About the Episode
Our F-word for this episode is ‘food’. In this episode we’ll be discussing food neutrality, in particular how messaging online, and the binary language we often use around food can lead to complicated relationships with food.
We’re going to explore:
- Why we have binary feelings about food
- Fear-based messaging & our relationship to food
- Defining food neutrality & exploring our fears
- Neutral food practices for Halloween
“...our fear of eating certain foods is often a fear of weight gain. Body change. Fatness”
Topics discussed in episode 014
Takeaways
Food is often associated with guilt and shame due to diet culture.
Finding joy in food can lead to a healthier relationship with it.
BMI is an outdated and flawed measurement.
Practising food neutrality means recognizing that all foods have value.
The diet industry thrives on creating fear around food choices.
Self-trust is essential in developing a positive relationship with food.
Food can evoke memories and emotions, which are important to acknowledge.
Challenging societal norms around food can empower individuals.
Engaging in non-food related activities can help reduce food focus during holidays.
The nutrition content of food does not define one’s worth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:25 Embracing Food Neutrality During Halloween
12:05 Understanding Diet Culture and Its Impact
31:06 Practising Food Neutrality and Intuitive Eating
Transcription:
Melanie [she/her] (00:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to the Culture for All. This is episode number 14. And this week we are talking food. Food is our F word. We originally did have a guest episode planned for today, but due to circumstances completely out of our control, my guest and I needed to rearrange, reschedule our interview.
That conversation will be coming in a few weeks. We are going to be sitting down this month and I cannot wait for you to meet Naomi. cannot wait for you to hear this conversation, listening to what we’re talking about. But I wanted to keep with the F word of food, keep with that theme. And so I went back to the drawing board and was like, what do I want to talk about when it comes to food? And I was like, you know what?
It’s my favourite season, we’ve all established this,
So going to be talking about how we can ghost diet culture and find some food neutrality this Halloween. That is what we’re to be covering. I cannot wait to get into this, but first of all, I wanted to just do a little catch up. See how the hell you are. I
have some diet culture, diet industry stuff to get through. Things that have been on my mind, things that have been showing up for me, especially on social media. But firstly, let’s start with the joy. Let’s start with the fat joy. And I had shared with you all that I was going pumpkin picking. And if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen some stories last weekend. I had so much fun. We went to this pumpkin patch that I haven’t been to since before 2020.
and it was just glorious. The weather was absolutely on our side, which was great. I was overly prepared with raincoats and rain boots and we didn’t need any of it. It was actually warm enough that I was just in a t-shirt, but it was really lovely. Greyson had a friend with him, so they were able to just kind of go off and they were looking for the golden pumpkin, which would have meant if we’d found it, we would have got our wheelbarrow pumpkins for free.
We didn’t find it. And there was many debate over what a golden pumpkin would look like. I got a great haul of pumpkins. I am very excited to this weekend. I’m going to start to kind of style them. I’ve got some straw that my husband picked up from the pet store. I’m going to kind of use that. I think I’m going to spray paint one of our like fold up chairs that we never use. I’m going to spray paint it black and I’m going to position a skeleton in there. I have a vision.
It’s very exciting.
But one of the things that really stood out to me when we were walking around at the pumpkin patch and I’ve got a wheelbarrow with pumpkins, how at peace I felt, how comfortable I felt. I didn’t feel anxious at all. I didn’t feel visible. I just felt at peace. I had so much fun being with a friend, being with family, but I felt really, really at peace with my body and
I was a little bit nervous beforehand. Hadn’t been pumpkin picking for a long time. Wasn’t sure how I would feel.
All I felt was joy. All I felt was excitement and happiness, and I was very aware of that feeling. was, it it, it feels really sad that I have to be so hyper aware of the fact that I’m at peace with my body, or in that moment that I feel very neutral, that I feel very…
Like I’m just living my life, but it was really, really interesting. And I was joking with a friend, I was like, I could do this like every weekend. This would be so much fun to do this every weekend. I don’t know where I’d put all the pumpkins, but just to come and be at a pumpkin patch. I guess what I’ve kind of walked away from that weekend thinking, okay, I know that the weather was cooler. I know that I felt really comfortable.
How can I create that feeling in other ways? How can I create that feeling? And that feeling of peace and that feeling of joy, you know, how can I create that in other movement or…
just in living my life because obviously going to a pumpkin patch I went there with the purpose of picking pumpkins I didn’t go there with the purpose of like getting in movement and like I’m gonna you know move this many steps or do anything like it wasn’t measured there was no measurement the only measurement was joy so I’m kind of leaning into that and thinking about how I can use that as kind of my my yardstick I guess for
I move in my body and the ways in which I move in my body and more so about the feelings. So yeah, stay tuned for that. I’m guessing once we get to like Halloween it’s gonna be a lot cooler and I want to try and do some things that week with my kid because
school is out the week of Halloween and we very rarely ever have that. Usually Halloween is the week after half term. So I’m going to try and find a couple of things for us to do that week as well that can get us outside and leaning more into that joy and Halloween spooky fun. So that was really fun.
a couple of other things that have come up that I wanted to share with you. I received a list of dates from my son’s school, and one of them was this measurement thing that they were going to be doing in November.
the part of this measurement is of course height and weight because they want to calculate children’s BMI.
And as you can imagine, I felt quite strongly about this. I felt quite strongly that this is bullshit. being a parent in a larger body, having a kid who to some extent is in a larger body, also not wanting to control or…
put any of the kind of generational body stuff on him. I’m, you know, that is something that I am very, very clear about. We are not putting that bullshit on him. And I felt very at odds, to be honest. Because on the one hand, I do not want him to have to be weighed and measured. I think it’s rubbish.
I wanted to protect him from any, you know, potential bullying or any conversations or comments that could come up at school. Because even though they say it’s anonymous, I’m like, yeah, but do the kids know what they weigh? And then are they all going to be like telling each other what they weigh? Because, you know, I have visions of how that is going to go. And then I started to think about the fact that if I opt him out of it…
Is he gonna wonder why he’s the only one not doing it? Is that gonna be an issue? So I decided the best thing was to talk to him about it. So I kind of approached the topic very carefully, and I went with logic. My kid does well with understanding, at least seemingly, understanding why I feel a certain way. So I explained BMI him. I explained…
that they wanted to measure them at school. And I said, they’re going to calculate something called your BMI. Do you know what BMI is? Not really. Okay. So I explained what it was. I said, it’s, you know, basically these two numbers and they chart you on a graph. And I said, the thing is, BMI is trash. And I explained where it came from and where it started. And it was created by this insurance company and the people at the time who could afford insurance.
premiums were middle-aged white men and obviously they then decided that you if we have this chart and BMI we can plot people right and my 10 year old said but surely that’s just they could charge them more money I was like yeah okay my 10 year old gets it so I explained him as well morally I don’t agree with BMI I don’t agree
with the use of this data, right, because if you google this NCMP or whatever it is, this measurement program, the only thing that comes up is the purpose of it is so they can track childhood… the O word. And I’m like, that’s just furthering the anti-fat narrative, it’s furthering medical weight stigma. So I…
talking about it I said are you happy for me to opt you out and he said yeah sure and I said okay I want you to also just be aware of the fact you might be the only one in class that opts out of it is that okay with you yeah I might get to read I’m like great let’s move on from this then so I also recognize that
the bullshit that comes with
body image, BMI, weight stigma, stereotyping, bullying, at this age, can last a lifetime. Being the only one opting out of something because your mum doesn’t- I said to him, like, just tell your friends that I think the BMI’s trash. That’s what you have to do. You don’t have to- you don’t have to explain yourself at all, but if you feel that you want to, that’s- that’s what you can say. Blame me, that’s fine, I don’t care.
that will last the rest of the day, perhaps. The questions may last that day. And I was like, you know what? A half a day of being quizzed by your friends versus a lifetime of having body image issues, I’m okay with that.
So yeah, that was a little week of what do I do, what is the right move here. But I felt like I wanted to share it with you all because if there’s anyone else in a similar position, because you don’t have to opt in, you do not have to consent, it is expected that you will be okay with it,
In a lighter note, a lighter note, I have been working on some anti-diet gravestone drawings. So I shared on Instagram, as I do every month, a little snippet of what’s coming up on the podcast. And I decided to make it spooky. And I added some gravestones, like just, they were blank. And I added in things like RIP diet culture. And here lies…
all the fucks I gave about diets and things like that. And I asked, should I create some more of these with like anti-diet phrases or, you know, rest in peace type things. And there was some interest. So I’ve been working on the drawings. I’m going to share them on social media. If there is some interest, will print some and get them stocked in the shop because I do have a shop and I have been
very quiet. I have not been prioritising my drawing or my shop this year for many reasons, but I’m… it is the season that I feel very creative, I come alive, so I am… yeah, I’ll be drawing and sharing that over on social media, so make sure you follow in Culture of a Wool Pod over on Instagram and TikTok if you are on TikTok, where I’ll be sharing more of those things as well. So…
As I said, today’s episode we’re going to be focusing on an F word, food. We’re going to be talking about ghosting diet culture and finding food neutrality this Halloween.
We’re going to explore food neutrality and how this can really play a part during Halloween and support an intuitive eating practice. This is something that I myself have been working on intuitive eating practice for a couple of years now. And at this time of year, it feels like it’s something I get to really lean into. I’ve always had such a complicated relationship with food, but especially during the holiday season.
So in this episode, we’re going to cover why we have binary feelings about food. We’re to talk about fear-based messaging, our relationship to food, defining food neutrality, exploring those fears, and then neutral food practices for Halloween. This is going to be a very food heavy episode. So content warning upfront, we are going to be talking about the diet industry. We’re going to be talking about diet language and messaging, manipulative marketing tactics used by diet companies and…
be exploring relationships that we can have, that we sometimes have with food. If this is an episode that is going to be triggering, if it is something you don’t feel that you are ready to listen to, you can pause at any time if you want to start. Also you can just sit this one out. Absolutely fine. But I do want to also remind everyone I am not a qualified intuitive eating coach.
I am not a therapist. My qualification is lived experience, what I’ve practiced, what I’ve learned over my entire lifetime and in relation to intuitive eating in the last few years. This is not a how to, there are no rules because the practice is intuitive and individual personal preference and lived experience plays an integral part in finding neutrality, finding satisfaction and a sense of peace with food. So…
We have all seen those posts, those social media posts flying around at this time of year equating candy to exercises or providing a full breakdown or which candy is better for us, snack size versus regular. Should we enforce rules? Should we let kids eat what they like? We are inundated with this kind of information at this time of year. And you know, a number of years ago
10, 12 years ago, I remember the first time I started to see this type of content. It was everywhere. And it carried on from October all the way through into January. With every holiday, with every type of meal, with everything. It was workouts themed, different exercises themed.
if you eat this, what this means, all this kind of messaging, this constant information.
And whilst it is everywhere, I have kind of created a bubble where I don’t see a lot of this. I certainly don’t follow people who would share this kind of information But that doesn’t mean I can avoid it. I’ve shared just recently how I have been inundated with
different diet and weight loss adverts constantly on Instagram. And it’s really quite shocking to go from not seeing really anything to something has happened, somebody’s decided that I am part of their target audience. And I’m kind of blocking and trying to filter out different words, but I also don’t want to filter out things I want to see, which is I think where that kind of fuzzy line is. But funnily enough,
I was planning this episode and the day before I received an email from my son’s dojo where he goes to karate and the email was about Halloween because they continue Halloween training, sorry Halloween training, that would be great, karate training throughout the holidays and they were letting us know if you have karate on Halloween you could dress up.
I’m going to read your sentence from the email. It says, while you’re aiming for an impressive look, we’ll still be training hard to burn off those Halloween treats.
And I was like, really? Really? Great. It didn’t surprise me, but I was also a little disappointed that this was the messaging in the email. Also because they didn’t need to tell us that, they didn’t need that, it was completely irrelevant. Bearing in mind the whole point of the actual email was to say, you can come dressed up.
karate that day. If it’s Halloween and you’re going to training, feel free to come in your costume.” That was the point of the email. But we had to add in this statement that… gotta burn off those Halloween treats guys!
So the timing of this couldn’t have been more perfect though, because today we’re talking about food neutrality, specifically around Halloween. And I think when we talk about whether it’s food neutrality or food peace whatever we want to talk about in terms of, you know, there being no moral value in what we eat.
We have to talk about where it comes from. We have to talk about where this, these beliefs come from. And it’s this kind of stuff, right? It’s this kind of stuff. Creating negative associations between movement and calories, reinforcing messages that we move our bodies to burn calories instead of to have fun.
I don’t know that any of those children especially are going there because they’re like, I’ve got to burn those calories. They’re there to have fun. You can tell that by the way they mess about and play together beforehand. You can tell that from the smiles on their faces when they’re learning.
and when they’re interacting with the adults and the senseis. I can’t speak for the adults, but again I think this is a, to me at least, I get the impression this is a sport where it requires a lot of focus and a lot of discipline. But discipline with your thinking and the way you think about the way you move, rather than being the fastest or the best or the most athletic. I’m not saying those things may not help, I just think that
In particular, if we’re talking about this karate, I don’t know that any of them are going with the intention of burning calories. These kids are there to have fun, right? Not because they think it’s going to change their body. But developing…
a negative body image, shifting the focus from fun and enjoyment to control and fitness and fitting in and body image and comparison. This stuff comes at a young age, right? When we start to use things like fear-based diet culture messaging about food, specifically candy, it creates a binary thinking around food and it reinforces the belief that food holds power over our ability to make decisions.
When we see messages that evoke fear or shame around food, we further complicate our relationship with food. We begin using binary, in this case, good-bad, language to describe foods, perhaps going as far as labeling certain foods as forbidden. Again, this gives so much power to food and it diminishes our own intuition and ability to make autonomous decisions.
And this negative binary language, good, very easily transfers onto how we feel about ourselves.
When we make these decisions, for example, you know, I am bad because I ate blank. And these food choices, they begin to determine how we feel about an entire day. Right? My entire day is ruined because I ate blank. And I know looking back, I’ve certainly felt that way about myself when I was tracking food and watching
you know, everything that I ate. It was not only an exhaustive process, but the decisions I made about what to eat.
I held so much moral value about myself in those decisions. And it was very, very simply good or bad. There was, there was no gray area, right? And that would transfer to how I felt about a day or a week. You know, I’m sure many of you can also reflect and think there were times when I would say
I had a bad week.
When actually, perhaps nothing about my week was bad. Nothing about my week was even negative. But my entire perception of that week would have been based on how I felt about my body.
how I felt about my body would have been a direct response to what I’d eaten. So, unfortunately the diet industry, it thrives, right? It thrives on this kind of messaging, especially the wellness brands. I’m using air quotes, you can’t see that, but these wellness brands who claim to not be a diet, but instead be all about healthy choices and lifestyle changes.
In just this past week, I’ve seen adverts from the diet company Noom and online pharmacy Numan who are using some fantastic tip-top manipulative marketing tactics by agreeing, right? I use that term loosely, but agreeing that being in a larger body might not be a choice, right? This is a really common conversation piece amongst people who are working in the anti-diet space.
maybe being in a larger body isn’t actually something that everybody’s choosing or not choosing, perhaps there is so much more to it.
Cool, but then they gently…
ever so gently they’re telling us that our brains are just broken, right? You know, because hashtag science. And I’m like…
The way that they have ever so gently twisted.
this message, this narrative to work for them is an amazing piece of marketing. And
I particularly enjoyed their claim that my fat body has affected my hunger and fullness signals. When the truth is that diets and the diet industry and diet culture is what has affected my hunger and fullness signals. The very thing that they are selling is what fucks with our hunger and fullness signals. I was like, wow, it’s…
It’s so blatant. It’s just astonishing. And also not, right? It’s like it smacks me in the face and I’m like… 10 years ago? 15 years ago?
I would have believed it.
But it’s, ugh.
These adverts They’re really, really bothering me.
but in particular this one I found their marketing techniques were very, very interesting.
So all of that aside, when it comes to shifting away from this binary language, shifting away from this binary language,
And looking at whether it’s food neutrality, food peace, like whatever you want to call it, but you know, removing this moral value. This is why it’s like pieces of a puzzle and it’s a practice, right? It’s straightforward. It’s not going to necessarily be easy or simple. like everybody’s experience is different. Because whilst food neutrality is the idea that food holds no moral value,
Right? And we’re stepping away from this binary language of good and bad and instead practicing that food is just food. It is, it is a puzzle. Because each of our relationships to food, our experiences, our cultures, personal preference, what we enjoy, what we don’t enjoy, right? That’s an individual practice. Which is why at the beginning I said, this is not like a how-to guide. It’s a practice.
And the practice can get really messy at times. And there has to be a lot of trust. You know, I think that’s a really big piece of the puzzle, is that self-trust. Perhaps even the central and integral piece of food neutrality, a food piece, whatever we want to call it, is starting to trust ourselves. Because all foods can serve a purpose.
Right? All foods can serve a purpose. Yes. All foods can serve a purpose. Whether that be providing nutrients or creating memories. Because some foods may have more nutrients than others, but this does not make those foods any better than those with fewer nutrients. If someone has a food allergy, right?
Yes, them eating something that they have an allergic reaction to would not be good, it would be bad. But somebody who doesn’t have a food allergy can still eat that food. It doesn’t have any moral… value.
Food can impact how we feel, physically, mentally and emotionally. And it’s absolutely normal to have feelings about food. Excitement, joy, nostalgia. I know that, again, when I was tracking and measuring and controlling what I ate and restricting,
I was very aware of the fact that when I wanted to celebrate, I wanted to eat. When I wanted to commiserate, I wanted to eat. When I went on holiday, I felt like there were so many photos of me eating. I’m now able to look at that and say that first of all, it’s fine, it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with it. And also part of that is because I was restricting it all the other times, right?
And also food is cultural, it is social. Food can hold so many good memories for us.
I know that my relationship to foods during different holidays is deeply woven amongst childhood memories and foods that remind me of my dad. I shared with you in a previous episode, I lost my dad when I was 16 and as I’ve gotten older and…
kind of moved through my adult life without him, there are very distinct memories of certain foods. And I hold those foods really closely to me because they’re really positive memories of holidays or, you know, celebrations and trips.
And also just like, general meals. Dolmades, stuffed vine leaves, I’ve probably mentioned this before. They are a very, very distinct memory that I have of him. Greek food in general is something that I, when I have it, I think of him. I also have negative memories. I remember him…
serving me aubergine for dinner as a child. I was quite young. I was not impressed. I cried. And to this day I do not like aubergine. Yeah, it’s… there’s very few foods that I dislike, but aubergine is like one of those things where I’m just like, no. I, to this day, don’t like it. But there’s nothing wrong with aubergines, and either good or bad, I just personally don’t enjoy them. Doesn’t have any moral value.
But the diet industry repeatedly takes our intuition and our autonomy and it transfers it into messages and marketing that food holds all the power. The diet industry is responsible for that. Food is important but it doesn’t actually have some kind of cosmic superpower over us.
But the diet industry thrives on that messaging. It needs us to believe that we are just incapable of making decisions about our own bodies and our own health and what we eat and what we don’t eat and that personal preference is irrelevant. We also have to recognize that our fear of eating certain foods is often a fear of weight gain, body change, fatness.
We’re going to talk about this in our bonus episode this month,
We talk about the word fatphobia, and in recent years people have moved away from that, that word, that phrase, because people are not afraid of fat. People, they’re afraid of fatness. People are afraid of gaining weight. People are afraid of their bodies changing.
because diet culture, the diet industry has created this messaging that our bodies shouldn’t change, That we should be the same size we were in high school.
And.
interwoven with all of that messaging is fear of eating certain foods because the fear of weight gain, fear of body change, fear of fatness. We don’t necessarily fear the food. We fear what the food means or the examples and behaviors that have been passed down to us from the adults in our lives when we were younger.
And unfortunately, many of these messages and behaviors have followed us into adulthood. And each year as we navigate holidays and celebrations, we are inundated with feelings and thoughts around food. And again, the diet industry thrives on this. So how do we practice food neutrality at Halloween?
And I think in order for us to learn which foods are satisfying, including things like texture and smell and flavor, we need to practice eating them. And I know this can feel really overwhelming and scary. So here are, I want to share a few ways that we can kind of inject some joy into this process, because it can be overwhelming. It can be very uncomfortable.
I also know from the experience of doing this for a few years, it’s fascinating. Fascinating what kind of comes from it. So, you know, let’s try and inject some joy into the process. Here’s what it might look like. It might look like making a family recipe with your partner, friends, kids, and creating a new memory or tradition.
Making a family recipe and getting to try that recipe and sitting down and enjoying it. It might be trying a new seasonal recipe, using ingredients and flavor combinations that you love, Spending time savoring that food and being curious about what it is in this meal recipe, whatever it is that actually satisfies you.
It could look like hosting a seasonal brunch or a dinner and asking folks to bring one of their favorite autumn or seasonal meals. Because food can be about so much more than nutrients, It can really nourish our soul and it can be sociable. And being able to hear stories from friends of like, why they love this particular meal, what their memory is.
Really lovely. You can also plan some non-food related Halloween activities, There are things that we can do that have nothing to do with food. Pumpkin or apple picking, a spooky games night, decorating party, Not everything has to be about food, but we also need to understand, as I said, that to learn what satisfies us we have to eat. We have to…
have those foods and try those foods and sit with those foods. It might also look like regularly enjoying satisfying meals and adding satisfying snacks to your day. And what I mean by that in particular is, again, depending on your journey, depending on where you’re at with…
food and your own practice, whether it’s intuitive eating or whatever it is that we’re doing as individuals.
enjoying the things that perhaps in the past we’ve restricted ourselves from, or things that we’ve not bought, and being very intentional about it.
and giving ourselves a space to be intentional and sit down and it’s not always going to be perfect, but you know, if we’re able to actually be intentional about it, that can be really, really helpful. It can really help to build our relationship of food neutrality.
giving yourself permission to have the candy or the foods that you want. Now, not just for Halloween, but always, but in particular, if we’re talking about it, you know, seasonally and at Halloween, yeah, give yourself permission to have the candy, to buy the candy, to have the candy and the foods that you actually want and buy some Halloween candy that you really enjoy.
I still believe that hands down this principle, finding satisfaction factor of food, mind blowing. Still to this day, I’m like, do other people know about this? I’m like, this, this is, it is, in principle it is very simple, but…
I know, as I said earlier, it’s a lot more complicated and messy than just find what you like. Because half the time we don’t even know what we like, Half the time we’re like, I’m not even sure I know what it is I actually enjoy.
I also think practicing food neutrality might look like checking off social media, If social media messaging, especially after Halloween, tends to be triggering, try filtering words like I was mentioning earlier, filter phrases, or just take a few days off social media, if it’s possible for you to do so. I know it is possible for us all do so, but I also know some of you may have businesses that require you to be online.
But like you do you, right? You do you. And if there is one thing I want you to take away from today’s episode, I want you to remember that the nutrition content of your food choices do not reflect your moral character.