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NUTRITION
Our Children | Spring 2021
Stop feeding diet culture Serving up healthy attitudes for our children By Crystal Murray
R
ecently I talked with a couple friends about a diet plan one of them was following. One had lost a few pounds and said she really didn’t have trouble keeping to the plan. There were lots of recipes, she never felt hungry, and she liked the results. The other friend piped up that she would be interested in trying but she was careful not to engage in any disordered eating, which could impact her teenage daughters. Her statement lingered with me and even stung a bit as I thought about my own eating behaviour. Are they disordered? Has my relationship with food had an impact on my children?
Good Food vs. Bad Food I’ve long tried to be conscious about what I eat. That’s because I was diagnosed with Celiac disease about seven years ago, but also a general part of my effort to be what I considered to be fit and healthy. One of my sons has Type 1 diabetes. When he was diagnosed at the age of three, it piqued my interest in nutrition and the way our bodies respond to different foods. I also became vigilant about foods that I labelled as either good or bad, as
they related to stabilizing blood sugar. My other son, who doesn’t have diabetes, is also studying nutrition at university. He tells me he grew up thinking about foods as good or bad. This had nothing to do with blood sugar control for him. It suggests that even though I have no recollection of openly categorizing food this way, perhaps my kids were getting an unhealthy message. I wasn’t restricting my children from having treats, but I did have limits and made sure that they understood what
WHY SO STRICT?
“The culture of restricting kid’s foods, treats in general, has become so prevalent,” says Dr. Cheryl Aubie, who has vast knowledge of the impacts of food restriction from her clinical practice. “Kids for the most part eat foods that are good for them and they tend not to overeat these treats if they are not always restricted from them. If you make these types of food less scarce then in most cases the kids, when they have access to them, will not overeat. Categorizing foods as good or bad for you can also get in the way of kids eating for nutrition and there are also a lot of outside influences that determine how young people choose to eat.”
healthy food really was. I thought I was educating my family on good nutrition but was I unintentionally and quietly exposing my children to the toxicity of diet culture and disordered eating?
Diet Culture It’s almost impossible to escape diet culture. Dr. Cheryl Aubie is a Halifax psychologist who also works with the province’s Eating Disorder Clinic. She believes that our culture venerates diet and weight loss. “It is absolutely true that many people have a disordered approach to eating.” says Aubie. Disordered eating isn’t an eating disorder diagnosis. Aubie explains that disordered eating is a concept explaining when people are on the verge of unhealthy food attitudes and behaviours. Diet culture that feeds disordered eating suggests that people are worthy based on their body size. It vilifies some ways of eating and celebrates others. Dr. Phillip Joy, assistant professor in applied human nutrition at Mount Saint Vincent University adds that diet culture
