorders a challenge for healthcare networks to treat. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-shadow-pandemic-of-young-people-with-eating-disorders-strains-capacity/