Do we need a new word for “Healthy?”
A recent article in the Telegraph highlighted what practitioners working in disordered eating have long known, that the word “healthy” when it comes to making food choices is becoming increasingly problematic.
In the article, Celia Walden writes about a growing trend amongst teenagers to hide food avoidant behaviours under the guise of “healthyfulness”. This can look like avoiding carbohydrates, strict adherence to counting their steps or fasting. All done under the assumption of being healthy. You see despite all the body positivity, diet culture hasn’t changed, it’s just become sneakier. Now if you want to avoid eating for several hours in the day, you can say you’re intermittent fasting. If you won’t allow yourself to eat a treat without having to compensate with exercise, you’re just wanting to get your step count up.
Why is this an issue? When we start to narrow our food choices down to only what is deemed healthy, we run the risk of developing rigid behaviours and thinking patterns around food, commonly known as black-and-white thinking. This mindset, where foods are classed as good or bad, clean or dirty, can lead to an inflexibility around food where food choices are governed by food rules and food fears. This type of black and white thinking is fuelled by social media, not known for its love of nuance, which is unfortunate as this is where our teens spend a significant amount of time looking at picture perfect diets with heavily edited content. Conflicting information, extreme thinking and the demonising of certain foods means it’s increasingly hard for teens (and their parents) to see what a normal, balanced relationship with food looks like. And this is important because not only is the number of people suffering with disordered eating on the rise, but it’s also become normalised. Just think of the number of podcasts you’ve probably heard demonising certain foods over the past year all of which feed (no pun intended) into a narrative around what, when and how we “should” be eating. Collectively these are known as food rules and are usually established by something we’ve heard or read, rather than internal, intuitive cues and signals to food and hunger. These rules become more established when we believe them to have significant influence over our weight and body shape.
So, what should a normal relationship with food look like? It’s important to teach our teens that a normal diet is not a perfect diet. A normal diet varies day-to-day, allowing for flexibility based on hunger, schedule, and available foods. It involves eating a wide variety of foods, ensuring that you consume enough to meet your nutritional needs. Most importantly, it means avoiding labelling foods as good or bad. In a healthy relationship with food, there is no guilt, shame, or compensatory behaviour associated with food choices1.
It’s at this point, you might be thinking I’m encouraging your teen to simply live off big gulps and jammy dodgers. Let’s be clear. Food and nutrition are, of course, important, and teaching our teens how to nourish and fuel themselves is a crucial life skill. However, maybe we need to help broaden their view away from simply focusing on being ‘healthy’ and towards balance, flexibility, connection, and pleasure. Where we teach them how to listen to their own internal cues around appetite, hunger, and fullness rather than external voices based on food rules and fears.
What can we do instead?
Create a positive food environment at home. Model a normal relationship with food for them. Consider what the eating environment is like at mealtimes in your house. Are mealtime battles causing a lot of stress around the table? So often we can hyper focus on what our teens are eating at the expense of thinking about how they are eating. A relaxed family meal around the table creates a welcoming eating environment where our children can learn how to develop a healthy and relaxed relationship with food. This shared experience of coming together for a meal helps to foster an enjoyment of eating. This enjoyment is key for them to learn how to seek out a variety of foods—the cornerstone of good health—on their own volition.
Eat at regular intervals. This is mostly three meals a day with two to three snacks depending on nutritional needs.
Remove or reduce chatter around dietary rules and labels – all food and drink can have a place in a normal diet, it’s the balance we need to be mindful of. Try and avoid labelling less beneficial foods as bad. Creating a moral value around food only serves to encourage negative beliefs and behaviours around food.
Encourage a flexible approach to food, a balanced approach to food isn’t perfect. We have 21 meals a week, not all of them are going to be nutritionally complete and that’s okay. It’s what you do consistently, over a long period of time that matters.
Encourage our teenagers to tune into their internal cues of hunger, fullness and appetite to guide their decisions about what, when and how to eat, rather than letting diet culture, rules, or food fears dictate their choices. This is about developing their eating competency and building their intuition. Serving meals ‘family style,’ where our children can choose which foods they want to eat and how much, is one tool to help build this skill. Additionally, mindful eating practices, such as eating at the table instead of in front of the TV, also contribute to this development.
It may help to find sources of this online if this is a difficult, or new, area for you. Evelyn Tribole is the cofounder of Intuitive Eating and is a regular poster on Instagram and youtube. Ellyn Satter’s book, ‘Secrets of feeding a healthy family’, which has been referenced in this article, is a fantastic resource for those wanting to learn how to teach their children how to eat naturally and how to build trust back into their relationship with food and their body. Finally, Bee Wilson’s First Bite: How We Learn to Eat is one of my favorite and most-read books on the subject of nutrition and eating habits. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in understanding how we acquire our taste for certain foods and how we can change these preferences while also improving our relationship with food along the way.
If you feel that you or your teen’s relationship with food is being impacted in any way, big or small, by food rules or food fears, it’s important to get help. Please use the enquiry form on this website to get in touch.
References:
[1] Ellynsatterinstitute.org. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/What-is-normal-eating-Secure.pdf> [Accessed 3rd September 2024]
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