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These days, you cant get into a conversation about nutrition and wellness without someone mentioningdiet culture.
Denis Novikov via Getty Images
Its all over social media, in both anti-diet spaces and more general wellness ones.
Celebrities arecalling it out.
Its mentioned inacademic research.
Even the young teenagers I work with in my nutrition practice use the term.
But just because a term is ubiquitous doesnt mean that its universally understood.
Whats the definition of diet culture?
What are some of the roots of diet culture?
Theres also plenty of racism and anti-Blackness baked into this colonial idea that thinness and food restriction equal goodness.
In her bookFearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia,Dr.
Along withhealth science, this flawed assumption has also taken root in capitalism.
Whats the link between diet culture and anti-fatness?
Basically, our society views fatness as a problem and diet culture as the solution.
But thelink between weight and health is incredibly complex.
Being fat isnt inherently unhealthy, just as being thin doesnt automatically make a person healthy.
And a2020 paperfound that any weight people lost via popular diets was typically regained within a year.
That might make sense at first thought, but its not based on science, either.
But the evidence is clear that what we eat plays just a small role in our overall health.
How does diet culture get in the way of true wellness?
So diet culture undermines both adequacy and variety, which are the two most important things for good nutrition.
Wellness culture can also do some major damage here.
Instead, its all aboutwellnessand striving to be the best, happiest, healthiest version of yourself.
But, in general, wellness culture isnt grounded in health and nutrition science, either.
So what does a worldwithoutdiet culture look like?
Its literally our norm.
This makes it really hard to imagine a world without it, or to break free from it.
To be blunt, diet culture isnt going anywhere.
