Diet Culture is the water we swim in, it’s hard to realize just how pervasive it is until you start to notice things. You notice that someone saying a shirt is flattering on you, means that it makes you look thinner. You notice comments around food like “Someone take these brownies away from me! They are dangerous.” “I need to be good and just get a salad tonight” as if our choices on how to nourish our bodies make us a better or worse person. In terms of the quarantine happening worldwide, why is it we feel the need to ask someone how they are exercising now that gyms are closed? We don’t need to attach moral value to the amount of at home work-outs they do. These people aren’t better, they are just choosing (hopefully) a different way to cope. We should be asking how they are feeling about self-isolating, and instead attach moral value to the extent they are participating in social distancing—that is what can make someone a better person in this time.
Diet Culture associates the ideas of healthy, thin, and athletic as related and raises them on a pedestal--and this completely misses the mark. Body size isn’t indicative of health, someone’s weight doesn’t reflect their athletic ability, and being healthy is not an indication of value. Before we can shift to a weight-inclusive framework, we have to understand and believe this. As of now people in the “overweight” BMI category have a longer life expectancy than those in the “healthy” BMI category (Bacon & Aphramor 2011). People can be in a smaller body and have many health complications, and people can be in much larger bodies and be perfectly healthy. But, being healthy isn’t a prerequisite to your presence and value in this world. We must come to terms with the ability to pursue health comes with a lot of privilege and it is not the ultimate human achievement.
Do you know the greatest predictor of someone’s health across their lifetime? It’s not their diet, or their exercise---it’s an individual’s socio-economic status. The "perfect" diet, and rigid exercise routines are not what promise us health, and this is taken from the CDC’s ODPHP (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion). How does this impact health for people living in larger bodies? One study showed that only 15.6% of hiring professionals would hire a woman who appeared overweight (Rith, 2017). This blatant weight discrimination contributes to inequity in economic opportunity. If we genuinely cared about people's health, it appears ending weight stigma, would also improve the socio-economic status--the most significant predictor of health.
Why do we assume we know how healthy someone is, the food choices they make, and if they exercise regularly just by looking at their body shape? Your weight is the 2nd most inheritable trait (behind only height) so why is something that we hardly have control over so stigmatized by society? (Hur et al., 2008) Next time you make assumptions about someone’s lifestyle based on how they look, ask yourself what evidence do I have? And note what thoughts you generate about them as a person, based on these initial judgements. Finally, give yourself compassion and recognize it stems from a lifetime of living in diet culture.
In conclusion, food is NOT bad/junk or good/”healthy”, body size doesn’t have moral value, and health status doesn’t relate to your worth as a person. Before we can smash the system... we must understand the system, our complacency in the system, and STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID! (metaphorically of course because Kool-Aid is delicious).
Bacon, L., Aphramor, L. Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift. Nutr J 10, 9 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
Hur, Kaprio, Iacono, Boomsma, McGue, Silventoinen, . . . Hur, Y-M. (2008). Genetic influences on the difference in variability of height, weight and body mass index between Caucasian and East Asian adolescent twins. International Journal of Obesity, 32(10), 1455-1467.
Rith Umoh. “Study Finds You’re Less Likely to Get Hired if You’re Overweight. Here’s How to Avoid This Bias” CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/03/study-finds-youre-less-likely-to-get-hired-if-youre-overweight.html Accessed 29 March 2020.