Examples Of Diet Culture
Diet culture is also all around us which means it probably impacts your life on a daily basis possibly without you even realizing it.
Examples of diet culture. Diet culture can be defined as a society that focuses on and values weight shape and size over health and well being this definition operates on a widely held belief that we need to make our bodies smaller to achieve optimal health not only is this mindset misguided it s damaging. Instead they still push dieting and weight loss. Diagnosed celiac disease diabetes etc and not actually be engaging in diet culture which i should add is very rare and hard to do. Diet culture is a term that melissa and i use all the time and we realized it may be a confusing term for many of you.
This is probably the most confusing aspect of diet culture. But that s just not true. Diet culture tells us that losing weight is a good thing no matter how it s done. If someone in your life has lost weight it could be due to depression or an eating disorder or an illness.
Diet culture is a system of knowledge values and meanings that supports interpretations of personal health choices as moral character. There s just no way of knowing. You might have a soft spot for mama s marinara an aunt s curry and chapatis dad s barbecue ribs or grandmother s holiday tamales. I want to explain what we mean when we talk.
Let s break it down. They talk about body positivity and anti diet this and non diet that which seems legitimate when in actual fact is not. To get a real look at how diet culture affects us we talked to 10 women about their experience with dieting how the quest to lose weight has affected them and how they found empowerment instead. Moreover some people may eat in a way that they refer to as a diet for legit medical reasons e g.
Examples of its influence in our society if you ve been following my blog you know that i ve mentioned diet culture in multiple blog posts and that i previously struggled with disordered eating followed by doing some internal housekeeping and becoming a non diet dietitian and a health coach who specializes in intuitive. Cultivated and gathered grains and vegetables with some hunted meats for rural tribes and fish for coastal tribes make up the basic diet that has supported this culture for many generations. Diet of course refers to what you eat. Unfortunately there has been a recent trend of health professionals claiming under false pretences to be non diet.
Diet culture doesn t just mean being on a diet because you don t have to follow any sort of official diet to be caught up in the culture of dieting. When you grow up in a distinctive culture it s bound to influence your lifestyle your belief system and perhaps most enjoyably your diet.