Question

What is Diet Culture? And, how does diet culture feed into the growing disordered eating problem?

Answer 1

Diet culture has many definitions and it doesn’t have a concrete definition as such.  In brief diet culture is promotion of specific diet, body shape or size etc to be ideal, healthy and beautiful.

According to this  women should be thin and men need to be muscular with as little fat as possible. Being thin is considered to be healthy and ideal. The people who doesn’t fall under this category are considered as unhealthy, unattractive and this led to serious body shaming and bullying. This sets specific norms which are to be attained to be considered beautiful. Each person’s body is different from another and has it’s own characteristics. The body size, muscle and  fat percentages depends on various factors like genetics, geographical location, climate, diet, culture etc. This kind of propaganda without considering all the factors is forcing people to try and maintain the slim body in order to avoid body shaming and bullying. As it’s not possible for all the people naturally due to the factors stated above, people resort to unhealthy dietary habits to attain the acceptance body shape and sizes. The diet culture promoted a wrong belief into the people that carbs and fats are bad. But in fact they are quite essential for the healthy functioning of the body. Even though having  relatively low fat percentage has its benefits on the health and reduces many risk factors like heart diseases and diabetes. A balance diet containing carbohydrates, proteins, fats and Other micronutrients is essential for healthy functioning of the body. But many people are known to restrict their diet from very little to almost zero carbs and fats consumption. Such dietary habits are having detrimental effects on the hormonal levels and overall health of the individual. Some people abuse diuretics and fat burners to achieve this in short terms. This was more seen in fitness and fashion industry but nowadays it crept into normal lifestyle also. The pressure to fall in the ideal body shape category is having its effect not only physical but also on the psychological health of the individual. There were instances of people going into depression unable to attain the goal to become slim. Some are known to have developed a condition called anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.

This is a brief discussion on some of the ways diet culture is feeding into growing disordered eating problems. Hope this is helpful. Please feel free to ask if you want further elaborate discussion on this topic and give your feedback. Thank you and have a great day.