Diet culture is unnecessary and therefore harmful to people of all weights and sizes, encouraging views that being skinny is ideal and that fat is bad.
This type of thinking or thoughts contribute to mental health concerns and eating disorder behaviors, especially for easily influenced groups like teenagers.
Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, and author of Anti-Diet, defines diet culture as a belief system that “worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue,” promotes weight loss and maintaining a low weight as a way to elevate social status, and demonizes certain foods and eating styles while elevating others.
The diet industry affects everyone, however, it has historically targeted girls and women at higher rates. And over the years it has been proven to have a negative impact on women.
The danger of diet culture
Diet culture focuses on thinness over health and well-being. Oftentimes, diet culture encourages women in particular to cut out entire food groups (like carbohydrates) to lose weight and makes individuals believe that some foods are “good and bad,” “real and fake,” and “clean and dirty.”
When we associate carbohydrates with gaining weight and losing weight, it only creates food fear, guilt, and even more insecurities.
Health is not based on your size or number on the scale because health cannot be determined based on how we look.
Yes. there are individuals who are obese, however obesity is associated with chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers, but obsessing with thinness is risky on many levels because food restriction can lead to unhealthy relationship with food, mood swings, dehydration, constipation, malnutrition, decreased metabolism, muscle loss, and even an eating disorder.
Diet culture is a harmful societal norm that contributes to the many factors that lead to the development of mental health conditions and eating disorders. Diet culture also influences rising rates of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder.
According to Clarity Clinic, eating disorders impact over 30 million Americans and have the highest mental illness mortality rate.
In order to keep healthy, eat healthy from all the food pyramid in order to maintain a healthy balanced diet.
Remember, the diet industry is a business, and just like any other, it is doing whatever it takes to make money even at the cost of consumers.
Your body may not look the same as it did in the past however that “Okay”! It may look different than it did when you were in high school or university. Your body may have changed, but you have also changed in this past year: we are supposed to change emotionally, mentally, and physically. Our bodies are meant to evolve, adapt and find new ways of existing.
Also see: How to overcome eating disorders
