Diet vs. Diet Culture
On today’s episode of Words Matter with Jessie, I am going to differentiate between “diet” and “diet culture”. In my opinion, both terms have left us wanting and are leaving much of their potential on the table.
“Diet” can be used to define different sets of foods that induce different physiological or physical reactions. There are many, well known diets, such as the South Beach Diet, the Keto diet, the Mediterranean diet, etc. According to Google, there are two official definitions:
“The kinds of foods that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.”
“A special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.”
The example sentence on the definition page of diet reads, “Restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight. It’s difficult to diet.” YIKES. My greatest hope is to nudge us towards using the first definition, or reword the second one so it reads, “a special course of food that meets someone’s individual needs.”
The fun continues: Medical News Today defines Diet Culture as a “set of cultural myths around food, weight, and health. It focuses on thinness as an ideal, and labels foods and behaviors as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Diet Culture may have negative consequences on a person’s well-being, including poor mental health, negative body image, and disordered eating.” Diet culture does not allow us to embrace our individuality. It implies that all diets are used for weight loss and promotes guilt, shame, and restriction in association with eating.
If it seems like I’m being pedantic - I am, and for good reason. The way we talk to ourselves is largely influenced by the beliefs that we carry around, whether we are talking about food, exercise, stress, relationships, or just about any other topic. I was recently introduced to the work of Dr. Alia Crum who is a psychology professor at Stanford University studying how changes in subjective mindsets can alter objective reality. I highly recommend watching her Ted Talk, but I will share the study that caught my attention.
In 2011 Dr. Crum and her colleagues ran a study to test whether the mindset (belief) about a food affected the physiological reaction to it, measured by the changes in hunger hormone. They gave the same group of people the exact same 380 calorie milkshake on two different occasions with the shake bearing two different labels: one claiming it was a 620 calorie “indulgent” shake and one claiming it was a 140 calorie “sensible” shake. They found there was a significant decrease in the hunger hormone from drinking the “indulgent” shake and the subjects drank less than when compared to the “sensible” shake. People were more satisfied and satiated and reacted physiologically as if they had consumed more food.
On the Huberman podcast, Dr. Crum explains that it’s not enough to tell yourself that eating good food is good for you and in fact, the best approach is a little counterintuitive. We typically think if we tell ourselves we are eating healthy, then we will be most satisfied. But, it’s actually most effective when we believe that eating good food is indulgent and nourishing and above and beyond just “good”. It is important to feel like we are getting enough food. And looking at all these definitions, its no wonder! We have been conditioned to believe that eating healthily means feeling restricted and that if there are good foods then there must be bad foods and don’t we all just secretly want to be bad??
How I interpret this: If you assume you will be unsatisfied with healthy food, you are more likely to be unsatisfied. The more you know about your food and believe that it is on your side and nourishing you in the best ways possible, the more satisfied you will feel. This starts a positive feedback loop. You will feel more satisfied eating those foods and then more easily trust that they’re good for you the next time and so on. The research of Dr. Crum also shows that changing our thoughts and how we approach food can help facilitate this positive feedback loop earlier on, we don’t have to wait to feel the difference to start reframing it.
So, by all means, try different diets. Feel free to call them diets, because that is what they are. But let’s remove the restrictive shackles of deprivation from the definition. Let’s try diets that nourish us and help us feel full and satisfied and ready to take on the day. Let’s stick with diets that give us sustainable energy and keep our weight in a zone that feels healthy for our body, whether that is less than when we started or more.
Let’s eat good food.