Have you ever heard someone talk about “good” and “bad” foods? These words often appear in health, dieting, and even some wellness spaces. You might have seen lists separating the “good” foods from the “bad” ones in your doctor’s office, in a magazine article, or even on a wellness blog. 

The message behind these conversations is that some foods are bad for you, and others are good for you.  We are so used to this type of dialogue around food that we may not question it.

I WANT TO PROVOKE YOU TO QUESTION FOOD MORALITY 

If you haven’t heard of food morality, it’s okay. I wasn’t familiar with the term until I started doing my own work around my food relationship.  If you are familiar with the term, you know it’s a big part of why so many of us have struggled with food relationships. 

Food morality is about connecting our food choices to a moral value.  When we talk about “good” vs. “bad” or “healthy” vs. “unhealthy,” we are giving food a binary value and assigning a moral code to the foods we choose. Categorizing foods in the binary means that all foods are either good or bad for all people, which is not the case. Every person’s body is different. Every person’s body needs are different.  Therefore, every person’s body has different a different relationship with food. Also, food serves more than just our physical needs. 

Much of food morality is rooted in fatphobia and healthism. Fatphobia is an aversion to fat, a dislike of fat bodies, and a fear of becoming/being fat. Healthism is an obsessive preoccupation with health that prioritizes it above everything and equates it with human worth.  Food morality tells us that “good” foods help us avoid fatness and achieve supreme healthiness.  According to food morality, the less fat our body is, and the more healthy we are, the more valuable we are as humans. 

Food morality seeks to create a hierarchy of human worth through our food choices.  The more “good” foods we choose, the more valuable we are.  The more “bad” foods we choose, the less valuable we are.  This is why we sometimes experience feelings of guilt and shame about the food we eat.  That negative association can lead to disorders with eating, negative body image, and overall low self-confidence. 

Thinking of foods as “good” or “bad” can impact our ability to choose foods that serve us.  If we only choose based on a moral code created by a social health standard, it impairs our ability to learn what foods are best for our bio-individuality. I learned about bio-individuality while training as a health coach at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  Joshua Rosenthal created the term:

“Bio-individuality means there is not a one-size-fits-all diet, each person is a unique individual with highly individualized nutritional requirements.” In bio-individuality, we recognize each individual body will differ in their nutritional needs as a result of their external and internal factors like the foods we eat, our emotional thoughts, lifestyle patterns, and our surrounding physical environment.

It’s important to recognize that our individual needs vary, and many things can impact them.  How we choose our food can go BEYOND calories, fat, body size, etc. Our food choices impact our holistic well-being (mind, body, and spirit). When we think of our food outside of the binary “good” vs. “bad” and envision food as nourishment for our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs, we can begin to change our food relationship completely. 

IMAGINE CHOOSING FOOD FROM A LIBERATED MINDSET 

Choosing food that serves your needs is liberating! Diet companies and oppressive health brands make BILLIONS of dollars a year by keeping us in the food morality mindset.  As long as we feel guilt and shame about our bodies and the food we eat, we are prey for them to profit from our pain. They try to guilt us into “good” choices and shame us into changing our bodies based on society’s health and beauty standards.  The truth is that neither guilt nor shame leads us to true liberation. 

LET’S RECLAIM OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD

Have you ever been challenged by food guilt? You aren’t alone.  I’ve also experienced it, and it fueled over 20 years of toxic dieting. I STILL struggle with staying “guilt-free” sometimes, especially during the seasons when the diet industry inundates us with messaging about food and body size. 

  It would be best if you didn’t carry around the emotional weight and mental stress of food morality. You weren’t born feeling shame about your food choices. So, where did you learn it from? Thinking about your journey with food morality can help you break free if you so desire.

 Here are some reflection questions to help you focus on food liberation: 

• When did you first feel guilt about something you ate?
• What was the first message you ever heard about food morality?
• How does food morality show up in your choices and words for yourself?
• How does food morality influence your words and behaviors towards others?
• What are some of the benefits of divesting from food morality?
• What are some ways in which food serves you beyond the physical?

Are you ready to reclaim freedom from food morality so you can begin choosing the foods that serve you? If you need help getting started, reach out to me.  I’m ready to support you!