Neutralize Nutrition Breaking FOOD StigmaS

Diet myths and food stigmas seep through into our lives in a million ways. They shift and morph as different styles come in and out of fashion. They are flimsy, unreliable and usually harmful, yet we always believe them.

Today, the most powerful myths travel through social media: in a food blogger’s latest Instagram post, or a “What I Eat in a Day” video snowballing likes on TikTok. Why do we so easily believe what we see online? Is it because the person who is posting it embodies what we wish we looked like? Is it so we can feel some kind of control over our looks by attempting to regulate how we eat, exercise or think about ourselves? For most of us, it’s probably a combination of insecurity and seeking control over our self worth. However, we will find neither things successfully by obsessing over and subscribing to

For many young women, we were taught about food through a lens of fatphobia. We watched our mothers, our friends and our relatives make comments about their own bodies and food, as well as those around them. We learned which foods had a negative connotation, and followed suit in what we were told is “good for you.”

Well, what you were told probably isn’t actually what is good for you.

Ideally, we would be able to rely on our natural hunger cues, which allow us to intuitively eat a variety of foods based on how we feel and properly nourish ourselves to fulfill our energy needs. A hunger cue could be anything from feeling your stomach rumble to craving food. It’s a physical alarm clock that tells us: Time to eat!

However, growing up with a morphed sense of nutrition diminishes our natural hunger cues and ability to use intuitive eating to properly nourish and fuel ourselves.

No matter your past with food, you can rebuild those natural hunger cues. It just takes time to reestablish a healthy and nourishing relationship with food.

Navika Gangrade, Ph.D., RD, is a registered dietician working with LK Nutrition, a nutrition counseling group in Brooklyn. Gangrade explained that there are three main nutrition needs at the root of all our eating: protein, carbohydrates and fats.

Right off the bat, both carbohydrates and fats are constantly considered “fattening” or “bad” for you. But that is entirely a stigma.

In reality, you need all three of these components in your diet in order to have a fully functional mind and body.

Gangrade used the keto diet as an example of how restricting one of these components affects your health and wellbeing.

“If you’re lacking some core nutrition group, we

by KYLA GUILFOIL art by LAUREN RAZIANO layout by ADRIANNE HUTTO

often times see effects on our mood, as well as if we’re just lacking in food in general, we see effects on our mood,” Gangrade said. “And these effects can be different things like anxiety, feeling down, feeling restless, but also could be long term health effects.”

Gangrade mentioned “brain fog” that is often attached to the keto diet. Gangrade explained that carbohydrates should be the most significant part of our diet, meaning that we should eat more carbs than anything else, because it is what many of our critical functions rely on, including our brain function. Since being keto means you greatly restrict your carbohydrate intake, she explained that your brain will actually begin to feel foggy, or you will struggle to focus or think clearly.

It is incredibly common to see posts emphasizing “low carb” meals or find packaging at the grocery store that advertise “only two grams of carbs!” We have been conditioned to view carbohydrates as an enemy, when in reality it is a nutrient that fuels us and allows us to be fully functional people.

Gangrade encourages the idea that any food can fit into a healthy, sustainable diet. She explained that it’s important to remove the labels of “good” and “bad” foods and instead recognize that each food has some type of value and has a place in your diet.

“Nutrition science really shows that all foods can fit into a balanced, nourishing diet,” Gangrade said. “So once you look at the signs, you can see that you can really have all these different types of foods and there’s no need to restrict food groups or restrict [certain] types of foods.”

Gangrade said that with knowing that all foods fit, you can estab lish a foundation for yourself to allow yourself to eat whatever works for you, and create a much more stable relationship with food.

With a lack of accessibility for some college students, it is difficult to always find the “right” things to However, as Gangrade explained, the best thing can do for your body and mind is to find combinations of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, in whatever form you can.

Starting with this foundation can help you begin to challenge so many of the diet stigmas that we are raised by, and find what actually makes you feel good.

It is difficult to recognize biases we have about food because they are so ingrained in us. But, taking small steps to question your relationship with food and learning more from reliable sources about food can unlock a mental and physical health you might not have known was possible.

Any food can be a part of a healthy, sustainable diet. Stop thinking of “diet” as a rulebook to stay in a certain mold, and begin thinking of “diet” as the recipe to a healthy and full life.