It’s so incredible how there is simultaneously diet culture that says only eating the way of our ancestors is healthy while there are also areas of diet culture that says you can’t eat an apple because an apple = sugar and sugar bad. Meanwhile the people who think it’s only healthy to eat the food of cavemen are drinking their protein shakes they found in the wild.
One week there will be a news headline about a study showing that eating chicken eggs is bad for cholesterol. The next week there’s a news headline about a study that shows eating chicken eggs helps you fight cancer. Both of these news articles made for clicks conveniently don’t mention that the collective sample size of these two studies was fifteen people over a course of five months.
This yoga instructor says you can’t eat between noon and 3 pm. This doctor who had less than ten hours of training on nutrition says you shouldn’t eat after 6 pm. This Instagram dietician says intermittent starving fasting is good for you. This celebrity fake doctor with a TV show says you should only eat on Wednesdays and if the weather is overcast.
Your mom who grew up hating her body because people would judge her for her appearance is on her 20th juice cleanse, but it’s for health, not because a lifetime of discrimination made her feel worthless. And hey, you should do this juice cleanse with her! And then the included three hour workout videos! And this new keto diet meant to help children with epilepsy looks good, let’s try that together! Oh, you don’t want to eat at all anymore? Well, at least not eating is good for you!
You should only eat meat. No, you should only eat vegetables and fruits. Scratch that, fruits have carbs. You should only eat cold-blooded mammals and seaweed. Wait, it’s actually okay to eat fruit again! Does this protein bar have omega-3 fatty acids? Wow, you don’t eat fat-free, dairy-free, carb-free, sugar-free milk? Do you even care about your health? Things without gluten taste worse, so that must mean they’re healthy! I can’t believe you actually ate a whole bag of chips. Yes, it was a single-serving bag meant for one person, but you still ate a whole bag of chips. I could never. Oh, my weekly supply of diet food arrived, and only double the cost of regular food from the grocery store! What a steal!! You actually feel pangs of hunger when you don’t eat and then listen to those hunger cues? What a fat ass. You know if you eat a single piece of cake you’ll get diabetes, an illness that is very complex and is actually extremely based on genetics, right?
You can never win with diet culture.
