Diet culture is a pervasive societal norm that glorifies thinness, equates it with health and moral virtue, and promotes restrictive eating habits. It's a complex web of beliefs and practices that can negatively impact mental and physical well-being. While specific diets may be legitimately recommended for certain health conditions, the pursuit of weight loss for purely aesthetic reasons can be detrimental.
Defining Diet Culture
There is no specific definition of diet culture, which can make the concept especially insidious. Essentially, diet culture glorifies thin, “toned bodies,” presenting them as the epitome of health and the one “true” healthy body type. Achieving this shape is not just encouraged in diet culture but elevated to a moral imperative; it is sometimes considered the most important goal someone can achieve. In this light, diet culture dictates that all aspects of someone’s life and lifestyle must revolve around working on or prioritizing the goal of having a thin, toned body. This false dichotomy also applies to food. Just as diet culture recognizes “good” (or “ambitious”) people who try to “stay fit,” and “bad” (or “lazy”) people who don’t, so too does diet culture designate “good” and “bad” foods.
Diet culture is a type of societal norm that classifies thin bodies as righteous and superior and large bodies as immoral and inferior [1]. Myths about food and health are also characteristic of diet culture, such as the false belief that an individual’s weight is synonymous with-and a direct representation of-their health [1].
Diet culture refers to a belief that thinness and appearance matter more than health. Those who embrace diet culture often restrict calories, adopt unsustainable or “fad” dieting practices, and engage in negative self-talk. They typically label food as being either good or bad and feel shame after eating bad food. Diet culture can be dangerous and can be a precursor to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.
Diet culture is a set of myths and expectations around food and weight, which typically equate thinness to health and categorize foods into “good” or “bad” types. Diet culture creates a moral hierarchy of body sizes and shapes, which typically idealizes thinness and creates fear and negativity about fat. Social media, consumer products, and health fads may all contribute to diet culture.
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Diet culture is the pervasive belief that certain body types are better than others. It’s based on myths that can ultimately have negative consequences for one’s overall well-being. Diet culture encompasses the collective beliefs and practices that promote the pursuit of weight loss as the ultimate marker of health and well-being. It is a pervasive force that permeates various aspects of our lives, from media portrayals of “ideal” bodies to the messages we receive from friends, family, and even healthcare professionals. Diet culture often emphasizes the importance of adhering to strict eating regimens, promoting quick fixes, and advocating for the thin ideal.
The Role of Media
On a cultural scale, diet culture gets a massive boost from long-held beauty ideals, including the thin ideal for women and lean, muscular bodies for men in Western cultures. Movies, TV shows, advertisements of all types, including the Internet, have long been understood to spread these and other unrealistic beauty standards, which have been directly tied to body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, and eating disorders. Diet culture presents itself as an antidote to this dissatisfaction, offering a path to achieving the “perfect” body or one that resembles the cultural ideal. In many cases, these messages can be even more treacherous, as they superficially present as being “inclusive,” but are still coded with diet culture ideals. In fact they are often delivered by people in “ideally thin” bodies.
The media perpetuates diet culture by promoting unrealistic body standards. Print advertisement, television, and movies use models who are unnaturally thin. This causes women, and in some cases men, to view themselves negatively, developing a low self-esteem that may lead to diet culture.
Social media platforms are accused of distorting reality, in that the models portrayed are either naturally thin and thus unrepresentative of normality, or unnaturally thin due to forced dieting, malnutrition, and/or digital editing2,3. Edited images have been reported to encourage men and women to compare themselves to heavily enhanced and often physically unachievable appearance ideals, which can have a serious negative impact on their wellbeing6. Exposure to these images in the media has been associated with increased body dissatisfaction, lowered self-esteem, and body image-related anxiety6. Also, not surprisingly, the media are often blamed for the increasing incidence of eating disorders because images of idealized/slim physiques motivate society to attempt to achieve slimness themselves.
The Impact of Diet Culture
While specific diets may be legitimately recommended to be followed by people with certain health concerns, such as Celiac disease or Diabetes, dieting specifically to lose weight or achieve a particular body shape can have many negative impacts on mental and physical health and well-being. When the world is painted in terms of absolutes: “good” and “bad” foods, “right” and “wrong” bodies, it can make every choice or non-choice feel like a moral test and potential trigger. For example, the idea that some foods are “bad” can make someone feel guilty or ashamed after eating them. This is an extremely harmful thought pattern tied to disordered eating and several eating disorders.
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Normalizing Disordered Eating
Diet culture promotes itself as championing health, but it often works to normalize disordered eating behaviors, including skipping meals, calorie counting, and other restrictive eating practices. These, in turn, frequently lead to even more problems like low self-esteem, feelings of failure, and the development of increasingly disordered eating behaviors to “counteract” these effects.
Undue Focus on Body Shape and Size
One of the most dangerous aspects of this worldview is the undue focus and attention it puts on dieting and body shape and size. A fixation with body image, food, and eating is a key factor in nearly every type of eating disorder. (6) Many conditions are also maintained by the belief that self-worth is directly tied to appearance, a thought often implied by diet culture. The conflation of dieting and moral superiority raises the stakes much more, adding even more pressure for someone to keep these ideas at the top of their minds. It can help create a sense of high personal standards and encourage concern or self-criticism when these standards aren’t met. In the scientific world, those are the same traits that make up “perfectionism,” a characteristic that has long been associated with eating disorders.
Perpetuation of Harmful Stereotypes and Weight Stigma
On the other side of that coin is the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes that help power weight stigma, weight discrimination, and weight bias. The idea that controlling what one eats and having a slender body offers a sense of moral superiority dates back to the 1800s when European enslavers used the concept as another way to separate themselves from-and hold themselves above-enslaved Africans, who tended to have larger bodies. (10) It offered a shorthand way for the ruling class to point at a Black person in a larger body and say they were lazy, amoral, or inferior.
On the gender divide, diet culture has long targeted cisgender women, though people of all genders are undoubtedly impacted by widespread images of “ideal” bodies. (11) The cultural “lessons” largely passed on to cisgender women, however, is that their worth is intrinsically tied to their appearance-and particularly, their weight. As awareness around the specific concerns of the LGBTQIA+ community has expanded, so have realizations that this community, too, is deeply and negatively impacted by diet culture. Statistics suggest that members of this community are more likely to experience disordered eating behaviors than their cisgender heterosexual peers, though more research is needed in this burgeoning field.
Weight stigma includes negative attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination that devalue individuals in larger bodies (e.g., believing that people in larger bodies are lazy) [5,6]. Experienced weight stigma and internalized weight stigma are associated with many adverse physical and psychological consequences, including chronic inflammation; elevated cortisol levels; and increased rates of anxiety, depression, disordered eating behaviors, body dissatisfaction, substance use disorders, and suicidality [7,8,9,10,11]. Further, concerns about the possibility of experiencing weight stigma (which are often fueled by past experiences of weight stigma) negatively influence physical and mental health [12].
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Mental Health
Diet culture messaging has been found to increase the risk of eating disorders, depression, and anxiety. In teenage girls, the body dissatisfaction that arises from diet culture norms has been linked to the use of eating disorder behaviors to attempt to manipulate weight. (1)
Physical Health
Diet culture encourages dieting behaviors, which are associated with long-term health consequences like loss of muscle from repeated weight loss attempts, weakened bones, high blood pressure, and chronic inflammation.
Combating Diet Culture
Recovering from an eating disorder is a difficult journey in any case, and it can be even harder in a society so fixated on diet and physical appearance. One of the best ways to confront diet culture is to meet it where it primarily lives: online. Combing through your social media is a great place to start. You can also take some proactive actions. Start following accounts that promote inclusivity, neutrality, size diversity, attentive self-care, intuitive eating, joyful movement, and other helpful practices-but remember to be careful, as many “wellness” accounts still peddle many of the same toxic ideas associated with diet culture.
Working to expand your sense of self-worth beyond your weight or appearance is another way to quiet the harmful ideas of diet culture. Start by identifying goals that align with your morals, then work toward achieving them. The same technique can be used for new hobbies that are good for you and make you feel good. And values work can also be helpful. A therapist or other mental health professional can help you with these strategies and offer different approaches and types of support that can help you cultivate a successful recovery journey. But regardless of the shape your path takes, the most important thing to remember is not to lose hope.
Here are some additional tips for challenging diet culture:
- Radical self-care: Practice self-care by putting oneself first and listening to oneself rather than ideals or behaviors fueled by consumerism.
- Self-acceptance: Learn to accept one’s body regardless of size, shape, or weight.
- Focus on nourishing the body: Switching the focus from weight loss to nourishing and looking after the body may be a more positive perspective.
- Find like-minded connections: Look for like-minded communities who reject diet culture, and avoid following media that makes people feel negative about their bodies.
- Seek out positive, empowering messages: Read books, articles, or blogs that promote positive messages of body acceptance.
- Resist diet culture: Call out or challenge ideas of diet culture in everyday life, such as a conversation that focuses on dieting, and begin an alternative conversation that feels more positive.
A 2021 study suggests intuitive eating may help people reject diet culture. Intuitive eating does not emphasize dieting or weight loss but focuses on eating in response to internal cues from the body, such as hunger or satiety. Participants reported that the benefits of intuitive eating included increased headspace, new hobbies and interests, and an improvement in being able to listen to themselves and act on it.
The Role of Healthcare Professionals
Healthcare professionals can also play a role in challenging diet culture by encouraging overall healthful behavior changes while being conscious of social determinants of health that influence these approaches. They may suggest behavioral changes, such as regular exercise; eating a nourishing, balanced diet; getting good quality sleep; and finding healthy ways to manage stress and anxiety.
For more help with this, people can speak with a healthcare professional, such as a dietitian, with experience in a “Health at Every Size®” approach.
Seeking Support
If people feel they are experiencing negative body image, mental health difficulties due to diet culture, or disordered eating, they can speak with a healthcare professional for support. Symptoms that could indicate someone needs help include:
- Compulsive dieting
- Obsession with weight
- Nutritional deficiencies due to dieting behaviors
- Purging behaviors, such as using laxatives to lose weight
People can also search for local treatment providers or find support groups and other free or low cost resources.
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