What is a Healthy Relationship With Food?
When you think of the phrase “healthy eating”, what comes to mind? Do you think of a colourful array of fruits and vegetables? Or maybe you think of a balanced meal, following the healthy plate model?
It is common for us to consider only the what when we think of “healthy eating”. But the why behind our food choices is important too! This is where our relationship with food comes in, which is an often overlooked aspect of healthy eating.
The World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
When we focus solely on what we are eating, we can miss the mark on eating in a health-promoting way. For example, if putting a heavy focus on what foods you are eating is coming at the expense of your mental or social wellbeing, it is no longer supporting your overall health.
It is important to take a holistic approach to nutrition, where we expand the definition of healthy eating beyond just the what. We should also consider how our relationship with food is impacting our overall health and wellbeing.
Food Worry
In North America, we are great at worrying about food. This makes sense considering the amount of nutrition information we are bombarded with regularly- not to mention that it is often conflicting!
Medical nutrition research is often misinterpreted in the media for the sake of attention-grabbing headlines. I browsed the New York Times website for some recent nutrition headlines, and here are some that I found:
“Is saturated fat in chocolate as bad as the fat in meat?”
“Meat increases heart risks, latest study concludes”
“How ‘fast carbs’ may undermine your health”
“Should your cocktail carry a cancer warning?”
Headlines like these can create a lot of food fear. We can start to worry about what is in our food, and whether or not we are eating the right things. This can fuel all the guilt and stress with eating.
But these headlines don’t give us the whole picture, like whether the research was only done in mice, how big the sample size was, or any other limitations of the study. Media headlines are usually based on an initial study, and are often disproved in subsequent review studies.
Worry and stress over healthy eating may have a greater impact on health than what we actually eat.
Does enjoying your food really matter?
When we are busy worrying about food, there is much less room to focus on pleasure, satisfaction, and enjoyment with eating. In other countries, such as France, attitudes towards food tend to be more positive. If you’ve ever travelled to France, you might know that it is a cultural norm to eat three traditional meals each day and to enjoy food with others.
There is a widely studied phenomenon called the French Paradox. The French have the highest per-capita dietary fat intake of any industrialized nation. Yet, they also have a longer life expectancy, take less medication, and have lower rates of heart disease than their North American counterparts. It is possible that having healthier relationships with food might explain this paradox. (3)
Read more about the value in eating satisfying food here.
What is a healthy relationship with food?
A healthy relationship with food means having a flexible mindset around eating. This means allowing all foods that you enjoy to fit into your diet without guilt.
It involves feeling emotionally neutral with eating – whether you are eating a vegetable or a candy bar. A healthy relationship with food means that you prioritize your body's wisdom to guide your food choices over external factors, like diets and meal plans.
Having a healthy relationship with food means you make eating choices from a place of taking care of yourself as opposed to from a place of control or restriction.
Intuitive Eating, an evidence-based eating framework created by two dietitians, has a heavy focus on improving relationships with food. It is well studied and has been associated with many health benefits.
A healthy relationship with food is often left out of the conversation around “healthy eating”. I hope this article helps you to understand the reasons it is valuable to also consider the why behind our food choices, in addition to the what.
What are some things that you have done, or are currently doing, to improve your relationship with food? Let me know in the comments below!
References:
Frequently asked questions. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions
Dumas-Mallet, E., Smith, A., Boraud, T., & Gonon, F. (2017, Feb 21). Poor replication validity of biomedical association studies reported by newspapers. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0172650
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating: A revolutionary anti-diet approach. New York: St. Martins Essentials.
