What is diet culture? Here’s the 101
What is diet culture and how does it effect kids? Here’s the 101, from nutritionist Jennifer Nash, with input from our wider expert team at The Body Happy Organisation CIC.
For some, ‘diet culture’ is a familiar and well-known term. However, many people – around 50% of our CPD workshop attendees in fact – haven’t heard of this term or, if they have, they have a limited view of it, namely equating ‘diet culture’ with ‘fad diets’.
Having a good understanding of what diet culture actually is can help us understand how body ideals (i.e. “good” and “bad” bodies) get perpetuated. Tackling issues of diet culture ensures we foster an environment which nurtures positive body image, body diversity and inclusion amongst children and young people.
What is diet culture and what does it have to do with body image?
Diet culture refers to the system of beliefs, dominant in our culture, which equates thinness with health, beauty, success, happiness, moral worth and social capital. It is predicated on, and perpetuates, body ideals, which reinforce the notion of “good” and “bad” bodies. These ideals are directly at odds with promoting positive body image and minimising body-based discrimination. Diet culture has its roots in, and is fundamentally interwoven with, other forms of systemic oppression, including ableism, racism and classism.
Extract from Body Happy Kids, by Molly Forbes, with illustrations by Stacie Swift. You can get your copy from all good bookshops, including our own.
What’s it got to do with kids?
When we think of diet culture we tend to think of adults “on a diet” or of adolescents being exposed to harmful ideas of food and restriction online. But diet culture shows up for children in many ways, from a really young age. These ideas perpetuate anti-fat bias amongst children, which can lead to poor body image on an individual level – this in turn can lead to associated issues such as disordered eating or eating disorders, anxiety and low mood and reduced engagement in class or sports activities. Diet culture also reinforces weight stigma amongst children, impacting how they might treat others, such as bullying.
How does diet culture show up around kids?
Follow us on Instagram at @bodyhappyorg for more educational content like this
Kids media - Lack of positive representation of fat characters, fatness as the punch line of the joke etc.
Public health policy - Weighing children in school, non holistic approaches to health, approaches focusing on a weight normative framework (including BMI)
Social media - Wellness culture, fitspo influencers, photo editing, filters, body-shaming trends and memes
Diet marketing - Advertising boards outside community centres where kids’ clubs take place, banners on school railings, sports kits sponsored by diet brands
Grown-ups - Overhead conversations about diets amongst adults, comments at the dinner table, body comments from relatives
Education policy - Health education based on a weight normative approach, binary messaging around “good” and “bad” food etc.
Recognising and minimising children’s exposure to diet culture is good for body image.
The diet culture litmus test
Diet culture isn't always easy to spot. Over the years it has become less easy to identify as it’s moved away from obvious and explicit beauty standards (e.g. magazine covers in the 1990s) and is nowadays cloaked in our conception of health and wellness.
Here are three questions to ask yourself if you're trying to work out if it’s diet culture or not:
1. Is it promoting a body ideal? It might not be that there is a “good” body being explicitly promoted, but is there a “bad” one?
2. Is weight loss or body modification the goal?
3. Is it promoting a narrow concept of health? (i.e. health behaviours as the only aspect of overall health and these behaviours solely focused on nutrition and exercise)
Three ways to tackle diet culture now
Tackling diet culture is an ongoing process, both in our own adult lives and in the lives of the next generation. Sometimes it can feel like an uphill battle, but every small step we take to fighting diet culture dismantles the system, bit by bit. Here are three steps you can take, now, to tackle diet culture in the lives of the kids around you:
1. Ensure there is representation of diverse bodies in the books you read with children or in the media they consume – check out the Body Happy-approved list of books or encourage your kids to follow some body positive and fat activists on social media
2. Stand up for a weight-inclusive approach in education or healthcare – this may include considering whether you agree with your child being weighed in school as part of the National Child Measurement Programme (see our info pack on the NCMP) or questioning whether you wish for your child to be weighed at medical appointments
3. Watch the conversations you have around kids on bodies, food and diets, and encourage other adults in your children’s lives to do the same
Spot diet culture, and call it out.