Diet culture
I have already mentioned my hatred for diet culture, and raged about how detrimental it is to everyone’s mental health and how it promotes disordered behaviours. But what exactly is it?
I mean, we all know what a diet is; we’ve all probably tried one, or had people around us trying to lose weight or ‘be healthy’ at some point in our lives. We’ve all heard of Weight Watchers, we’ve all seen those huge weight-loss posters in the tube with men and women telling us how much happier they are now that they have lost 3 stone in 3 weeks or something ridiculous. But sadly, diet culture is infinitely more insidious than these screaming, in-your-face examples. It is not only relevant to those who suffer from disordered eating, or even to those who have low self-esteem. It affects every single human being in the Western world.
If you’re thinking ‘not me!’ - trust me, it does, subconsciously.
Why is it that foods are labelled as ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Why are there women and men with ‘perfect’ chiseled bodies on instagram urging you follow them and learn their ‘secret’? Why do celebrities continue to promote and advertise detox teas - that they most certainly do not use - to the detriment of their many impressionable followers? Why is the term “guilt-free” widely used to lure in customers? Why are there so many articles telling us how much happier X celebrity is now she’s lost weight, and how depressed Y celebrity is now that she’s “let herself go”?Why did 33,000 women tell Glamour magazine that they would rather lose 10-15 pounds above ANY other goal?
Diet culture.
The reason for this devils prevalence is simply: money.
And I mean MONEY.
In 2018, the weight-loss and weight-management industry was worth $189.8 billion. (2)
By 2024, it is forecast to be worth $269.2 billion. (2)
Diet culture is extremely lucrative because it capitalises on our insecurities. It tells us, no matter who we are, that we look ‘wrong’, and then sells us the cure. It persistently shames larger bodies through before and after pictures, and idolises bodies with 0% body fat (unless the fat is in the right places of course - you don’t want to be flat chested!).
They bombard us with pictures of bodies we wish we had and tell us we could have them too. All we have to do, is hop on the treadmill, hand over our money and keep running towards the dangling carrot of self-confidence. They can’t promise us when we’ll reach it - but we don’t care, we just place one foot in front of the other, aiming for that golden carrot. We are either all-consumed by the thought of achieving that ‘perfect’ appearance, or we feel bad that we aren’t trying to. But if companies are selling a ‘cure’, then why do the companies keep making money and why isn’t everyone skinny, living perfect, happy lives and eating salad?
In short: they make money because diets DO NOT WORK.
In fact, 95% of those who diet, or actively pursue weight-loss, will gain all the weight back within 2-5 years, and between 40-60% of those people will actually gain back more weight than they lost in the first place. (3) This isn’t because they “didn’t have the strength to stick to it”, they didn’t “fall off the wagon”, this happened despite the dieters KEEPING UP with the strict weight-loss regime. The remaining 5% you ask? Well, I would not be at all surprised if the people in that 5% have chronic eating disorders, given that there is evidence to show that 35% of those who diet become pathological dieters, through yo-yo dieting and weight cycling, and 25% of those develop full-blown eating disorders.
Dangerous business my friends, daaaangerous business.
Of course that’s not what @weightlosstips or @fitkaren’s Instagram account tells you. They tell you that their plans are SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN to speed up metabolism and get the results you so desperately want, as long as you try hard enough. So, YOU are the failure. If you can’t achieve the body they sell you, that is because YOU are lazy, addicted to food and lack willpower. So what do you do? You go again. “I will try harder this time”. And when that doesn’t work, you try a different method. This cycle goes on and on and all the while, you are fucking up your self-esteem, your metabolism and your bank account.
It is hard to express how much power diet culture holds over everyone in the Western world, without sounding like I’m trying to lure you all into a cult. But let me try to illustrate it for you with some research I have been doing:
Once upon a time, the cut off point for women to be in the ‘normal’ weight range was 27.3 on a BMI chart (which are complete and utter bullshit anyway but that’s a whole other blog). Nowadays, the cut off point is 25 - why? Well, well, well I thought you’d never ask! In 1997, the National Institutes of Health in the US brought together a group of nine medical experts to decide whether the BMI cut-off points should be lowered. Despite the lack of evidence that those with higher BMI’s had a higher risk of illness, surprise surprise, the cut-off point was lowered. This meant that the day before the ruling, 58 million Americans were considered ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ according to BMI, and the day after, the number soared to 97 million. Almost 40 million Americans had become newly medically categorised as ‘fat’ without gaining a gram. Now why, despite the lack of evidence, were these cut-off points lowered? Two journalists from The Star Ledger, a Newark-based news provider looked into the ruling and shed some light on the sticky sitch…”Eight of the nine members had ties to the weight-loss industry” and were even, “recipients of research money, or advisors to for-profit groups such as Weight Watchers”
I am not making this shit up.
Eight of the nine people who made the decision that resulted in 39 million more clinically ‘overweight’ people in the US alone, were actively profiting from the weight-loss industry. Are you actually serious? They just went and got themselves 39 million new customers. This not only completely fucks up the self-esteem of those 39 million, but also means their health insurance costs ramp up, because they are now seen as ‘high risk’ patients. (Note: they are seen as so-called ‘high risk’ patients, despite the evidence we have from many studies, showing that a lot of the talk around weight as a risk factor is bollocks - but more of that another time). Whom might that benefit I wonder……Perhaps the insurance companies and healthcare professionals?
Oh yes, unfortunately both insurance companies, and health-care providers (meaning doctors) are literally paid by the likes of Weight Watchers and Slimming World to exclusively offer their diet plans to patients who are deemed as ‘overweight’. So, even though there are umpteen studies proving the inefficacy and dangers of dieting, there are DOCTORS, whom we look up to and rely on, who not only promote diets, but also have a profitable incentive to dish them out for their fat patients.
I really get that some of this sounds like a conspiracy theory - I told you, its hard to not seem like I’m recruiting cult members - but hear me out. A classic example, is the case of the Cambridge Diet. A 320-calorie a day liquid-protein diet, endorsed by practicing doctor, Alan Howard. At the time, there had already been 58 deaths directly related to liquid-protein diets, but Howard actively promoted it and offered it to clients, without revealing that he had massive shares in the company.
So, as we have seen, the profitability of diet culture has meant that many people have tried to get their hands on a piece of the pie. All contributing to our ever-increasing dissatisfaction with ourselves. Pretty depressing huh? Couldn’t get much worse could it?
I’m afraid it can. Remember when I earlier spoke about diet plans that were ‘CLINICALLY PROVEN TO RESULT IN WEIGHT LOSS’? Yep, I hate to do this to you, but you canny trust that either. In her book Body Positive Power, Megan Jayne Crabbe talks about the research gone into the UK’s current most popular non-prescription diet pills, produced by XLS Medical (big Pharma). Their slogan is “lose 3x more weight than with dieting alone”. The key ingredient in these pills is Litramine, and Megan went in search of these ‘clinically proven results’ and found this, “the only study I found showing Litramine to be effective on weight loss was entirely funded by the ‘exclusive’ manufacturer and distributor of Litramine…Elsewhere online, hundreds of independent reviews list side-effects ranging from constipation, bowel pain, diarrhoea, and headaches, to faecal impaction leading to hospitalisation, and even weight gain”I shit you not. Snakes everywhere. Speaking of which, what does this promotion of dangerous and useless products remind me of…ah of course, Kendall Jenner and her promotion of FlatTummyTea. Kendall told E! News that she has “literally like 12 cups a day” of the stuff. Now, forgive me for questioning Kendall’s sincerity, but given that detox teas contain 18mg of active Senna (a very strong laxative) in each bag, and the NHS recommends 2.5-20mg of active Senna a day for TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION - I highly doubt Kendall would be able to stomach 12 cups, meaning 216mg of Senna…But what she will happily stomach is a big $1,000,000 cheque from FlatTummyTea for endorsing them on social media. But look, let’s give poor Kenny a break, how was she supposed to know that she was potentially giving her (129 million) followers a severe case of the shits? For all we know she could have been suffering from chronic constipation herself! Kendall, if you are reading this - I hope you do a really big poo soon xxxxx
This example of irresponsible endorsement leads me onto my next point: how does diet culture promote disordered behaviours? People without any knowledge around eating disorders or disordered eating may struggle to see the parallels as clearly as those who do - but once it’s pointed out - it’s pretty fucking shocking.
Let’s first stick with Kendall’s favourite: FlatTummyTea. After you have finished shitting your guts out and have supposedly achieved your ‘kickass tummy you’ve always wanted’, FlatTummyTea offers a subscription box to ‘maintain’ this fairytale physique. On the sachets provided, it says “to combat those whoops moments”. A “whoops moment” meaning eating a chocolate bar, skipping a workout, or any other kind of minor indulgence. The phrase “burn off a meal” sends a similar shiver down my spine. There is a technical term for this compensation through taking laxatives, overexercising or being sick after an indulgence, and that is Bulimia Nervosa. A clinical eating disorder.
Now let us look at the concept of “cheat days”. So, you restrict your diet and eat ‘clean’ for 6 days (whatever that means seeing as the majority of foods are off-limits these days), and then on that one day of the week, permitting you have completed every workout and haven’t eaten a calorie more than is instructed, you have permission to eat all the “naughty foods” (or just normal fucking food) that you are usually FORBIDDEN from eating, before returning to a diet of cardboard on a plate. This is a worryingly similar cycle to binge eating disorder, when one compulsively eats everything in sight in order to numb a sense of self-dissatisfaction, often followed by a period of guilt-fuelled restriction.
Finally, let’s think about the term “guilt-free” foods. Even the very premise that one should feel guilt after eating ANY kind of food is disordered. Even, (believe it or not) after eating something that has been branded as “unhealthy” by diet culture. How is it okay that the world tells us to feel GUILTY for eating? Because my Anorexia also has a habit of doing that. Another concept that Anorexia loves, is intermittent fasting. A regime that fitness gurus dish out as ‘the method that TRANSFORMED their progress’. In reality, all they are doing is forcing their body into starvation mode for a few hours, slowing down their metabolism and increasing the secretion of their hunger hormones, therefore making them feel even hungrier than they would have if they had just eaten their fucking breakfast at breakfast time.
Diet culture has taught us all how to starve, (push that hunger away), binge, (cheat days) and purge, (burn it off!). Like I have said before - no wonder the numbers of eating disorders are sky-rocketing.
I know there will be many of you reading this thinking, ‘oh come on, all this is only harmful for those who have eating disorders or are sensitive to that kind of thing’, but alas these consistent messages embed themselves into everyone’s psyche. It’s messages like these that sow the seeds of eating disorders, whether we realise it or not. It was messages from those around me, that I was eating too many ‘guilty’ foods that caused me to internalise that guilt and start “being healthy” for the first time when I was 10, which then slowly spiralled into a disorder that has taken over my life for 8 years and counting.
Diet talk is inescapable - I remember my year 6 teacher telling the class that sausages were ‘bad’ and ‘fatty’, and justifying herself as she nibbled on a crumb of chocolate at our Easter party saying that she “hadn’t eaten chocolate since Christmas, so it was allowed”. Written down in this context, you might think it irresponsible, but these kinds of comments and conversations are everywhere we go: “resisting temptation”, “oh no, I mustn’t, I’m trying to be good”, “I might have a naughty biscuit, but only because I went on a run this morning”…what is it with all the hyper-moralisation of food? Diet culture treats us all like we’re poor old Eve in the bloody Garden of Eden. It makes us feel like what we eat, says something about our worth. It hyper-moralises food, hyper-normalises disordered eating and incites shame upon those who aren’t punishing themselves with exercise regimes and health-food cleanses. And all this, for a big, fuck-off stack of cash.
Fuck capitalism, and fuck diet culture.
References (cos I did my homework):
1: https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/how-the-fashion-industry-affects-the-bodies-of-young-women
3: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832
4: www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-facts-eating-disorders
5: Kitta MacPherson, Edward R. Silverman, ‘Fat’s Overlap, Many of the experts who decide you need to shed pounds work for the industry that profit from their declarations’, (The Star Ledger, 1997)
6: Laura Fraser, ‘Losing It, America’s Obsession with Weight and the Industry that Feeds on it’ (USA, Dutton, 1997)
7: Megan Jayne Crabbe, ‘Body Positive Power’ (UK, Vermilion, 2017)
