The following HH guest blog post comes from Julie Nowak. You can read more of Julie’s work at SeasonalBody.org
The food movement and body-positive movement seem to be in different worlds. With the former focusing on creating a more equitable and sustainable food system, and the latter working to promote positive body image and deconstruct beauty standards, there may not appear to be a reason for overlap. But food and bodies are interconnected on a very core level.
Present-day Western body image issues often revolve around the consumption of food, which our food system impacts. Yet when the food movement addresses many important issues affected by our broken food system, body image is generally excluded. Thus, I would like to present two ways the food movement can become more body-positive. (Note: I use the term “fat” in this piece as a neutral descriptor – like tall or short; the term has been reclaimed by many and is preferred over the more negative terms “obese” and “overweight”.)
- We can talk about food issues without fat-shaming.
Despite good intentions, there is a lot of fat-shaming that happens within the food movement: from using photos of (often headless) fat individuals eating “junk food”, to touting the “obesity epidemic” as the reason that we need food justice, to upholding “sexy thinness” to sell the local food diet. Think about how a fat student feels when they see a school poster about healthy eating that negatively depicts a fellow fat kid – they are being told that their body is “bad” and that they aren’t supposed to look the way they do.
We can talk about nutrition and all the other important food issues WITHOUT shaming individuals for their weight. Even if your focus is health, remember that you can’t know if someone is healthy by looking at them. And even if you could, no individual should be judged, oppressed or devalued based on their weight or health status. Also, when there is a focus on the “obesity epidemic” within the food movement, fat individuals are left thinking they are not allowed in. Let’s change that by promoting size diversity and using more inclusive, weight-neutral messaging.
- We can be mindful of language that triggers disordered eating.
Talking about food legalistically can trigger disordered eating. When we refer to food as inherently “good” or “bad”, we can contribute to the negative diet culture. The ideology for determining what is “good” or “bad” can vary: whole foods vs. processed, organic vs. conventional, local vs. imported, vegan vs. factory-farmed…and on and on. While it is important to discuss and challenge these issues (and I adhere to many of them myself), describing individual food as falling firmly into the “good” or “bad” category is a legalistic way of shaming individuals for the food they eat. This can feed into disordered eating habits, such as striving to be “perfect”.
Food labelling is important for industry transparency and to accommodate dietary restrictions; but let’s be mindful of our intentions and effects as we label and promote certain foods. Does a student really need to know how many calories or grams of fat are in their school lunch? Let’s keep that conversation away from the actual meal, and encourage everyone to focus on eating with pleasure and mindfulness.
By bringing size diversity and disordered eating into the food justice discussion, we can work towards creating a more body-positive food movement. Of course, the body-positive movement can also learn a lot from the food movement, so let’s work on connecting the two!
To learn more about these topics, check out the following websites:
- ASDAH: https://www.sizediversityandhealth.org
- NAAFA: http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/index.html
- NEDIC: http://nedic.ca
About Julie Nowak:
Julie Nowak is a Toronto-based food justice organizer, educator and writer who focuses on the intersection of food issues, body image and disability. This stems from her personal experience of finding healing from disordered eating through therapeutic farming and involvement in food justice, as well as living as a disabled person after a brain injury. Julie enjoys gardening, vegan seasonal cooking, and walking in parks. You can follow her at SeasonalBody.org