Diet, Nutrition, & Health: Diet Culture

Practicing intuitive eating could help you feel better than ever before.

Diet Culture is dangerous and harms people of all sizes, including by perpetuating eating disorders and making a full recovery almost impossible. But when it comes to identifying Diet Culture in a world that is sadly rife with it, there can be plenty of confusion. If we truly want to prevent eating disorders and create a culture where full recovery is possible, we need to learn to identify Diet Culture and speak out against it. While this list certainly isn’t exhaustive, it covers some of the main tenets of Diet Culture, as well as some options for fighting back.

Diet culture and fatphobia perpetuate eating disorders and can make full recovery impossible. They create an environment in which we, as the brilliant Deb Burgard has said, prescribe and encourage the same behaviors for fat people that we diagnose and treat as eating disordered in thin people (which also results in missing or even encouraging eating disorders in people of higher weight). The popularity of dangerous weight-loss medications and surgeries make it seem perfectly acceptable to risk a fat person’s life and quality of life in pursuit of thinness–which is not only dangerous for fat people, but also a dangerous message to send to those of any size who may have or may develop an eating disorder.