How Diet Culture Messages About Cleanses, Detoxes, and Healthcare Can Backfire: Part 1

The Dangers of Shaming and Blaming People into Healthy and “Clean” Eating

Hello dear friends,

Previously, I examined the controversies about cleansing and detoxification among various health professionals. This included the debate over whether to use strategies to mitigate the risks from excessive chemical exposure found in our environment and consumer products.

Since detrimental substances in our food and environment are ubiquitous, they cannot be completely avoided. For this reason, I feel it is advisable to reduce their harmful impact. This involves providing the body with holistic support for their enhanced elimination and making efforts to prevent their further accumulation.

Still, there are caveats to consider on how we approach “purifying the body.” Unfortunately, many integrative practitioners are not aware of these three unintentional, dangerous consequences.

As a review, these include:

• Economic strains: Expensive cleansing protocols are not easily available to economically disadvantaged individuals and this may increase their anxiety over their inability to obtain them. Furthermore, if manufacturers are required to remove chemicals from their products, accessing alternative resources could drive their item prices up.
• Food morality: Advocating for restricting and eliminating “unclean food” and “bad” health practices is a result of diet culture messaging and contributes to healthism. It often makes one become unduly preoccupied with food and exercise at the expense of other areas of their life. This can lead to a decrease in self-esteem, mental health deterioration, “fatphobia,” and body image issues.
• Fueling eating disorders: Food morality taken to the extreme can ignite full-blown eating disorders. One of the most common ones that can result is orthorexia, a determination to attain dietary perfection.

In this video blog, I will dive more into one of these serious pitfalls. Specifically, I will discuss how linking diet culture messages to purifying our bodies can lead to a fatal focus on clean eating. In an upcoming post, I will highlight how suboptimal healthcare for large bodies is another concerning ramification.

As always, all the references, links, and articles will be linked in the accompanying post and article links will be available in the resource section.

So, let’s get started.

 

Dying to Be Thin: How Diet Culture Can Damage Our Relationship to Our Bodies and Disconnects Us from Our Food

Just as in other areas of healthcare, cleansing and detoxing have been inundated by harmful diet culture messages.

According to Medical News Today:

• Diet culture is a set of myths and expectations around food and weight, which typically equate thinness to health and categorize foods into “good” or “bad” types.
• Diet culture creates a moral hierarchy of body sizes and shapes, which typically idealizes thinness and creates fear and negativity about fat. Social media, consumer products, and health fads may all contribute to diet culture.

In previous article by the NFPT (National Federation of Professional Trainers), which has since been removed, it was stated:

• Eating Disorder Registered Dietitians and Professionals (EDRD PRO) defines diet culture as, “a belief system that focuses on and values weight, shape, and size over well-being.”
• Though focusing on weight, shape, and size aren’t innately wrong, valuing those things over total physical, mental, social, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, or financial wellness is.
• The consequence of valuing any single area of wellness over all others is that we get thrown out of the balance that brings true and long-lasting health.

An article from John Hopkins University recently caught my attention on just how pervasive diet culture has become in our world (bold emphasis mine):

Since the beginning of the … pandemic, many members of the mental health community (including me) have become increasingly concerned about dramatic rises in eating disorder (ED) symptoms that have been reported both in the United States and globally. These include, and are not limited to:

• excessive and dangerous compensatory behaviors to prevent weight gain,
• disturbances in the way in which folks are experiencing their body weight and shape,
• intense fears of gaining weight, and
• restrictive eating

 

How Purifying Our Life Can Lead to Fatal Dietary Perfection

So, what do diet culture messages have to do with cleansing and detoxifying?

Many of the “purifying programs” promise that a “better” body type can be attained through this cleansing process. This innately implies that our bodies are not enough as they are and that they are “unclean” and “toxic.” As noted above, it also consists of a type of moralization of food as “good and clean” and “toxic and bad”. This can lead followers to become excessively preoccupied with “clean eating” and be fearful of certain foods. Eventually, this obsession can morph into disordered eating, especially orthorexia.

 

Exchanging a Toxic Health Concern for a Fatal Mental Health Disorder

Does this mean we shouldn’t cleanse and aid our bodies’ natural elimination processes?

No.

I feel it is helpful to support our bodies’ natural processes for riding themselves from detrimental chemical exposures. However, I am concerned that our approach and messaging of detoxifying and cleansing may be exchanging one health concern for another.

Many in the holistic and integrative community are aware that our bodies and brains need enough food to function optimally. Yet in our attempts to shield ourselves from chemical stressors, we could be harming our mind and biology with suboptimal intake and poor nutrition. This is because any form of dietary restriction can lead to nutrient depletion and food obsession.

In other words, when healthcare advocates for diet culture messaging of food morality and body size status, we are a contributor to fueling the mental health crisis. This is by either intentionally or unintentionally encouraging eating disordered behavior.

Why intentionally? Because some forms of “healthy behavior” praised by society can be classified as disordered eating by mental health experts.

 

But What About Food Addiction?

What about the claims that processed foods can be addictive, so prioritizing “clean foods” is deemed necessary? This is a whole other conversation that is very nuanced.

In short, although the compounds within these foods may not be best for our health, they aren’t likely the sole cause of eating disorders or poor health by themselves. Rather, eating disorders and chronic diseases are very complex and have multiple factors that interplay.

This short-sighted viewpoint on food addiction is like saying that alcohol is addictive and the cause of alcoholic behavior. True, you need alcohol to fuel excessive drinking and alcohol can be addictive, but drinking alcohol alone doesn’t make everyone who drinks it acquire an alcohol use disorder or metabolic diseases.

Eating is even more complex than this. For example, studies show that a dieter’s brain who restricts food develops a whole different brain pattern of reward when eating the “forbidden treat” than someone eating the same food but not restricting it. In other words, people who diet and eliminate certain foods actually have a more pronounced enjoyment of them when they are re-introduced.

 

Staying Healthy In a Toxic World Without Giving Into Diet Culture

Today, we are in a crisis, a mental health crisis. Eating disorders are the deadliest mental health disorder. Diet culture messages of food morality, clean eating, and worshiping the “thin ideal” can fuel them.

It is possible to support the elimination of toxins while satisfying our bodies with food that feels good and supports our biology, psychology, soul, ethnic practices, and pleasure. Healthcare practitioners should be mindful not to demonize people’s health choices. Rather, we should teach people how to nourish their brain and body in various areas of health. This will allow space for healthy eating to be a part of the puzzle, not the determinant of purity.

We don’t need to give into diet culture. We need to focus on a balanced viewpoint of well-being. Regardless of body size, we can attain better health through nurturing behaviors that can be practiced by everyone. This is through using integrative and holistic solutions to aid the body, mind, spirit, and heart to function at their best.

We can also incorporate our essential oils to support the emotional upheaval of breaking free from diet culture.

What do you think? Please share your ideas in the comment section.

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn how to nourish and nurture your mind, body, heart, and soul.

Sending you many blessings.

 

Resources

• What Is a Full-body Detox? (Healthline)
• Do We Really Need to Cleanse and Detoxify in Our Chemical World? A HAES (Health at Every Size) and Naturopathic Perspective on Shielding the Body from Toxic Insults: Part I (My article with references)
• Living a Non-Toxic Lifestyle – A Final Summary on Naturopathic Detox and Cleansing (My article with references)
• Psst…The Dirty Little Secret That May Kill You! Is There Hope for a “Cleaner” Future? (My article on Natural Path with references)
• Why You Must be Vigilant and Not Rely on Companies, nor the Government, to Keep You Safe from Toxic Chemicals (My article on Natural Path with references)
• Resources for Living a Healthy, Non-Toxic Life for Better Mind-Body Balance: Greener Living with Clean Food, Safe Cosmetics, Chemical-Free Household Products, and Quality Water (My video blog with references)
• How Did Diet Culture Take Over Healthcare, the Fitness Industry, Nutrition, and Society? (My article with references)
• Is the United States Healthcare System Insane? (My article with references)
• How I Was Bamboozled into Blaming Food for Body Size- The Flaws in the “Food Addiction” Theory & Link to March 2019 Holistic and Integrative Medicine Top Reads (My article with references)
• The Dangers of Body Size Stigma and Food Shaming & How to Find Peace with Food and Focus on Health Without Obsessing on the Scale (My article with references)
• How Did Diet Culture Take Over Healthcare, the Fitness Industry, Nutrition, and Society (My article with references)
• The Dubious Practice of Detox (Harvard)
• Should You Do a Cleanse (UCLA)
• Effective Discipline to Raise Healthy Children (American Academy of Pediatrics)
• How Striving For the “Perfect Diet” Could Make You Anxious and Sick (My article with references)
• Are You a Food Addict? The Caveats to Food and Eating Addiction: Part III (My video blog with references)
• When Teen Body Image Becomes a Deadly Perception (Science Daily)
• What is Diet Culture (Christie Harrison)
• What to Know About Diet Culture (Medical News Today)
• The Rise of Eating Disorders Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic (John Hopkins)
• Could Your “Healthy Diet” Be Classified as an Eating Disorder? Recognizing the Different Types of Eating Disorders (My video blog with references)
• My Six Favorite Essential Oils and Two Amazing Oils Blends for Supporting Holistic Heart Health (My video article with references)