The Decibel - ‘What I eat in a day’ videos and the new diet culture

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Diet culture that celebrates thinness, weight loss and supplements, has been around for decades. But the global reach of social media and influencers talking about nutrition trends and advice is something new. And what they’re telling – and selling – to followers isn’t always safe or fact-based.Christy Harrison is a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counsellor and author. Her most recent book, The Wellness Trap, discusses moving away from diet-culture and sifting through disinformation. She’s on the podcast to discuss diet-culture’s presence on social media, the harms of nutrition trends and how to maintain a safe relationship with food today.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Before we get started, a warning that today we'll be talking about disordered eating. What I eat in a day, healthy edition. And when I say healthy, I mean really healthy. The top three snacks to eat to burn belly fat. Here's a full day of eating as a human who eats like a human and avoids poison. Here's the exact formula to lose 10 kilos in two weeks that no one talks about. If you want to lose 10 pounds this month, put down the chips and listen up. You might have seen videos like that online. There's no shortage of people on social media telling you what you should or shouldn't be eating.

And a lot of them are influencers with massive followings. Though it's possible to find more positive content, a lot of the stuff out there talks about body size and losing weight under a veneer of health and wellness. These ideas can be harmful and even dangerous. So today, we're speaking with Christy Harrison. registered dietitian, a certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of two books, including The Wellness Trap, which is about breaking free from the wellness industry. Christy will tell us about today's diet culture, why getting nutrition advice from social media can be particularly harmful, and how we can develop healthier relationships with food.

I'm Mainika Ramanwelms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Christy, thank you so much for talking to me today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So you're a registered dietitian. You've thought a lot about people's relationship with food and wellness. I wonder, how would you define what diet culture is? Yeah, so I define diet culture as a system of beliefs and values that has kind of four major tenets. It worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status.

So that can mean health status, moral status, social status, all of the above. Demonizes certain foods and food groups while elevating others. So that's where we get the sort of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy kind of rhetoric around food, and then oppresses people who don't match its supposed picture of health and well-being. It's interesting to hear you talk about kind of, I guess, the moral weighting that's happening here, like, you know, really talking about something is essentially or inherently good versus bad then. Yeah, it's really, you know, diet culture is very stigmatizing to higher weight people, stigmatizes certain food choices, and, you know, paints people as virtuous if they make other food choices. It really does have this sort of moralizing tone to it.

I want to ask you about, I guess, how this plays out on social media, because obviously so many of us are online for so much of our days now. How are we seeing these kind of ideas really reflected and portrayed on social media? Yeah, I think we're seeing a huge proliferation of these ideas on social media and also sort of, you know, diet culture has kind of gone underground in recent years or it's shapeshifted. I guess it sort of went underground in the early 2000s and morphed into wellness or these ideas about health and, you know, it became not so much about like vanity or aesthetics, but more about this idea of health and well-being and that actually you need to be thin in order to be healthy. It's not just about being good looking. It's about, you know,

promoting your health and your wellness. And a lot of diet companies consequently shifted their language to be more about wellness. And I think it was 2017 or 2018 Weight Watchers rebranded as WW and the tagline was wellness that works. You know, they wanted to move away from this idea of weight watching. Except now, diet culture is a little bit more above board again with the craze for GLP-1s and Ozempic and, you know, the new weight loss drugs. So it has kind of shifted back in that sense a little bit. And we see a lot of this mirrored on social media. You know, I think the rise of influencers showing their before and after pictures, their weight loss plans, their what I eat in a day videos, you know, for people to emulate and supposedly achieve the bodies that they have. Any specific buzzwords that I guess you look out for? Because we see

those a lot when online. Oh, yeah. I mean, so many buzzwords. I think one red flag is like, you know, the secret to or your doctor doesn't want you to know the hidden reasons why, you know, all of those kind of this idea that like there's something that they're hiding from you and I'm going to be the one to tell you. And, you know, this is the real way to eat and everything else is bogus. I think that's a real red flag. sort of dubious diagnoses that are flying around out there on social media and online in general, where people are made to feel like any potential symptom they have could be explained by this thing. And, you know, usually the supposed solution is doing a restrictive diet and taking a bunch of supplements. So if anyone's out there sort of recommending that type of thing, I think that's a huge red flag. I think another one is where

it's somebody selling some sort of diet or program and it's based on their supposed experience, but no actual credentials. And they say very little about what is actually entailed in the program. It's like you have to DM me for details or you have to sign up first before you can know like what's included in it. I think that's also a red flag for a potential scam or something that is not at the very least that's not evidence based. You mentioned that influencers are a big part of this. So I guess let's dive into this a little bit. Like what kind of role do they really have? Well, I think, you know, influencers have an interesting role in society because, you know, people have access to them in ways that they

often don't to their doctors or to people with real credentials, real health and medical credentials. And influencers put out a lot of health information. They put out a lot of like lifestyle information and stuff too. And they can feel really like easy to connect with, you know, friendly, approachable, relatable. There's these parasocial relationships that develop, you know, this idea that you feel like the influencer is your friend. And I think that can happen because we have access to influencers in these very intimate settings. You know, we take them with us into like the bathroom. Literally anywhere we go, right? Yeah. Literally anywhere we go. Right. Yeah. So like influencers become this sort of go-to for advice about health and wellbeing,

I think for a lot of people, and especially because, you know, healthcare systems in North America have their own issues. And I think there's this sort of sense of accessibility and like ability to get, you know, your information and your needs met and sort of like know what to do and take charge of your health maybe in a way too that comes from following what influencers say versus, you know, just talking to your doctor and waiting for that kind of care. Yeah, if you don't really have, you know, quick access to that is what you're saying is people will, I guess, start to look elsewhere. And one of these places ends up being social media. Exactly. And if you have an algorithm that has learned you are searching for particular kinds of health information, too, then it becomes so easy to like get fed more of the same content and get put in the path of information that feels especially tailored to you and what your needs are.

Influencers is a big term, right? There's a lot of people on social media that are giving, I guess, different kinds of advice. One thing that I, you know, think sometimes we have to remind ourselves that there's often brands behind these influencers, right? Can you touch on that? I guess, how does this play into that? Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it because, you know, the traditional influencer business model is this person is using their influence to sell something to their audience and they're paid to do that by different brands. And so when you think about, you know,

a lot of the nutrition and fitness and health influencers out there, they're being paid by supplement companies, diet companies. They're, you know, often really likable and relatable, and they present things in an accessible way and make people feel like they're your friend and that they actually have some helpful information to recommend. And so, you know, when they're recommending something that they've been paid to recommend, how reliable is that? Right. And a lot of the products that they are recommending, especially when it comes to supplements are just really untested and unregulated and perhaps not what people need and could even in some cases be harmful.

So all of these things I think are problems. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that or forget that when we have an ongoing relationship with an influencer. It feels like we have a relationship with them. It's easy to forget that, no, in fact, they're being paid to market to you. They are advertising right now. They're, you know, they're just like a billboard, except in a much friendlier and sort of more engaging form. Can I just ask you, though, too, we also see professionals online, right, giving out advice. What do we have to think about when we see that kind of content? I think that's a really interesting piece of this, because professionals online,

they might have credentials and, you know, be an actual practicing medical doctor or practicing dietitian or whatever it might be. And that's great. And they might have, you know, more evidence based information because of that. But perhaps not, you know, because unfortunately, the way the algorithms are and the way they sort of promote more extreme content. I have fallen into this trap myself, and I've seen many others fall into it as well, that, you know, the algorithms do kind of nudge us all, I think, to be less nuanced, to put things in more black and white ways, to kind of speak in more absolutes. And they're pushing us toward these kind of extremes of communication that maybe aren't as nuanced as we would want to be when we're dealing with an individual patient. We're all kind of aware now that, you know,

algorithms control what we see on social media to an extent. We often get content that will engage us even if we didn't specifically look for it, right? So how do these algorithms, I guess, play into the issues of our relationships with food and wellness when it comes to what we see on social media? The way the algorithms work is that, you know, they're designed to maximize engagement, keep people clicking. And that's like shocking and gets people talking, gets people clicking and also provokes moral outrage. We see in research that moral outrage is really something that gets amplified by social algorithms and, you know, really keeps people's engagement. And so I think extreme diets and anything that goes against conventional wisdom about weight and health and food can sort of provoke that in a way. And so that's where we

get sort of like the diet wars between, you know, people who are low carb or low fat or, you know, intermittent fasting and all these different diets that are all very extreme in their own ways, but, you know, sort of battling it out on social media. And then that makes for a lot of engagement and a lot of clicks. And we also see that people who come into social media, like looking for casual nutrition information or just information about fitness and sort of how to be healthy in general, really like basic benign stuff can quickly get funneled into more extreme diets and even pro eating disorder content. And so, yeah, there was a paper published in December 2022 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is a research organization that looks into social media platforms and how they're promoting

hateful content, but is also misinformation and conspiracy theories and things like that. And they did some research on TikTok. They had a paper called Deadly by Design that looked at how TikTok is pushing harmful content that promotes eating disorders and self-harm into users' feeds. And that happens incredibly quickly. The researchers set up new accounts that had the words lose weight in their username and found that within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within eight minutes, it was serving up content relating to eating disorders. And then every 39 seconds, it was recommending videos about body image and mental health. And these were, by the way, these accounts were posing as teens. So it was recommending all of these things to ostensibly

teen users. So there's lots of kinds of videos out there about food and nutrition. I want to talk about one popular trend that you mentioned a little bit earlier. It's called What I Eat in a Day. Can you describe what these videos are like, Christy? Yeah. So What I Eat in a Day videos are where an influencer goes on and shows literally what they eat in a day, supposedly, right? So they show you like, you know, it can take different forms. It can be pictures or it can be, you know, videos cut together or whatever of the food that they said they eat across the day. You know, some of the time with these videos, and I've worked with people who are formerly influencers who shared this with me, that they would make things up in the videos

or in the images. They would say that they ate certain things and omit that they ate a whole lot more than that, or they would show only the quote-unquote healthy stuff they were eating and leave out the more processed foods. They, you know, might have been dealing with disordered eating at the time and showing kind of a more restrictive day as opposed to like a more binging day. And something that I think is really important to touch on here is that a lot of these videos don't just show images of the food itself, right?

A lot of these people are also showing images of their body alongside the food that they eat. So I guess, Christy, just walk us through, like, what does that say to someone watching that kind of video? Yeah, that's a really important piece of this is because it says, you know, if you eat like this, you'll look like this. If you eat like me, you'll look like me. And that's such a common misconception in our society. Like in reality, two people could eat the exact same diet, the exact same way every day of their lives and look completely different because we all have, you know, different genetic makeups, different intestinal microbiomes, different, you know, all kinds of different things, different histories

of dieting, which can push our body set weight up over time. You know, all of those things can affect how people process the food they eat and the weight that they end up being and, you know, how their bodies look. And all of that is okay. And I think that, you know, body size diversity and body diversity in general is a good thing and should be celebrated. But I think these What I Eat In A Day videos are sort of eliding that in a way, you know, they're making it seem like, well, if you just, if everybody just ate exactly like this, we'd all look exactly like this. And the reality is completely the opposite. We'll be back after this message. Obviously, so many of us are on social media on a regular basis. But do we know, I guess,

who is most at risk from seeing this kind of content on their feeds? Yeah. So, you know, definitely younger people are at risk for this, especially young girls seem to be the most at risk. But I think really people across the age spectrum who are struggling with any sort of disordered eating and chronic dieting or body image issues are at risk from, you know, seeing content on social media and trying to emulate it and also getting pushed down these rabbit holes toward more disordered eating. So I think anyone who's going on social media looking for information about food and nutrition and health would do well to be really skeptical and, you know, recognize that they probably are going to be pushed in extreme directions and maybe not get their information from social media,

but look to other more reputable sources. Christy, you mentioned disordered eating. So let me ask you about that directly. Can you tell me about the relationship, I guess, between social media and seeing these kinds of things about wellness and nutrition on there, the relationship between that and disordered eating? Yeah, so there's evidence that when people get on social media and look for information about food and nutrition, that they can get pushed towards pro-eating disorder content and really

extreme diets and things that can trigger or exacerbate disordered eating. We also know that people who are already engaging in disordered eating, which, you know, that's a spectrum. So I use the term disordered eating because the term eating disorder is a clinical term. It's, you know, people have to be engaging in disordered behaviors at a certain frequency and, you know, meet certain criteria. But there are a lot of people who have subclinical disordered eating. It doesn't meet the criteria for a full-blown eating disorder, but it's nevertheless, you know, interfering with their lives and they're engaging in disordered eating, it doesn't meet the criteria for a full blown eating disorder, but it's nevertheless, you know, interfering with their lives, and they're engaging in disordered behaviors with some regularity. And so really, it's a whole spectrum. But for people who are already engaging

in some level of disordered eating, they do also tend to be more attracted to and interested in media related to nutrition and food and health in general. And so I think it's sort of a feedback loop, actually, where disordered eating can make people more vulnerable to that kind of content. And then that kind of content can also make people more vulnerable to disordered eating, and it just feeds on itself. So it sounds like, though, you can very quickly be pushed towards this kind of content, essentially. So can we just explain this a little bit? Like, how does this content exactly, I guess, maybe trigger, you know, disordered eating or, you know, someone who's recovering from disordered eating? How would this potentially, I guess, affect them here? So for people who are encountering this kind of glorification of disordered eating, right,

this, you know, promotion of extreme dieting or, you know, fasting behaviors or cutting out lots and lots of foods and that kind of thing, it can make people feel like, well, that's what I need to do to be healthy. And so I should try that. And when people embark on that, they can end up in a restrict binge cycle. Oftentimes, that's, I think, what I see sort of as the most common form of disordered eating is, you know, people will try to diet, restrict their eating in the way that they think is best, whether it's an influencer telling them to do that or, you know, just some diet plan or something they heard somewhere. And so they try to, you know, follow it, restrict their eating to the best of their ability within that diet. And then, you know, almost inevitably, our bodies

will rebel against that and try to, you know, regain any lost weight and rectify the lack of energy that's coming in because our bodies are pretty sensitive to energy deficits. And so if we're, if they sense that we're in sort of a state of famine, they tend to have all these biological mechanisms to push us to eat more, to think about food more, to be attracted to food that's more calorie dense, energy dense. And so all of those things combine to push people to kind of make up for the restriction. But it can be really distressing to get into a cycle like that. And unfortunately, with the diet culture we live in, the sort of antidote that's often

presented to binge eating or rebound eating is like, well, just restrict more, just restrict harder or cut out these foods, try this diet instead. And so it becomes just this vicious cycle where people get pushed into more and more extremes and sort of greater levels of disorder with food. In our last few minutes here, Christy, I guess I want to ask, you know, for people who are looking to try to figure out this balance for themselves on social media, I guess what are some of the red flags that you look out for when looking at, you know, food or nutrition content online? Like, I guess what ideas stick out to you as, you know, you see that and you know that might potentially be harmful?

Yeah, I think anything that is restricting a lot of different kinds of foods, telling you that, you know, major food groups are off limits or that you need to cut, you know, all kinds of things out of your diet, like gluten and dairy and nightshades and this and that, and sort of giving that as blanket advice to people rather than saying like, yeah, maybe if you have celiac disease, you might want to cut out, you know, probably want to cut out gluten because that is evidence-based, but, you know, not giving this sort of blanket recommendations, right? So the blanket advice to cut out foods or to restrict your eating to certain windows of the day, right? Like the

intermittent fasting kind of content or people who are recommending a whole bunch of supplements. So Christy, what do we need to keep in mind in order for us to, I guess, have a safe relationship with food and our well-being in today's world, especially when we're online on social media? I would say that for the most part, I would not recommend getting your advice about food or nutrition or health from social media. I think social media can be useful certainly for connecting with friends, for finding out what's going on in the world in sort of a limited way, right? Not necessarily getting all your news there, but, you know, staying up on things going on in your local community and things like that.

But when it comes to information about food and nutrition and health, I think there's a lot more harm than good there. And I would recommend trying to look for your information from more reputable sources, you know, like news outlets that are fact checked. Because the other thing with social media is that social media platforms are not held to the same standards of accurate reporting as traditional media outlets are. I think it's probably helpful to, you know, stay offline as much as you can and get as much of your health and nutrition information from other more reliable, less biased sources. Christy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Thank you so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. This episode was produced by our intern, Raisa Alibai. Zura Jabril joins us as a fellow of Carleton University's Brooke Forbes Award. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor.

Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.