Written by: Raquel Griffin MSW RSW
Time to read: 5 minutes
Sinful snacks, cheat days, and junk food— oh my!! These phrases probably sound pretty familiar; they demonstrate some of the ways in which diet culture’s flavours of puritanism, morality, and virtue are baked into our common discourses surrounding food and eating.
Historically, religion has long shaped the way we think about food and our bodies. Religions issued warnings about gluttony, engaging in fasting practices and avoidances of what could be seen as indulgent. These practices weren’t about weight loss for its own sake or the effects of eating on a person’s size, but about how bodily pleasure was thought to compromise the soul. It was penance: a way of making up for all the times you had screwed up that year, rather than a way of punishing your body for being too large.
Early Protestant Christianity associated bodily pleasure with moral weakness, emphasizing restraint and self-discipline as pathways to spiritual purity. Protestant Christian clergy and leaders like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg were pioneers of so-called “healthy eating”, linking bland diets to moral and sexual chastity; this included their own inventions of the Graham Cracker and Cornflakes. Graham believed that all of America’s moral failings could be traced back to “unholy” ways of eating, which could be cured with a strict diet. Graham’s list of “excess” of sinful indulgences included: meat, spices, caffeine, alcohol, and warmed/heated food, to name a few. He even instructed his followers to abstain from dancing (“Footloose” style), to take cold baths, and sleep on hard beds. These practices weren’t merely about health—they were about control and conformity.
While some of these diets would be seen as overkill today, their legacy persists in modern diet culture’s manifestations, emphasizing individual responsibility which equates thinness with virtue and fatness as a moral failing. In practice, this looks like promoting restrictive eating as a marker of self-worth, abstaining or using “caution” with demonized foods, and pathologizing fatness as inherently diseased and wild. Diet culture’s obsession with categorizing foods as “good” or “bad” not only distorts our relationship with food but also fuels systemic oppression. It marginalizes those who don’t fit its narrow ideals, often targeting women and femmes, racialized folks, queer folks, disabled and those in larger or fat bodies. These standards are rooted not in health but in control—diet culture is a system of oppression, in all its facets.
Reclaiming Pleasure with Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating principles offer a roadmap for this reclamation like rejecting the diet mentality, honouring hunger, making peace with food, and discovering the satisfaction factor.
- Unconditional Permission to Eat
Instead of viewing food as an enemy, allow yourself to enjoy it— label guilt as such when you notice it. You’ll notice that when you embrace variety and remove restrictions, food eventually loses its “forbidden fruit” allure. - Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Tune into your senses: what flavours, textures, or aromas do you truly enjoy? Eating with intention—savouring each bite and minimizing distractions—can transform meals into moments of joy. - Create Joyful Food Memories
Food doesn’t solely meet physical needs but also serves as a source of emotional and social connection. It brings people together, creates traditions, and tells stories. Recognizing these facets helps us see food as more than calories or nutrients—it’s a part of life’s richness. Make meaningful connections to memories involving food that were joyful. Who were you with? What made the experience special?
Reclaiming pleasure in food is an act of resistance against diet culture and the oppressive systems that sustain it. By rejecting rigidity, embracing flexibility, and reconnecting with ourselves, we can rediscover the joy and pleasure that eating was always meant to bring. A parting invitation: take that treasured creation of Sylvester’s Graham cracker and squish between two of them a warm, toasted marshmallow and melted chocolate square… Mmmm… what a delicious “Fuck you” to diet culture.
References:
Carlton, G. (2022, February 2). Meet sylvester graham, the religious health nut who thought white bread was evil. Retrieved from: https://allthatsinteresting.com/sylvester-graham
Look, M. (2024, February 12). Why was cereal invented? A brief history of corn flakes. Retrieved from: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/why-was-cereal-invented.htm
Harrison, C. (2019). Anti-diet: Reclaim your time, money, well-being, and happiness through intuitive eating. Little Brown: UK.
Harrison, C. (2019, May 20). Episode#196: diet culture’s racist roots with Sabrina Strings. Food Psych. Retrieved from https://christyharrison.com/foodpsych/6/the-racist-roots-of-diet- culture-with-sabrina-strings-sociologist-and-author-of-fearing-the-black-body
Harrison, C. (2018, August 10). What is diet culture? Retrieved from: https://christyharrison.com/blog/what-is-diet-culture
Smith, A. F. (2009). Eating history: 30 turning points in the making of American cuisine. New York: Columbia University Press.
Strings, S. (2023, May 6). Fatphobia as misogynoir: gender, race & weight stigma. Body Talks Conference, Untrapped Academy.
Strings, S. (2019). Fearing the black body: the racial origins of fatphobia. New York University Press: New York.
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, 4th ed. St Martin’s Publishing Group: New York.
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2017). The intuitive eating workbook: ten principles for nourishing a healthy relationship with food. New Harbinger Publications: Oakland.
