Diet Culture is Toxic

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Diet culture is so normalized that many people don’t even realize they’re swimming in it. It disguises itself as “wellness,” “discipline,” and “health,” but at its core, diet culture is a belief system that harms our relationship with food, our bodies, and ourselves.

Diet culture is toxic. Not because people are weak or doing it wrong, but because the system itself is built on shame, control, and false promises.If you have ever tried to shrink your body, fat-shamed yourself or someone else, or restricted your food you are the victim of diet culture.

You’re a victim of diet culture if:

• You’re constantly trying to lose weight
• You see thin bodies as being superior to fat bodies
• You think a person with a thin body is more disciplined or worthy
• You think people with thin bodies are healthier than people in fat bodies
• You see yourself as more attractive when you are in a smaller body

These thoughts and actions might seem harmless, but they are in fact the building blocks that keep systemic oppression justified by the size of a persons body alive.

This article digs deep into what diet culture is, where it comes from, why it is toxic, and how to ditch diet culture for good.

What Is Diet Culture

Diet culture is the systemic oppression of people fueled by food restriction and body shaming. It is designed to keep you obedient and complacent to the demands of the patriarchy and capitalism. It teaches us that our value is conditional, and that condition is body size.

The five building blocks of diet culture include:

1. Black and white food rules
2. Glorification of thinness
3. Using exercise for permission to eat
4. Fear of being fat
5. Claims that smaller bodies lead to better health

If it comes with a set of rules, you can pretty much be sure it’s a part of diet culture.

The oppressive nature of the diet industry doesn’t call itself diet culture. Instead it hides itself behind highly valued labels such as working hard, self respect, health, and discipline.

Most people that realize diets just aren’t working are met with the resistance of “you’re just not disciplined ore enough” or “you simply have no self control,” which often keeps them paralyzed and invested in diets.

History Of Diet Culture

Diet culture didn’t start with calorie counting apps or influencers- it’s been woven into our world for centuries, riding on the backs of systems that value control, productivity, and appearance over human dignity.

Long before “wellness” became an Instagram noun, cultures around the world had beliefs about food, body size, and morality. But the modern version of diet culture, the one most of us have internalized, is a product of specific historical forces that collided and amplified one another.

At its core, diet culture is not about health. It is about control, worth, and conformity.Believe it or not, diet culture dates back to as early as 1830!

Where It Began: Control Over Bodies

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the idea that bodies could, and should—be molded gained traction alongside industrialization. With more people moving into cities and less into physical labor, bodies became less connected to survival and more connected to presentation. Ideals around thinness started to shift, especially for women, where slenderness came to symbolize self-discipline rather than health.

This wasn’t neutral. It was tied to early In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the idea that bodies could, and should, be molded gained traction alongside industrialization. With more people moving into cities and less into physical labor, bodies became less connected to survival and more connected to presentation. Ideals around thinness started to shift, especially for women, where slenderness came to symbolize self-discipline rather than health.

It is not a coincidence that everyone has a body, and regardless of what that body looks like 99% of people will report they are dissatisfied in some way with their bodies.

Diet Culture’s Roots in Racism

In Western history, thinness became idealized alongside whiteness. European colonizers framed their own bodies as controlled, civilized, disciplined, and morally superior. In contrast, Indigenous and Black bodies were described as excessive, unruly, indulgent, or lacking restraint. Body size and eating behaviors were moralized—and race was embedded into that morality. Sabrina Strings explores many of the racial roots of fatphobia and diet culture in her book “fearing the black body.” 

In the 18th Century race scientists at the height of race-making used certain traits and characteristics to justify the enslavement of Africans. These traits suggested that African Americans were:

• Greedy
• Illogical
• Overindulgence
• Irrational
• Had zero control control of sensual appetites (overeating etc). 

In other words – a person of value is someone who is seen as being one who can control the appetite.  Europeans were described as people who knew when to stop eating whereas African Americans were NOT! They used this to justify that African Americans were more akin to animals (out of control and ravenous around food) than they were human.

Since the slave trade was a huge capitalist interest- it made sense to use any means necessary to show Americans that enslavement was justifiable. Differences in body types and relationships with food were an easy way to do this at the time.

To top this off, colonization disrupted Indigenous food systems, farming practices, and cultural relationships with food. Traditional foods were labeled “unhealthy,” “primitive,” or “inferior,” while European food norms were elevated as superior.

These ideals for control and rationality extend into the early 20th century when the iconic beauty standard is seen as someone who is a Nordic American. She was a woman who was clearly: 

The Birth of BMI and “Health” Standards

Modern diet culture leans heavily on medical tools like BMI, but these tools were created by white European men and were never meant to define individual health. The BMI scale has racist and capitalist roots, and unfortunately still stands as the golden standard for determining health metrics in medical clinics (even though most practitioners at this point recognize the tool is outdated and not a good predictor of health).

BMI was based on population averages, not clinical outcomes, and it centered white male bodies as the norm. Everyone else including women, people of color, and disabled people were deviations from that “ideal.”

When we treat BMI as objective truth, we’re upholding a system that:

• Pathologizes non-white bodies
• Ignores genetics and diversity
• Justifies unequal medical care

That’s not accidental. That’s systemic.

The Weight-Loss Industry Emerges

By the early 1900s, diet books, corsets, and slimming products were already mainstream. But the real boom came after World War II when media exploded. First with Hollywood images of idealized bodies, and later with magazines and commercials pushing diet pills, fad diets, and “body perfect” messaging.

Suddenly, there was a powerful, ubiquitous voice telling people:

• “If you just controlled your body, you could control your life.”
• “Thin equals success, worth, self-control, attractiveness.”

The message was relentless—and it worked. Because it didn’t just sell products. It sold identity. Except there was one problem: The only “worthy” identity was that of a slender, tall female of nordic descent (Irish, French, Scottish, Brittish).

We were taught to idolize bodies that were thin and hate our bodies if they were fat. Unfortunately, not much has changed since the early days of the weight loss industry.

Diet Culture In The Media

Diet culture is not natural, it does not reflect reality, and it does not define health. And yet, it’s probably the number one thing you see and experience day in and day out.

Diet culture is rampant in social media spaces. If you’re a person scrolling social media, its probably not uncommon that your feed is being flooded with weight loss, anti-aging, and exercise regimens.

Some common themes of diet culture in social media include:

• Thin bodies being shown more frequently in feeds
• Only perfect photos are being shared
• People in fat bodies are afraid to show up in social media spaces
• Our algorithm feeds us what we spend the most time viewing (which is often thin bodies)

Social media gives us the false perception that most people are living in thin bodies and that only people living in thin bodies are having fun and doing great things.

Also, did ya’all know your social media feed will actually hijack what to feed you from diet culture from your other apps to keep you invested? For example, if you have weight loss or calorie tracking apps on your phone you’ll likely see ads for weight loss medications or programs on your feed. The longer you stop to look at what it feeds you, the more it keeps feeding you!

To top it all off, people reinforce the idea that only thin bodies are good bodies by blasting off unsolicited weight comments both in your social feeds and back in real life. It’s a never ending cycle that will refuse to quit until we forcefully break it.

Dieting Culture is Toxic

Diet Culture Infiltrates Everyday Life

By the late 20th century and into the 21st, diet culture became ubiquitous:

• Schools taught food shaming under the guise of “health education.”
• Healthcare providers often saw weight first and human second.
• Corporations profited from endless “fixes,” from shakes and bars to counting apps and cleanses.
• Media glorified extreme thinness and dismissed suffering in larger bodies.
• Employers began denying people employment or terminating employees for their body size

Everything we do, in every well intended infrastructural we have created in western society is infested with diet culture.

Diet Culture and Eating Disorders

Not only can diet culture negatively impact out mental and physical health, it can be downright deadly.

One of the most common contributors to disordered eating is dieting at an early age. Many may experience body dysmorphia as a direct result of the messaging about fat bodies in our culture and go to extreme lengths to try to control the way their body looks.

The extreme pressures to maintain a certain body standard and create rules and regulations around food can lead to:

• Extreme restriction in calories
• Diet pill addiction
• Feeling guilty after eating
• Complete lack of hunger cues
• Cutting out food groups that can contain essential vitamins and minerals (for example, I don’t eat anything with sugar).
• Compulsive exercise
• Self induced purging
• Laxative abuse

These symptoms of eating disorders can have many short and long term clinical impacts and could be life threatening.

In my anorexia story, I took subtle messages of dieting to the extreme. I know i’m not alone in how diet messages at one point threatened my life

Reject The Diet Mentality

Everybody influences diet culture in one way or another. Here are some ways you can help to dismantle the system and regain power and control over your life:

• Call out fatphobia
• Refuse to weigh at healthcare visits that aren’t medically necessary
• Stop using labels like good/bad/healthy and unhealthy food
• Don’t promote exercise with the intent of shrinking the body
• Remove scales from your home
• Practice gentle nutrition
• Practicing food neutrality 
• Eliminating body checking of yourself and others 
• Honoring all types of hunger 
• Use Body Positive Journal Prompts
• Checking out of cosmetic exercise and practicing joyful movement with your body
• Stop counting calories

Not sure if you’re still dieting or mentally restricting your food? Take this food freedom quiz to find out! Learn to enjoy food by divesting from diet culture.