How You Talk About Food Affects What You Eat (Or IF You Eat Healthy At All)
The Power of Our Words
Food is part of our daily lives. . . . unless you happen to be fasting.
And because food is part of our normal human and social experience, it shows up not just as part of our routine habits, but in various cultural and broadcast media that we also encounter daily.
Food messages are everywhere. Many of them are so subtle we may not realize how they impact our impressions, preferences, and values related to food.
A child on a TV series pushes away their plate of veggies while making an unhappy face, scowling, “I hate this”.
A famous actor talks about their struggles to lose weight and stick to a healthy diet on a talk show or podcast. “It was just so hard.”
An Instagram feed showcases decadent desserts in rich visual detail, and healthy desserts in smaller, more austere presentations such as bite size pieces.
A website promotes a healthy version of a recipe as being ‘almost as good’ as ‘the real thing’.
Food, and food language, occupy a large part of our day whether we are aware of it or not.
In last week’s post (The Only Health-related New Year's Resolution You Need), I talked about Awareness and the role it plays in our journey towards health:
Awareness is the most critical first element that allows us to change anything. You cannot change what you are not even aware of.
This means paying attention to what your body is telling you.
It also means becoming aware of the language you use to refer to healthy foods.
The Impact of Food Language
Most people these days struggle to be healthier. The start of the new year brings with it our desire to change ‘what is’ into ‘what could be’.
Resolutions to improve our health and fitness in January abound. But the uphill nature of this battle runs much deeper than you may realize.
Our language affects our mindset and beliefs. Those beliefs affect our behaviors, including whether we stick to a healthy eating plan and fitness routine or not.
A 2022 study published in the journal Appetite analyzed the dialogue about healthy food found in six different media categories, including movies, television, social media posts, food recipes, and food reviews. The researchers were looking to see whether healthy foods are portrayed with same language and appeal as unhealthy foods.
Pooling across the six media types, the study shows that healthy foods were described as less crave-worthy, less exciting, and less social significantly more often than unhealthy foods. For example, unhealthy foods were described in social media and entertainment with phrases like “I couldn’t stop eating” compared to phrases like “I hate peas” associated with eating healthy.
And while it may be easy to dismiss this idea as a marketing ploy (think how media uses product placement to encourage you to buy something), the reality is that we consistently hear messages that tell us eating healthy is difficult, unappealing, and separates us from others in social situations.
Thus, buried within our cultural lexicon of food is a widespread pattern that undermines the very goals we hope to achieve: eating healthier, being fitter.
Food Language Awareness 101
Our language deeply affects our beliefs.
Our beliefs shape our actions.
Our actions shape our health.
Step 1: As you move into January 2025, reflect on the messages you are hearing and seeing in the media you consume (pun intended).
Take notice of how many times you see healthy food portrayed positively vs negatively.
Catch the subtle (and not so subtle) negative narratives surrounding healthy food. This is the first step in raising your food language awareness.
Where are you encountering the most negative messages about healthy food?
Can you find better media, entertainment, recipe sites or online communities that support developing more positive language, views and habits around healthy food?
[Hint: The Naturalized Human is one of those places!]
Step 2: Now, reflect on your own language around healthy food and healthy eating.
Your own language strongly influences your behavior.
Nothing about eating healthy needs to be “hard”, “a struggle”, “a battle”, “impossible”, “boring”, “restrictive”, or “unappealing”.
Catch yourself if you start falling into a negative story about your efforts to eat healthy. Reframe those thoughts into powerful positives that support your journey.
Even simple phrases like the following, repeated often, can help reset your thought patterns:
I love eating healthy.
Eating healthy gives me more energy.
It’s getting easier and easier to choose healthy foods.
This is an easy healthy recipe to make.
I am choosing healthy foods. It doesn’t matter what anyone else decides to order.
I am giving my body the nutrients it needs to heal and thrive.
Healthy foods are nourishing me.
Awareness is the first step
Don’t allow your food thoughts to run off unattended.
Our language is a powerful tool in our personal health story that can help shape our success or speed us into failure.
The conclusion from the study on food language in media helps us frame how to move forward (bold emphasis mine):
These data suggest that strategies to encourage healthy choices must counteract pervasive narratives that dissociate healthy foods from craveability, excitement, and social connection in individuals' everyday lives.
Share your thoughts
Have negative food narratives stalled your plans to eat healthier?
Where have you encountered these narratives most often?
What are you willing to do differently knowing that positive food language is part of achieving lasting health?
The Naturalized Human is a reader-supported newsletter that focuses on our mind-body-food connections. Drawing from recent research findings, personal experience, and our natural history as ancient humans living in a modern world, I want to help you achieve your health and wellness goals within a supportive community. Subscribe to receive TNH in your inbox each week (usually on Friday or Saturday). Paid subscribers get access to more in-depth programs and content.
So important to our young people too - so often we are looked at as hippies because we cook our own food! Plus it is food we can recognise as healthy!!
I’m thinking of potato chips: “You can’t just eat one!”
Thanks for writing about the internal chatter we have inherited from society about food. I’ll be on the lookout for what I’m telling myself today.