Anti-Diet Culture Sucks

Bringing Balance To The Conversation

Anti Diet Culture

Anti-diet culture can be defined as a belief system that focuses on and values identity politics, lived experience, and relativity of knowledge over objective discussion related to nutrition. I took the liberty of defining anti-diet culture myself as a foil to Christy Harrison’s definition of diet culture. Diet culture has a negative connotation from professionals who discuss the concept. The concept itself isn’t real but that still does not dissuade anti-diet advocates from pretending it is.

Movements often need an enemy, diet culture is the enemy of anti-diet culture. I will speak of anti-diet culture in an unfavorable way in order to bring balance to this conversation as it seems good intentions have clouded rationality. People have a duty to think rationally but ideology can often distort this. I am here to open up the discussion and rid nutrition of dogma.

 My argument against anti-diet culture will consist of three parts:

1. Selective Rationality

2. Undermining Facts

3. Blurring Boundaries

Selective Rationality

Anti diet advocates often invoke science and evidence to refute their opposition. Mention the superiority of low carb diets and an anti-diet advocate might correctly bring up literature showing low carb diets are not superior. This same lack of superiority can be said about veganism, paleo, and any other popular diet out there. How do people know these diets aren’t necessarily superior to one another? We have a lot of evidence and data showing many of these diets do not have weight loss, hypertrophy, or sports performance advantages.

However, science and evidence are often ignored in favor of 'lived experience' when it comes to the application of anti-diet frameworks. When you question the efficacy of anti-diet approaches like intuitive eating or HAES many advocates will throw two tropes. These tropes are the ‘lived experience’ trope and the ‘eating disorder’ trope.

The ‘lived experience’ trope pertains to the lack of empirical data behind some of the claims made by anti-diet culture, because of this lack of data advocates will stress the lived experience of clients. They will say since this approach worked for so and so given their circumstances the approach must work for everyone. While I will not deny anti-dieting approaches can work for some people this is not universally true for everyone. The research behind the approaches is still lacking in many regards. To claim that lived experience is superior to data would also give way to accepting the lived experiences of others. If other people found great success on the ketogenic diet, for instance, one would have to accept their experience. It would be logically inconsistent to reject someone's experience given the data but accepting someone's experience in spite of the data. Anti-diet advocates are just selectively choosing anecdotes at that point.

The eating disorder trope is trickier. Eating disorders are complex mental disorders that are often some of the most severe in the mental health profession. There is still a lot of ambiguity for the etiology of eating disorders but there are a lot of ideas about its causes. This ambiguity leads to misconceptions which anti-diet culture exploits. There is some evidence suggesting anti-diet approaches can work for those with eating disorders but this evidence is far from definitive (link). However, anti-diet advocates like to justify their method by bringing up eating disorders acting like the evidence of their existence validates their methods. The existence of eating disorders does not validate anti-diet culture or its tentative beliefs (diet culture). Anti-diet methods are only a few of the many methods for dealing with the various eating disorders.

It seems science and evidence is only relevant to back up anti-diet culture’s arguments and to go against its opponent’s arguments. But swiftly rejected when the evidence goes against anti-diet.  How is it rational to selectively use science and evidence only when convenient?

Undermining Facts

Anti diet culture often undermines factual claims and evidence that does not fit into the ideology. A classic example is the potential health detriments of obesity. Anti diet culture accuses those who speak up about the health detriments of obesity of being “fatphobic”. This is a term used to shut down any proactive discussion surrounding weight and health even though the connection is clear (link- endocrine society). While there is evidence of weight stigma and morality associated with obesity this should be divorced from the scientific discussion. In order to have objective discourse, there cannot be undermining of facts merely to avoid the possibility of offense. Talking about a disease in a scientific manner does not constitute a value judgment. A person isn’t ‘bad’ because they’re obese but they do suffer from a disease and potential consequences of that disease. 

Anti-diet culture also undermines dieting success for many individuals. The whole “95% of diets fail” claim is blatantly false and cannot be verified, long term weight loss success is possible. However, if one takes the “95%” number at face value to argue against diets (a word that can mean many things) they neglect to mention the 5% who succeed. What is the population size of those on a diet? A population size of 100 people is different compared to a million people. If the population size is a million then that means 50 thousand people “succeeded” on their diet, that's not a small number. How much do they benefit? If the 5% who succeeded cut their risk of chronic lifestyle-related diseases by half that’s huge. But we don’t know because no context is ever given. What does one even define as dieting success or failure? There has to be some criteria given, some database, and some analysis of these numbers but the anti-diet advocates can’t provide it.

Anti-diet culture loves to undermine the fact that not everyone that goes on a diet develops a problematic relationship with food or eating disorder. Anti-diet culture loves to pathologize structured eating methods like calorie counting, macro tracking, time-restricted feeding, etc. For an ideology that loves the personal experiences of those who support it, it sure loves to make a generalization of methods it disagrees with.

Blurring Boundaries

Anti diet culture blurs the lines of science, clinical practice, political activism, critical theory, and postmodernism to create a monolithic conglomerate. From the previous post on diet culture (link), one can easily realize the political component of anti-diet culture. This political component seems to be in line with social justice movements such as fat acceptance. Fat acceptance refers to a social movement aimed at challenging many societal attitudes in regards to fatness and the experiences of fat people. While it’s generally agreeable weight stigma does exist and I have anecdotally experienced it, this does not add validity to many of the claims those in fat acceptance make. Statements like, “Diets are a cure that doesn’t work, for a disease that doesn’t exist.” encompass the attitude of fat acceptance and anti-diet culture. Anti diet culture, as well as fat acceptance, are also connected to feminism and other postmodern theoretical approaches.

When one questions the tenets of anti-diet culture they are usually labeled fatphobic (a term coming from fat acceptance) or a promoter of diet culture which is oppressive. Supposedly this is oppressive against everyone but in actuality, this oppression mainly seems prevalent amongst white women, usually dietitians. Professionals who should stick to evidence-based practice but are now mixing in their political beliefs into the field; thus blurring the lines between nutritional science and activism. How can we have a productive conversation when the discussion is politicized? How can we objectively talk about obesity when the issue is denied? How can nutritional science be discussed when labels such as “diet culture” enter the discussion?

The answer is no one can have an objective conversation about health, nutrition, weight, and lifestyle as long as political stances are thrown into the mix. Onc cannot hold that there are multiple ways of “knowing” by valuing lived experience over science whilst simultaneously believing the oppression of specific groups as objectively true. While the experiences of individuals can be informative it is not infallible, much like science itself, but science is a process towards approximate truth by self-correction. Experience is not inherently self-correcting and can be false. It’s logically inconsistent to say there is no universal knowledge but many different “knowledges” yet make the universal claim there are oppressed groups whose lived experience matters above all else. One could just refute that universal claim by stating that's what another person defines as knowledge. The argument is self-refuting and inconsistent. 

This logical inconsistency is often at the heart of anti-diet culture. Anti-diet culture only uses evidence, science, experience, political ideology, and ethical considerations self servingly. There is no arguing against anti-diet culture or else you’re the enemy and a part of this invisible diet culture no one can see besides the anti-diet advocates. This is not to suggest advocates do not have valid concerns and criticism for many dieting and health practices but the explanations for these issues are not absolute. Anti-diet culture is not uniformly true or immune from criticism but it blurs so many lines between so many areas it is difficult to argue against. 

Anti-diet culture is an unfalsifiable force used as a weapon, not a solution. Anything against anti-diet culture is diet culture which makes it 'bad' (that means sexist, racist, classist, etc.). Anti-diet culture defines diet culture in whatever way it wants as it mixes in any socio-political stance into its cause, making it almost impossible to argue against. 

Takeaways