During fifth week Isabelle ended our class with a beautiful thought: that at the end of all “this” we need to love and respect ourselves if we hope to help those around us. I have tried to carry that thought with me for the past few weeks and have found that I still have a certain guilt when I make decisions about food and what I put into my body. Do I respect myself when I eat “unhealthy” foods? Am I treating my body “correctly”? Eating healthy is not an accessible option for everyone, but how do we even approach that problem when the word healthy has been warped into diet trends and “clean eating”.
It seems that for as long as I can remember there have been diet trends released on Good Morning America and on People magazine covers telling consumers how they should eat in order to be healthy. I can remember my parents trying the atkins diet years ago and I know that this comes from their internalized fear of seeing their parents suffer from diabetes and dangerously high cholesterol. For some, this relationship to food is shaped by the scientific and cultural definition of “healthy food”. For others, they have been forced to find a new way to eat because of serious food allergies and digestive intolerances. We have also discussed in this class that certain groups do not even have the opportunity to choose healthy foods and follow these trends. This week I want us to explore the messages we have received past and present about what it means to eat “right”.
Social media has used these trends to their advantage. Check out these diagrams published by buzzfeed last year. https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolynkylstra/healthy-eating-charts?utm_term=.baebA56XD#.ugyMOXRoy
Do you all think that these diagrams and “tips” are positive or negative, and why? What audiences are they reaching?
What kind of message does this send for immigrants and their families in the US? I know that an Argentinian’s diet does not fit in any of those charts. Certain portions for foods like rice and legumes are unrealistic for people from countries like Costa Rica where these are a major food group. Emma had us dig into cuisine and our experiences on study abroad during fifth week and I feel that revisiting some of those topics could be beneficial for our class discussion.
I only ask of you to read the titles and captions, what stands out?
Much of the conversations surrounding food are attached to scientific findings, and the knowledge of nutritionists. I do not intend for this blog post to be a nutrition lesson. Personally, I feel that I am still figuring out what is best for me and what makes me feel “healthy” . My first year here at K, I took full advantage of the cafeteria and ate dessert after almost every meal (my parents were sugarphobics and according to them, aside from family gatherings, birthdays, and holidays, dessert was the enemy). I came home to my honest (but loving) female family members telling me that I did not escape the freshman 15. Insecurities aside, I knew that I probably was not putting the best ingredients into my body but getting up for seconds and thirds in the cafeteria helped me deal with stress.
The summer after my first year at K my father and I attempted to live with the Paleo diet for a few weeks. While I lived almost for the first time in my life with no farts (TMI..) I woke up craving sugar and had to stop going out with friends because I ended up eating iceberg lettuce salads while they enjoyed burgers and nachos. I would follow the strict guidelines for about a week and then purge on sweets and cheddar cheese. These moments of “cheating” made me feel guilty and confused. Was I the healthy one during those weeks? Or were my friends making the “right” choice?
Please read the article below. I do not agree with all of the author’s points but it does shed some insight on diet culture in general.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/ruby-tandoh-eat-clean-wellness?utm_source=vicetwitteruk
I realize it is lengthy, but if you have time please read some of the comments in response to the article.
How do people with food allergies react to this author’s points about gluten’s comparison to MSG? Feel free to respond in your comments about initial thoughts and responses to Tandoh's claims. As someone who has pretty uncomfortable reactions to dairy, I find her critique a bit intense. I have friends and colleagues who have made conscious decisions about their diet, whether it be going paleo or gluten-free, and it has changed their lives for the better.
Reflecting on what is written this whole post seems like a giant contradiction. And it is! I hope to unpack this contradiction in class and to look into personal insights for the “right” way to eat (Or if there even is one…?). This entry is a bit anecdotal and personal but I believe food is personal. This topic can be difficult and I hope to make our class on Thursday an open space. Feel free to respond in however you feel comfortable to this blog. It can be open and free flowing. You can think about:
What messages have you all been given about what is the “right” food to eat? Was that put into question when you came into college?
Have there been times in your life where you have been forced to reevaluate your relationship to food? Has this class made you reevaluate your relationship to food?
If you all could create a new food trend in hopes of creating a less confusing rhetoric, what would it be? What messages would you hope to send?
Thanks for opening up this space for a safe and open conversation about food, Josie! I agree, food is personal and I appreciate your honesty and willingness to bring us there. This post brings up a lot of things I have thought about through the course of this quarter. I think it is important to point out that certain diets are only applicable to certain groups and that there is a moralizing that tends to occur with food that ignores culture and economics and many other factors.
ReplyDeleteKeeping those things in mind, with the culture and socioeconomic background I bring to the table I have definitely been forced to reevaluate my relationship to food. I would say my high school career was actually much more stressful than college and I would find myself paying little to no attention to food, just mindlessly eating after class on the couch in front of the TV until I fell asleep. It wasn't until I got to college and realized my interest in food and the power it has that I began making really conscious decisions about what I ate. My sister was always a health nut and I made fun of her for it. Now when she came to visit me this weekend and I took her to the farmer's market she liked to brag that I have become her. But we still differ in a lot of ways in our relationship to food. I have just become more deliberate in my choices, as she always has.
I think that when considering all of the diet trends and suggesting what the best way to eat is, that is a very personal thing. There is no right system for all people. We all have different bodies, different taste buds and different cultures. It makes me think of excersize fads. My sister is also a workout nut and I was so excited for her to join me in my Barre class this weekend, the first workout (other than yoga) that I have felt extremely connected to. She hated it. But she loves to run. Different things work for different bodies.
I would say I feel healthier now than I ever have. I'm not sure whether I have lost weight, I think I may have but I haven't kept track. All I know is that what I put into my body feels good. When I put something into my body that is on the unhealthy side, I can feel it. But I don't beat myself up for it. Some days we just need to eat four slices of pizza. We all come to the table with different lives and different bodies so there is no universal diet for everyone. The one thing I think that can universally help us all is to just be mindful of what we eat and listen to the ways our bodies respond.
Thanks for bringing this up Josie! I think that it really interesting to examine the changing ways we relate with food, especially with the boom of social media. I know as a kid I used to do those “17 Magazine” work outs and try their recipes. What I found, from my parents, was that they were just packed with sugar (haha). My parents have always been very active at “healthy” eaters. My dad has always done all types of work out classes and is a gym addict and my mom has danced all her life, as a professional dancer and choreographer. Because of this, as a kid, I didn’t have sweets or soda or anything like that. As I grew older I realized the unhealthy relationship and disconnect from one’s body feeling the need to be active can create. My mom has always been trying to lose weight to work towards that dancers physic and when I was a ballerina I found myself doing that as well. I think sometimes the line between eating healthy and eating small portions of just salads can be very thin.
ReplyDeleteI think this unhealthy relationship can continue with social media. I know I’m guilty of scrolling through those Instagram pages with the super fit men and women on the beach eating fruit. I think this can add to the unhealthy relationship to food and fitness as we are always comparing ourselves to others. So I guess my main point of thought would be it all comes down to self-love and listing to your own body (although this can be a very hard task). Sorry for this rambling post!!
I grew up in a pretty similar environment with Josie. My mom and stepdad are very health conscious people. They taught me that sugar is evil, fat is evil, meat is also evil, and veggies are miracle foods that make you super healthy. After coming to college and studying biology, I disagree with some of my parents’ points.
ReplyDeleteI agree that sugar and fat are not very good for your body. Looking at the evolutionary history of humans, primates (including us) are not very used to eat a lot of sugar and fat. Sugar and fat were something rare and scarce. Because of our ancestor species’ background, we tend to store as much sugar and fat as possible. Our evolution hasn’t been caught up to our modern lifestyle, I think.
But I don’t think meat is bad and veggie is always good anymore. Eating too much of meat is not good. However, because humans are animals and our bodies are made up of animal cells (which are different from plant cells), we can get nutrients more efficiently from eating animal products. Eating too much of veggies is also not good, I believe. Especially because of my current status as a college student, it is difficult for me to buy organic veggies all the time. This means that I need to eat veggies that were grown by using pesticides/herbicides and other possibly harmful chemicals, which may accumulate in my body if I eat too much.
So based on my experience, like Josey, I question whether there is a “right way” of eating. I think each person has own beliefs about food, and people should not comment on other peoples’ choices. In addition to the relationships to food people establish through education and sharing of ideas with surrounding people, there are some foods that are good for some people, but not suited to others.
First off, thanks for the shout out Josie! I love you and your beautiful mind. Thank you for starting a conversation around this issue. I think when you said that this issue is full of contradictions you nailed it right on the head. I believe I have often struggled over this topic and it constantly causes my mind to turn because it is complicated and leads to contradictory thoughts. Before my gluten and dairy allergy fully developed I did not restrict my diet in anyway. I tried to go for the everything in moderation approach, but I was never one to turn down a piece of pizza. However, I still experienced insecurities in my body like many people out there. I was definitely someone who at times felt guilty for when I indulged in “junk” food. A guilt that I believe is caused by the moralistic tone that surrounds conversations of healthy eating.
ReplyDeleteMy junior year of high school I started experiencing digestive pain and general gastrointestinal struggles. It caused me to have to start paying attention to what I was and was not putting in my body at a greater level. Whether or whether not a food made me feel good was something I had to always start listening to. Once I began to discover foods that were giving me trouble I felt great relief and actually gained greater confidence in my body and in general felt better about myself. My story though is something that is unique. The way my body works is unique. That is where I get frustrated with the “clean” eating books. For some those types of diets can free people from physical pain or for others they can cause more stress in their lives and more insecurity. I think the idea that gluten is “evil” and should be cut out of everyone’s diets is ridiculous. It’s not the antithesis of a superfood, it’s simply something that people are allergic too like pineapple or peanuts. But, no one is going around shaming people for eating those foods. So why has gluten become the focus? I think it is the fact that it is connected to bread and carbs, two things that have gotten bad reps because supposedly if you eat them you are completely giving up your ability to have a “beach body” and thus allowing yourself to be unattractive and have fat on your bones. Ugh. This type of logic infuriates me. I feel like the idea of the gluten allergy has been co-opted by the health industry as another tool to shame people for what they eat and used to promote a particular exclusive idea of “health.”
I think the Vice article gets at that. I agree with the Vice article on most points however I think its critique of Deliciously Ella is a little off. I personally use Ella Mills cookbooks and website often for recipes because one they are delicious and two they do not use ingredients that inflame my stomach. She discusses thoroughly in her book that the reason she is eating the way she is is because it has helped her deal with the symptoms of a disease she suffers. I think this framing her cookbook is responsible because the diet she presents is restrictive and not right for everyone. Her books appears to me to be targeted at people with ailments they are trying to solve by eating differently. Bottom line for me is when moralistic language appears in dialogue around food it should be questioned and thought deeply about because there is usually some bigger cultural issues going on underneath.
I think this post taps into some very interesting cultural trends within our society. Like fashion, diets are trends that ebb and flow in their popularity. It seems like every few years something new and "groundbreaking" comes out that demonstrates what current ingredient or food group shouldn't be touched with a ten foot pole. For many years, fat was the enemy, then carbohydrates, now sugar, GMO's, and gluten are suspect. I also remember my parents doing the Atkins diet when it was big and being bummed that my mom no longer would make a weekly loaf of homemade sourdough. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Oz, and Oprah are just a few of the celebrity faces that have contributed to the culture machine of dieting that profits from peoples fears and insecurities. I think it is important to note how the diet industry is not at all divorced from patriarchal messaging about women's bodies and fat shaming. This is not is say that men aren't subjected to health/body advice and scrutiny, simply that those messages tend to take on very different tones when directed at feminine and masculine bodies.
ReplyDeleteWhen I reflect on my own relationship to food over the years, I found reading Michael Pollan's books several years ago to be instrumental in causing me to think critically about not only how food affects my bodily health, but also the health of the planet. While Michael Pollan is undoubtably his very own genre of "food/eating celebrity", I think part of why I connected to this literature so much is that the tone of his writing is informative without being preachy or dogma (something other food writers should take note of). Michael Pollan's famous 7 words ; "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" has been helpful to me personally when I cook and prepare meals.
More than any food guru, I think we need to trust ourselves most when it comes to making decisions about what we eat. I think the best advice we can get is the information our own bodies give us. While I don't consider any food "off limits", I do listen to my body when it gives me clear signals after a night of beer and nachos with friends. Like Isabelle said, our bodies and systems are unique which is why mass diet trends often don't work for so many. Overall, we need to be kinder and more forgiving of ourselves and realize there is not one perfect eating plan or regimen that will work for everyone.
I completely agree with your bolded statement, Josie; food literally becomes the person who eats it, making it, literally, one of our most personal decisions. I’ve had problems with perceptions of what the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ things to eat are. Lessons published in both cookbooks and scientific journals are constantly changing—can we eat fat yet? Is coffee healthy again? (I hope so.) Tracing diet fads through the last century reveals huge contradictions in teachings of what foods are healthy and what people can be considered healthy. I’ve tried a couple of ‘eating styles’ during my time at K. I went gluten and dairy free for a few months during my sophomore year, but because I was still eating exclusively food from the caf, I wasn’t eating a balanced diet. After my immune system was temporarily compromised, I returned to my ‘normal’ eating patterns. One change that’s stuck during my time at K is reducing my meat consumption. This started out of a general distrust of the caf’s filets, but I’ve noticed a huge difference in my gut. I’m not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a noticeable difference in how I feel physically (and I feel better morally for helping the environment, even if just a little).
ReplyDeleteI hope that we can move towards a more personalized way of feeding our families and ourselves. Whether from taste or a process that comes later in the digestive process, people have a variety of reasons for avoiding the foods they avoid. It’s frustrating to be told the ‘correct’ way to eat the ‘correct’ foods. Many times, these claims seem to be validated by neither empirical studies nor even personal experience; there are just lots and lots of them, and they’re loud. I think the Vice article was a bit extreme in its criticism, but it’s important to point out that ‘wellness’ has been adopted by the food industry. I really appreciated one reader’s comment: “This article is equally as vague, convoluted and potentially harmful as the literature it is criticizing.” I’m not sure we know as much as we think we do about nutrition, but that doesn’t stop us from shouting it. One graphic that really struck me in the BuzzFeed article has the “Nutrient Density Scores” of several leafy greens. What is this? Is a higher number really better? What do nutrients do to my body, anyway? I know my confusion can be mostly attributed to my own ignorance regarding food and digestion. But I find the history of our culture’s relationship with nutrition to mixed to be completely trusted. People know what food makes them feel good, and I hope they can have better access to it without shame.
I’m a really big fan of this post, its additional literature, and the questions it puts forth. These are the thoughts that have been buzzing around in my head, amorphous and largely unattended, put into words. I have absolutely noticed the culture that surrounds eating well in America, but I didn’t necessarily notice the harm it could do because it was such a reflection of what I had always known from my personal life. A few years ago, in a desperate attempt to get healthy – fast – I scoured the internet for bite-sized (pardon the pun) info graphics that are reminiscent of those featured in the BuzzFeed list, and I still have many of them saved on my computer. As a part of that hungry target audience, I understand that these are messages of false progress and promises. I certainly don’t see them as all bad, but they are in part aimed at the vulnerable, and they could aid in certain individual obsessive behavior. They also assume economic and temporal stability, which is not a reality for many people in America eating unhealthily today. I see similar assumptions in the HuffPost “Taste” article, but there are also more titles that denote a relationship with food, including “Love and the Pleasures of Eating” and “The Art of BBQ”, which is not, in itself, a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteI really resonate with what you said about your Paleo excursion, and your post actually got me thinking more critically about my ever-present desire to go vegan: would it really be the best choice for me, my nutritional needs, and my time constraints? I have found that many outlets whose ideas I subscribe to recommend a vegan diet as the healthiest one for your body and the planet. I see that as absolute truth within our current food system, but I do understand homo sapiens, as omnivores, were meant to eat animal products. Those are not the only messages I have received, of course; my whole life, my mother has struggled with her weight, and she’s always ingesting and recommending sugar-free or low-calorie options; beauty vloggers recommend certain foods within a diet to stimulate nail and hair growth or healthy, glowing skin; etc. College has only exposed me to more recommendations for and warnings against particular foods, and this experience entire is one time (of many) in my life so far that has caused me to reevaluate my relationship with food. One of the biggest milestones in more recent history was my time spent in Thailand learning about the food system there and the larger world. It was wild, and I could talk about that for quite a while, but I’d still be in the same spot I am now: yearning for answers but being so comfortable in the current state of things in life not to look for those answers.
Thanks, Josie, for opening up a space to talk about this! I think it is really important that we critically look at all of the messages that we get about food and our bodies so that we can sort through what decisions are best for us. Certain parts of Ruby Tandoh's article resonated with me--I do think that diet "trends" are often promoted as marketing strategies that play into insecurities that we have about our bodies (insecurities caused by messages we've received from our society about how our worth is tied to specific forms of physical appearance). At the same time, I'm remembering the post of one of last year's students, Lucy Mailing, who told us about some of her health struggles and how changing her diet, including eliminating gluten, dramatically improved her health, energy, and mental clarity. So, I also have some sympathy with those commenters who feel that the article is not taking their experiences with these diets seriously.
ReplyDeleteThe messages I got about food as a kid were essentially that you ate whatever was put in front of you without complaining, you cleaned your plate, and you said thank you, even if you hated the food. While I can see that my parents were trying to instill a certain ethic of gratitude and politeness with these messages, it's taken me a long time to learn to listen instead to what my body really wants to be eating and to say "no" to foods that don't feel good to me. I still struggle with that, actually. Now that I'm older, I've developed difficulties with digesting certain foods. Garlic is one food that will give me problems if I eat it in large quantities. But sometimes if I'm at a potluck or a lunch meeting, I'll take some food without realizing it has a lot of garlic in it. Once I take a bite, I know I shouldn't eat any more but that clean plate ethic is so strong in me that I will often go ahead and eat it rather than throw it out even though I know I won't feel good later.
So my re-evaluation of my relationship with food is one where I'm trying to honor my body's needs first, rather than conforming to societal pressure at the expense of my well-being. I think the problem I have with some of these diet trends is that they are so prescriptive--they tell people what is good for them rather than helping people to learn to find that out for themselves. I really do think that different people have different nutritional needs and that our bodies can communicate with us about those needs through our feelings.
So my food trend would be about slowing down (big surprise there!) and paying attention to our bodies as we eat. Paying attention to how we feel as we eat. That passage in the article about the studies on iron absorption was a little shocking--but perhaps there is something to the idea that if we truly relish our food, it will nourish us more. I'd like to explore that idea in a diet trend.
This post touches on a wide variety of issues related to wellness, dieting, bodies, food culture, etc. Like Josie, I agree with some (not all) of the arguments made in the Vice article. To pull out a quote I liked though: "...rarely do we agree upon what is and is not good for us. In the absence of certainty, the safest and arguably most healthy approach to nutrition falls back on variety... When cure-all good health is promised via the exclusion of whole food groups, that might be to go against the grain of one of the few nutritional sureties we have." Reading this statement with a grain of salt of course (i.e. noting that it sometimes IS necessary for folks with specific dietary needs, allergies, etc. to cut out certain foods), it makes an interesting point. To echo what others have said in their comments, everyone has different bodies and different dietary needs, and trying to be mindful of what we eat (given our access) and how it makes us feel-- just trying to be in touch with our own bodies-- is an important part of this conversation. In critiquing some of the current rhetoric of wellness, I think we should question the implications of universality-- that "good food" vs. "bad food" means the same thing for/to everyone. My own relationship with food has changed a lot since coming to college, mainly because of my decent-but-not-amazing cooking skills (versus those of my parents). I never really learned to cook from my parents, though growing up I ate a lot of home-cooked meals. Now, not on a meal plan, I have a few staples-- bread, pasta, eggs, yogurt, hummus, peanut butter, nuts-- and buy a variety of veggies and fruit (and snacks!) when I go grocery shopping. I don't cook the most creative meals but they're pretty good. I think maybe the most dramatic shift in the move from home to college is actually just my awareness of the weekly budget needed to purchase food that makes me feel good. I'm starting to ramble a bit, haha... but I'm looking forward to the class discussion tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteThis post really touches on some of the things that we have been bringing up all quarter but never really had the time to explore completely. My personal relationship with food hasn't changed all that much throughout my life but there are a few things that have changed it for me. When I was younger my mothers wold cook food for me every day. They would tell me that I had to eat a variety of things like grains as well as veggies and to stay away from too many sweets. This is all the guidance that I had before middle school. I had no idea that my parents were buying from local businesses whenever possible. When I got older my parents would take me shopping and actually talk to me about the food we were buying. From this I got a sense of what the "right" food to eat was. In my early years at K I was on the meal plan and had no dietary restrictions.I don't feel as though I was able to eat the way that I did when I was at home but it didn't really change what was most important to me about eating meals, the people who I was eating with. Once I moved out of the dorms I was allowed to once again eat more locally and control what I eat. I have gone back to the way that I was raised which is trying to eat foods that are sourced locally and responsibly. I try to get a lot of what I cook from the local farmer's market and the rest I buy from local businesses. I hope to continue this trend after college and to maintain the relationship with food that I have formed.
ReplyDeleteThis post really touches on some of the things that we have been bringing up all quarter but never really had the time to explore completely. My personal relationship with food hasn't changed all that much throughout my life but there are a few things that have changed it for me. When I was younger my mothers wold cook food for me every day. They would tell me that I had to eat a variety of things like grains as well as veggies and to stay away from too many sweets. This is all the guidance that I had before middle school. I had no idea that my parents were buying from local businesses whenever possible. When I got older my parents would take me shopping and actually talk to me about the food we were buying. From this I got a sense of what the "right" food to eat was. In my early years at K I was on the meal plan and had no dietary restrictions.I don't feel as though I was able to eat the way that I did when I was at home but it didn't really change what was most important to me about eating meals, the people who I was eating with. Once I moved out of the dorms I was allowed to once again eat more locally and control what I eat. I have gone back to the way that I was raised which is trying to eat foods that are sourced locally and responsibly. I try to get a lot of what I cook from the local farmer's market and the rest I buy from local businesses. I hope to continue this trend after college and to maintain the relationship with food that I have formed.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the insightful and personal post, Josie! In reviewing the Buzzfeed diagrams, I couldn’t help but think of the premise of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. As omnivores, the variety of foods at our disposal to consume is enormous. Given this plethora of choice, the question of “what should we eat for dinner/lunch/breakfast/etc.?” is incredibly complicated. This complication is compounded by the green revolution (which has made the quantity and variety of foodstuffs exponentially more accessible) and diasporic migration/globalization (which has disrupted traditional/cultural cuisines in terms of knowledge of those traditions and access to foods that make up those cuisines). To me, it seems that a part of diet trends is explained these uncertainties/displacements. I don’t quite advocate for all people to return to their “ancestral” cuisines—because preference, access, allergies, and intersecting identities complicate that pursuit infinitely. But, perhaps an approach to eating that is more “pluralistic” and fluid (that maybe draws upon multiple traditions?) is preferable to the highly particularistic diets we’re currently fed—pun intended. Like you, Josie, I didn’t agree with everything said in the Vice article you shared but the ending idea about there being multiple ways of eating “well” resonated with me, because I don’t think there is a “one size fits all” solution for health. Maybe the omnivore’s dilemma is also a blessing to address our personal needs and desires!
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