My Happiness Coach

Everywhere I look is diet. Dieting culture has implanted itself so deeply into our daily lives, that we no longer notice that it’s even there.

Without stepping back & truly looking at diet culture for what it is, you might not notice it’s presence in your life. Try grocery shopping or cooking without glancing at the calories of a serving.

Nutrition Labels: the history of the nutrition facts label goes back to the 1960s. Before nutrition labels most meals where prepared at home with fresh, natural, whole ingredients. The foods that where required to list nutritional facts from 1941-1966 where “considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be for “special dietary uses,” that is, intended to meet particular dietary needs caused by physical, pathological, or other conditions.” (NIH: National Library of Medicine: “History of Nutrition Labeling” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/)

As processed foods became more prevalent and people were confused & wanted to know more about the food they were buying & eating, the consumers asked for help & the FDA come up with a labeling system. Basically, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) came up with something similar to nutrition facts labels in 1973, but these labels were voluntary unless the food made health claims.

The Recommended Dietary Allowance or RDAs (later referred as Daily Values) are the values that the percentages on the labels are based off of based on the size of a average serving. This labels started to come under question because they grew to label their food with nonspecific health claims. It was like they were manipulating the consumers with these claims.

Those consumers wanted more information about the food they were eating. So, in the late 1980s, the Surgeon General came out to say that these claims were basically correct. He said that there should be changes in the diets of the US people then & to “reduced consumption of fat, saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and sodium and increased amounts of complex carbohydrates and fiber—could lead to a reduced incidence of many chronic diseases.” (NIH: National Library of Medicine: “History of Nutrition Labeling” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/) This brought about the labeling of all foods.

Subsequentially, there was a lot of change & updates since the late 1980s in both the recommended Daily Values on the label & the recommended US diet.

But these are numbers that are misleading, especially the caloric count. Eating 100 calories of strawberries and 100 calories of chicken are different. They satisfy different needs but they are counted the same way.

There are so many programs & ideas, theories, & sometimes someone’s best guess. None are listening to what your body is saying. Nothing that is training you to listen to your body and its natural cues.

Join a fitness club, have a protein shake in the cafe at the gym, do the things that make us feel like we are being healthy but do so while listening to your body. Fitness and eating should bring us happiness not counting numbers.

I never thought that I would see the day where I swore off calorie tracking & realized the dangers of it in parallel to dieting. All numbers are not bad but pounds & calories cause more harm than help to us. I know that this doesn’t sound right. I know that you have been told your entire life that calorie counting & watching your weight were normal & important parts of being healthy.

Diet culture brought us to this point, it was the diet foods that caused us to become confused and need the labeling to begin with, now it has burrowed into our every bite.

*Please note that I am not a doctor or therapist. You should always check in with your healthcare professional before starting a new program*