"Since Demi Lavato’s Instagram post questioning diet options and comparing them to diet culture I decided to research what’s actually considered diet culture. This article dives into how diet culture can represent unhealthy displays of dieting, and how to recognize why offering diet options is different from pushing diet options on others." --Lola Christ, 7th Grade
First it’s probably best to start off with explaining what diet culture actually is, which isn’t as simple as you’d think. Diet culture is equating unhealthy standards to larger physiques.It’s using the idea that your body isn’t pretty, which is planted in your head through social media. Once that idea is planted, it takes advantage of it by offering you a solution which is dieting and slimming down to an “ideal body type.” As explained very well in the article titled Recognizing and Resisting Diet Culture, “Another aspect of diet culture is the use of food rules and restriction to manipulate body size, either to make sure one doesn’t become fat, or to try to make fat people thin.” These ideals are imprinted on you in order for companies to market diet producation like weight loss pills or classes that advertise losing 20 pounds in a week. This promise is not only unhealthy and unrealistic, but these companies make it seem like it is an obtainable necessity.
Now that you have a short explanation of diet culture we can explain how it appears in your everyday life. I’ve already mentioned that social media plays a huge role in diet culture, but here I’ll elaborate on it. Not only does social media’s influence fuel diet culture but it goes the other way, too.Diet culture perpetuates the idea in your mind to compare yourself to that one instagram post. Social media perpetuates the idea that because you compare yourself to these photos, you need to use dieting as a social. It’s like a constant cycle producing bad habits and bad ideals.
Along with this you’ve probably noticed the recurring theme that diet culture is more centered around the idea that it's unhealthy to have a bigger body. This is damaging to people of all sizes, because your lifestyle affects your health more than your body shape or type. Yet when you have already been exposed to body shaming, which most people with “non-ideal” body types have already been exposed to, the idea you need to be fixed gets planted in your imagination. This is one of the ways to tell between healthy diet habits and companies and companies and ideals set around malicious intent.
Now we get to the part that Demi Lavato didn’t understand properly—differentiating healthy dieting from ones that develop unsafe standards. Like I said, dieting on its own isn’t intended to spread hate, which is why offering diet options to appeal to larger crowds isn’t diet culture. The difference with this is if the store were to advertise the diet option as healthier for you, but when Demi accused their attempts at reaching a broader audience as triggering it was unfair. Throwing around serious words that are used in serious situations to try and justify her attempts at understanding diet culture was uncalled for, because in reality diet options that are pushed and promoted as thinning are triggering to people who suffer from eating disorders or have body image issues. In this encounter,it was clear Demi was trying to address her premature call out by following it with accusations such as the staff being rude when in reality she likely realized the company meant no ill will and wasn’t interested in correcting herself. In reality, diet culture is more revolved around food shaming and convincing participants of media that they need to restrict themselves and conform to body ideals instead of that they should just make solid attempts in their day to day life to be healthy.
Diet culture essentially administers the ideas that you are unhealthy if you have a bigger body and that to be healthy you need to consume extremist products marketed at slimming yourself to fit ideals instilled by these very items. A good example of how these affect your mindset is shown in an interview with Judith Matz called Navigating Food Shaming -- And the Antidote to Diet Culture where they show thoughts you may have when you’ve been affected by negative dieting. “I was bad today: I ate carbs, I’m being good today, so I can’t eat dessert, You look great—have you lost weight?, It’s a cheat day, I’m too fat, When I lose weight, I’ll feel more confident.”
The difference in mindsets is that dieting without the culture incentive is more focused on being healthy regardless of how your weight stands, or being healthy for a cause like being Vegetarian because its overall message resonates with you. Those are examples of healthy dieting! It’s the message behind the purpose that can show you the significant distinction of the two.
Now that you have a short explanation of diet culture we can explain how it appears in your everyday life. I’ve already mentioned that social media plays a huge role in diet culture, but here I’ll elaborate on it. Not only does social media’s influence fuel diet culture but it goes the other way, too.Diet culture perpetuates the idea in your mind to compare yourself to that one instagram post. Social media perpetuates the idea that because you compare yourself to these photos, you need to use dieting as a social. It’s like a constant cycle producing bad habits and bad ideals.
Along with this you’ve probably noticed the recurring theme that diet culture is more centered around the idea that it's unhealthy to have a bigger body. This is damaging to people of all sizes, because your lifestyle affects your health more than your body shape or type. Yet when you have already been exposed to body shaming, which most people with “non-ideal” body types have already been exposed to, the idea you need to be fixed gets planted in your imagination. This is one of the ways to tell between healthy diet habits and companies and companies and ideals set around malicious intent.
Now we get to the part that Demi Lavato didn’t understand properly—differentiating healthy dieting from ones that develop unsafe standards. Like I said, dieting on its own isn’t intended to spread hate, which is why offering diet options to appeal to larger crowds isn’t diet culture. The difference with this is if the store were to advertise the diet option as healthier for you, but when Demi accused their attempts at reaching a broader audience as triggering it was unfair. Throwing around serious words that are used in serious situations to try and justify her attempts at understanding diet culture was uncalled for, because in reality diet options that are pushed and promoted as thinning are triggering to people who suffer from eating disorders or have body image issues. In this encounter,it was clear Demi was trying to address her premature call out by following it with accusations such as the staff being rude when in reality she likely realized the company meant no ill will and wasn’t interested in correcting herself. In reality, diet culture is more revolved around food shaming and convincing participants of media that they need to restrict themselves and conform to body ideals instead of that they should just make solid attempts in their day to day life to be healthy.
Diet culture essentially administers the ideas that you are unhealthy if you have a bigger body and that to be healthy you need to consume extremist products marketed at slimming yourself to fit ideals instilled by these very items. A good example of how these affect your mindset is shown in an interview with Judith Matz called Navigating Food Shaming -- And the Antidote to Diet Culture where they show thoughts you may have when you’ve been affected by negative dieting. “I was bad today: I ate carbs, I’m being good today, so I can’t eat dessert, You look great—have you lost weight?, It’s a cheat day, I’m too fat, When I lose weight, I’ll feel more confident.”
The difference in mindsets is that dieting without the culture incentive is more focused on being healthy regardless of how your weight stands, or being healthy for a cause like being Vegetarian because its overall message resonates with you. Those are examples of healthy dieting! It’s the message behind the purpose that can show you the significant distinction of the two.
