![]() Medical care (including access to health care) accounts for 16%, while the remaining 50% is determined by factors out of a person’s control-known as the social determinants of health (SDOH), which include housing, food access, transportation, social and economic mobility, social service connections, and physical environment. A report published in April 2022 by the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, an advisory group for the Department of Health and Human Services, estimates that just 34% of a person’s health can be attributed to their personal health behaviors like what they choose to eat and drink, how often they exercise, and whether they smoke or use drugs. That might make sense at first thought, but it’s not based on science, either. The most famous example is probably clergyman Sylvester Graham (namesake of the graham cracker, which was originally much less delicious than it is now), who promoted a bland vegetarian diet of bread, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables as a way to quell sexual urges, improve health, and ensure moral virtue.Īnother fatphobic concept that’s central to diet culture is healthism, which is the belief that each person is solely responsible for their own health, Tovar says. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, American protestants started to publicly equate deprivation with health, and health with morality. What are some of the roots of diet culture? “Diet culture is the culture we’re all steeped in it’s the belief that we can control our bodies based on what and how much we eat, and it places a moral judgment on food and bodies.” In other words, it makes us believe, consciously or not, that certain foods and (thin, usually white) bodies are good, while other foods and (fat, often Black or non-white) bodies are bad. “There’s this idea that diet culture only affects people who choose to diet, but that’s not true,” Sabrina Strings, PhD, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies diet culture and fatphobia, tells SELF. We’re all surrounded-and influenced-by diet culture, all the time. Diet culture also “oppresses people who don’t match up with its supposed picture of ‘health,’ which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities,” Harrison writes. ![]() Harrison defines diet culture as a belief system that “worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue,” promotes weight loss and maintaining a low weight as a way to elevate social status, and demonizes certain foods and eating styles while elevating others. What’s the definition of diet culture?Īlthough there’s no official definition of diet culture, Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, author of Anti-Diet, published a great one on her blog in 2018. ![]() That’s why SELF asked experts to address some of the most common questions and misconceptions about the term to give you a better understanding of what diet culture really means and why it’s so problematic. What’s worse, diet culture is so ingrained, especially in Western society, that we often don’t even recognize it. ![]()
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