Since the dawn of human life, we’ve needed nourishment to survive. We can’t escape the fact that our living, walking, talking selves rely on food to get through each day of activity, each night of sleep, each thought we process, and every step we take. But just because food is necessary doesn’t mean it has to control us.

Food is meant to be pleasurable, nourishing, and energizing. Yet diet culture teaches us to fear it, to loathe it, and to allow it to fill us not with nutrients but with guilt.

How did this happen?

In this post, I’ll explore how and why food has become such a central focus in our lives, so much so that entire disorders have evolved because of it. I’ll also share food's role in my life and how it grew from something parents make kids finish before dessert into a topic I put all my weight on. Pun intended.

The role of food in childhood

As a kid, my mealtimes were pretty standard and unchanging. My mom fed us adequately, not always deliciously, but I didn’t care so much about the food’s taste. After a day likely spent running, jumping, dancing, biking, and playing any number of sports, by the end of it I was hungry, so I ate.

Outside of the three major meals, *snack* times became more of an opportunity to experiment. My two sisters and I were lucky enough to have a pantry full of options. Little Debbie, Frito-Lay, and other brands of the 90s were staples in our tiny kitchen closet.

As we grew into agency-possessing children, snack time was a chance to exercise our freedoms. We could choose something salty or something sweet. We could select something we’d tried in the past and enjoy it simply for its taste, or we could try something new.

Regardless of how you grew up and what meal and snack time looked like for you, there was likely a moment in your upbringing when suddenly, you were allowed to make decisions about what to eat. One might argue this is when we develop our preferences for taste. We get to decide what we want, regardless of whether it’s healthy, high in fat or calories, or deemed a “bad” food by whatever diet is in vogue at the time. It’s a time of blissful ignorance, one that I know many of us wish we could return to.

Read ‘From diet to disordered: Where's the line?’

Facets of food in the human world

When broken down, food is a fairly straightforward concept that shows up in our world in different ways. Let’s explore how food has evolved from nourishment to cultural concept to a pillar of emotional comfort.

Food as nourishment

In its simplest form, food provides our body with nutrients that we don’t naturally make. Things like vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, and, yes, even fat. We need these things not only to survive but also to thrive and evolve as human beings. As we’ve explored new ways to consume the food our ancestors found in their immediate environments, we now have millions of possibilities of food combinations, tastes, and textures that have taken mealtime beyond the sole purpose of providing fuel.

Food as a cultural concept

Depending on what was available to our ancestors, different geographies had access to different ingredients. Before global trade, we had to eat what we found in our surroundings. This birthed the cultural traditions around food.

Locals worked with what they had access to, experimenting to create the cuisines we know and love today. These recipes have permeated through families, cultures, and generations, each time offering an opportunity to put a new spin on a dish and make it unique.

All of this transformation has led food to become more than just a source of energy but a cultural center point around which traditions have been cultivated.

Food as an emotional comfort

Relatively recently (in the grand scheme), evidence has shown that certain foods elicit the release of feel-good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. Foods that are high in zinc, folate, magnesium, potassium, and other nutrients have been shown to correlate with increased levels of energy and clarity.

Anecdotally, we turn to some foods for comfort (e.g., chicken soup, warm tea), possibly because we learned during our childhoods to equate them with improved mood and health.

A shift in perception

Physiologically, culturally, and emotionally, food is a non-negotiable component of daily human life. But once external messaging starts to seep into our subconsciousness, our views on food might turn sour.

As our autonomy over the food we choose to eat increases, the opinions of the media, friends, and even extended family can start to affect how we perceive food and its relation to our bodies. In my case, infomercials, diet trends, and body-centric comments from relatives and neighbors introduced the idea that the food I eat has direct influence on the way my body looks.

Media, for example, can “teach” our still-growing minds about the correlation between certain foods and undesirable body outcomes. And because we don’t know any better, we might absorb these messages as true statements, learning to equate thinness with goodness and fat as something to avoid or get rid of.

It’s hard to escape the notion that the conversations on screen or in our dining rooms can construct pieces of our internal dialogue with ourselves, cementing beliefs that may last our entire lives unless we actively try to unlearn them.

Diets as mainstream ideals

Once diet culture has its claws in us, it can be hard to shake its messaging. But if you step outside its bounds and analyze diets from an objective place, you may notice many diets are just socially accepted forms of restriction.

Restricting how much we eat can send our bodies into survival mode. It can affect our moods, our concentration, our bowels, and our energy levels—all in the name of conserving energy to survive.

Read: ‘How to spot diet dialogue (and what to say instead)’

Meanwhile, diet culture is constantly changing its credo, leaving dieters confused about how to feel about the food they’re eating, the moral value of it, and whether we’re doing dieting the right way. We might ask ourselves:

Is this food good or bad?
Did I eat too little or too much?
Should I feel satisfied or guilty?

Personal insight:
I write from the “we” point of view a lot because diet culture had this hold on me for a long time. I let it tell me what foods to avoid, what was so “bad” about those foods, and I felt pride when I made a “good” food decision.
Eventually, my internal cues for hunger and desire had been muted by an arbitrary, indecisive external script. It took years for me to restore trust in my body, to accept the cravings, to satisfy them, and to not feel guilty afterward. But it’s been worth it to untether myself from the clutches of diet culture.

How to rebuild your relationship with food

Freeing yourself from years or decades of diet-centric messaging doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a daily, and sometimes hourly process, to monitor your body’s hunger cues and learn how to nourish it in a way that works best for you. Hunger cues can show up in so many ways—physical, emotional, and psychological. It takes close concentration and patience to be able to determine whether what you’re feeling is hunger or whether it’s some other desire for connection, rest, or inward reflection.

A major part of relearning how to trust your body is mindfulness. After a meal, pay attention to how you feel. If you feel uncomfortable, sit with it. If you can’t sit still, journal. Explore where the discomfort is coming from. Write down how it feels in the three ways mentioned above—physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

If you feel you need to talk it out rather than write it out, seek out a professional, like a therapist or nutritionist who has been trained to guide people through their relationships with food. Use your best judgment when screening these professionals. If you notice they use common diet language or focus solely on weight loss, keep looking for someone else.

Learn how to get help

I can almost guarantee that no matter the role food currently plays in your life, it hasn’t always been the enemy. There was probably a time when you felt joyful, excited, satiated, and even neutral about food. If you have a hard time conceptualizing this feeling, try using the writing prompt below to uncover the root of your relationship with food.

When did food become the enemy? Humans’ complicated relationship with food

The role of food in childhood