“Diet Culture” has become a buzzword across social media in recent years, and it refers to anything that perpetuates problematic ideas about weight, external food rules, and the value of your body’s size.
Diet culture harms everyone regardless of their body shape or size, and runs rampant on social media as well as in advertisements and product branding. Diet culture is damaging on a lot of levels, but some of the main impacts are notions you may have ingrained in your own mind as a result of the world around you.
Diet culture pathologized certain body types
Diet culture tends to rely on conflating body size with health. Larger body sizes are viewed as inherently less healthy than smaller ones, despite whatever’s actually going on behind the scenes with someone’s health. This kind of thinking can act as a justification for those with eating disorders. Fat people are pushed into disordered habits almost as a prescription, because being skinny is seen as the only healthy option. Non-fat people are justified in continuing disordered habits because if they were fat, these habits would be encouraged.
Body positivity activist, Deb Burgard, states, “We prescribe for fat people what we diagnose as disordered in thin people.”
It’s vital to turn this on its head and realize that health is achievable at every size, and work to unlearn these ideas about yourself and other people.
2. Diet Culture encourages external rules about eating
Diet culture encourages restricting food or implementing food rules (such as no carbs, no sugars, etc..) in order to achieve the goal of manipulating one’s body type. This is dangerous for many reasons, particularly given that very few people can actually change their body type or prevent weight gain by restricting food in this way. This is one of the biggest red flags for disordered eating too. It’s helpful instead to remember that food can serve many purposes, including nourishment and celebration.
Food is not inherently “good” or “bad” on its own, and assigning these ideas to categories of nutrients can be incredibly dangerous (not to mention an ineffective waste of time when you are attempting to achieve a weight or fitness related goal.)
3. Diet Culture creates thin privilege
Thin privilege is being able to enter a restaurant, plane, or theater and now that a seat will accommodate you. The same goes for clothing shopping, or anything else that has become size-dependent. If you have thin privilege, you can help combat it by challenging people’s ideas about fat people deserving any less than thin people. Listen to what fat people want that thin people already have, and ask how you can help achieve it.
To learn more, read this comprehensive article about recognizing and resisting diet culture.
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