The idea that one perfect, universal diet exists and can be followed by everybody is highly problematic and is entirely unlikely to be true, but that hasn’t stopped various diets from making the outrageous claim that they have super secret access to the Divine.
One thing that really troubles me is how specific diet ideologies claim that absolutely all of your health problems will be solved if only you follow them, and since these specific ideologies distinguish themselves by what they eliminate, they act very similar to cults, where your level of adherence is regarded as your level of worthiness. Whenever somebody doesn’t experience ‘nirvana’ on the diet, it is assumed that they simply didn’t follow it faithfully enough.
This is not to deny anecdotes. Some people do wonderfully on one diet or another, but it’s super important to acknowledge that people have great success on a variety of diets. It’s also entirely possible that you have a specific condition and need to avoid one diet or another. What bothers me is how, from a purely ideological perspective, so many diets claim they will solve all of your problems. [To their credit, I haven’t heard any Keto gurus promising Keto prevents hairloss, amiright? Hm? Amiright?]
One thing that interests me is that prehistoric humans, who are technically considered to have eaten as “paleo” as imaginable, didn’t stand a chance against certain diseases. I’ve read numerous stories where amazonian tribes, despite living in nature’s abundance, were often making the rounds at missionary outposts, not because they cared about Christianity, but because the missionaries had medicine. It’s important to realize that before antibiotics, vaccinations, and modern medicine, pathogens, parasites, and afflictions could royally fuck you up, and you stood no chance against them, no matter how “natural” and “healthy” your diet was. It’s a tremendous privilege that we in the United States even have the option to think of diet as having the potential to heal everything, since smallpox has been eradicated from the wild, water treatment infrastructure has either severely reduced some of the worst pathogens or otherwise simply prevented them from coming in contact with humans, scourges like ebola are not present, and potentially lethal or crippling diseases like polio and measles are prevented with immunizations (the later of which are on the rise, though, due to the antix-vax movement).
But sure, why not sell some poor schmucks on the idea that your diet or supplement will solve all of their problems and usher in perfect health? [You could almost construct this as a critique of capitalism, though that’s not what I’m trying to do here]
None of this is to say that diet isn’t important: it absolute is: it’s simply not a miracle cure. It can steer you toward or away from diseases specifically caused by diet – lifestyle diseases – as a function of your genetic profile and risk, but it isn’t a miracle cure, and anybody trying to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you a bill of goods. The reason this is so appealing in the United States is because most of our disease IS lifestyle disease.
I skipped about 1.5 chapters on the middle, but I did otherwise finish reading “Anxious Eaters” the other day. That last section on psychology is really powerful. Most of these diets are, in fact, selling you something, and if it isn’t the foods themselves, sometimes packaged and branded, it is an image of yourself as being “health conscious” and “in control”. Restrictive diets often appeal to people who want to satisfy the cultural image of “discipline” that is so highly praised. It’s more than just ‘food’, it’s the symbolism of food. This is my own analysis, but I think that’s what makes Veganism appealing: “I care about the environment”, “I care about conscious beings”, “I care about the planet”, and by extension “I am a good person”; or Carnivore: “I am free and independent”, “I am manly” [for men], “I am not restrained by those who want to control me”, “I am in on the secret knowledge that certain factions don’t want me to know”, and by extension “I am not controlled by other people and I think independently”. It’s never just about the food: it’s about the message.
You could even argue that somebody like me, who aligns more with the Mediterranean diet (not to be confused with Mediterranean food) – which falls between the extremes of Veganism and the Carnivore diet – wishes to say, “I am a balanced person”, “I am reasonable, and not prone to extremes”, and therefore, “I am a safe and accepting person to be around”. For me, personally, I would also add I have never appreciated the judgementality that I’ve received from some people who follow a strict diet, and this has maybe caused me to reject the extremes, since assholes are so easily drawn toward them (presumably, according to my perception), and I don’t want to be associated with them. It’s worth noting that I politically align quite moderate, with a few conservative leanings. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think anybody really escapes saying something about themselves by associating with one diet or another, or not associating at all. Being human is weird like that.
From a different angle, most people following a “diet” strictly, want to believe that they are obtaining some kind of purity, some kind of psychological cleansing, and are entering a “healthier state”. It’s a form of self care, probably because they feel they are not taking care of themselves in other ways. Or, they feel deficient in some capacity, either as a person, a parent, a spouse, a worker, or a member of society. Isolated from its broader economic overtones, capitalism often implies that an individual can buy their way to happiness or fulfillment, and so, since we are heavily influence by capitalism, a common answer presented is to “buy” health, in the form of food, whether that involves buying organic, buying exotic “superfoods”, buying health-conscious packaging, etc., etc. It’s not to say that these things don’t have an effect on us, only that the perceived solution always involves buying something. This goes back to what I mentioned in my last Diet Religions post about agency, and how labeling every food imaginable as either “right” or “wrong” is an act of agency designed to invoke a response in the individual (pride vs shame, etc). [I have an upcoming post I want to make on the cost of food and how “health” food tends to exclude those with a low-income, hence why I don’t like to push some of the foods I eat onto others, AT ALL]
One person finds a way of eating that “works” for them, and so they slap a trademark on it, write a book, write a cookbook, sell products to the public, and charge for seminars. If you don’t experience the same results, it’s your fault for not trying harder, or so they say.
Also interesting to me is how these things have diminishing marginal returns. Obsessing over diet is known as orthorexia, and it’s not good for you.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been skeptical about the health claims of various diets. It’s always something like, “Your skin will glow!” “You’ll look 10 years younger!” “You’ll wake up with tons of energy every day!” “You lose tons of weight and be able to eat anything you want!” First of all, I have no idea what baseline to compare my own life to. Sleep has one of the greatest effects on how I wake up, and I don’t completely know how diet affects that, as the single greatest disruptor of my sleep is psychological stress from the stuff I work on and how I perceive my progress through it. It’s also not clear to me that my personality even has a ton of energy, though I rarely feel particularly lacking in it (unless I don’t get enough sleep). Some children are bouncing off the walls, so is there something wrong with you if you’re a middle-aged adult and aren’t bouncing off the walls? No? Don’t ask questions, just buy product! And sure, I guess Jennifer Connelly still looks good, but there’s only so much you can do against the tide of ageing. We pretty solidly know that things like smoking can make you look older, but simple diet is unlikely to make you look 20 years younger of whatever. What’s more important to address is why people feel their value as a person is diminished as they age. Where’s the cure for that?
Ever notice that these supposed benefits seem to address our cultural fears? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. The book briefly talks about this, especially how diets are often presented as a “cure” for cancer, which is a huge cultural fear, even though modern treatment means it has never been more survivable. Ask Steve Jobs how relying of food alone worked for him. I don’t doubt a good diet can help both prevention and recovery, but sometimes really healthy people get cancer, and sometimes really unhealthy people don’t. I don’t blame people for their cancer: I don’t want anybody to have to go through it. It’s not clear to me that diet can prevent all cancer: saying it can is unproven and asinine.
This is going to sound kind of weird, but after writing these past few posts, I’m coming to an odd realization: I cannot control everything about my health. This is not to abdicate responsibility for doing my part, but no amount of attention, study, or change, can guarantee me the things I’m hoping for. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that some of my heartburn problems are related to stress, unforgiveness (largely toward myself), and bitterness (largely toward old friends). And yes, I’m about 30 pounds overweight, but there is a strange, latent fear that keeps me from eating less, even when I’m decently full. My diet has generally been great at maintaining the same weight over the years, but it’s times of stress that lead me to “stress eat”, and that’s when I gain weight. Nutritionally, my diet has never been better, but cutting back in order to lose weight is psychologically challenging, due to that fear. My prayer is that God would unravel the roots of that fear, and free me from its bondage, which has come to intertwine itself with so many aspects of my life. The answer is not the arrogance and pride of any particular diet, or its self-actualizing claims: the answer is guidance from the Divine, which can shortcut the subtle vanity of agency.
[I want to be clear that none of these posts are meant to criticize religion itself, they are just a fun way to poke fun at diets by comparing them to religions; the similarities are shocking. I do actually believe that there is one true religion – Christianity – but I also believe that people frequently choose a super-specific orthodoxy within it, not so much to find the truth as to “be right”, and these people can often be quite terrible, when they aren’t simply misguided. I always try to respect people no matter what their religion is, and although I am absolutely not a universalist, I do not see them as black and white, especially since they often crisscross with Christian values and don’t deserve to be condemned the way self-righteous people sometimes condemn them. He who is without sin, cast the first stone….]