Is fear mongering just as bad as diet culture?
It makes for a shocking headline...but it's not doing our anxiety any favors.
When I made the conscious decision to stop focusing on my weight and start focusing on my health, I immediately let my diet culture-obsessed mind turn to a new type of fascination: worrying about disease.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good to have a motivation to take care of your body long term and do decrease the risks of developing some kind of chronic disease. This is a very good thing! But when you start to let that risk feed into every decision you make surrounding food? Honestly? It’s just as bad as dieting itself. Or at least it was for me.
When I let go of this mindset of trying to get my body to look a certain way or be a certain size, I felt this new sense of freedom when it came to learning about my health. I read lots of books about aging and living with a longevity perspective. At first this idea felt exciting—the decisions I make can actually impact how long I live!—but it soon became another rabbit hole of questionable decisions, anxiety, and shame. I found myself picking up those same “yo-yo” habits like I did when I was dieting heavily, having periods of eating and drinking whatever I wanted before having to “start back up again on Monday.”
If I’m being brutally honest with myself, I think the reason I was falling into these same behaviors is because of what I was reading and…oh god here it goes….what I was writing.
The messy truth about working in media and writing about health.
As many of you are aware, I work as a journalist, and a majority of my work focuses on health and nutrition. (I know, shocker!) For the past five years I’ve written for different publications doing my absolute best to debunk diet culture claims and provide people with real, scientific evidence when it came to the food we eat. I feel proud of a lot of my work, but I also cringe at some of those old headlines and articles.
In my attempt to debunk diet culture, I fell privy to this idea of trying to shock readers with claims about our health. These snazzy studies would come out claiming certain foods can “cause cancer” or “lead to stroke” and while they made for some incredibly clickable headlines, the studies were more than questionable. They’re usually short controlled studies with minimal participants, or reviews with broad health claims that researchers are not 100% sure about, neither of which is enough to make any kind of long-term health claim. But I pitched and wrote the articles because they got the clicks. And the clicks always made the boss happy…
Needless to say, I was unintentionally using fear mongering as a tactic to get people to click, not realizing how much anxiety and confusion I was creating for my readers.
If you’re not familiar with the term, fear mongering is “the action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue.” Like how erythritol leads to heart attacks, or how strawberries are toxic to eat because they’re one of “the dirty dozen.”
The headlines are shocking and it certainly creates conversation…but most dietitians hate it. In fact, many media dietitians are online trying to debunk these fear-based tactics by breaking down what the studies aren’t telling you (like how short they are, or how skewed the results may be) and speaking truth into fears or anxieties that pop up when you step in the kitchen.
“Sensational claims about the dangers of certain foods or ingredients can amplify fears, leading individuals to believe that consuming these items will directly cause serious health issues. This can create a state of constant vigilance and anxiety around eating,” says Lisa R. Young, PhD, RDN.
At this point, if you and I were having a cup of coffee or a glass of wine together, I would likely go on a rant about the ethics of journalism and how media has lowered their standards significantly. Being selective about what you cover is harder to find these days; most media companies are all about covering stories that will get the clicks and make more money. Saying no to covering a shocking study with a sexy headline would be foolish.
I mean sure, the study exists, and it’s not like any reporting in the story is false…but that’s where standards come in. Shouldn’t we care about giving the public the well rounded truth instead of writing a quick post about a study without any real depth or reporting? Shouldn’t we be a bit more skeptical about the research and who’s actually funding it?
*Steps off soap box*
Fear-based tactics can cause confusion and anxiety surrounding food…just like dieting.
I recently asked my followers on Instagram about how they feel about fear mongering and scary headlines, and the answers are very telling of why food anxiety is just as bad when it comes to disease risk as well as dieting. Here are a few of those responses:
“They make me feel anxious. It feels like no matter what I eat or drink, something will increase my risk of disease. Can these headlines communicate a positive message while also teaching me how and why I should take care of myself?”
“It’s frustrating. Stop the food fear, it’s confusing the sh** out of people.”
“FAKE NEWS!”
“It makes me feel scared and helpless! But I’m happy to know and be educated.”
It is confusing! We should feel helpless! We’re not properly being taught about health and nutrition in schools, we’re not being taught in our homes.
So instead, we grasp on to ideals from other countries (i.e. the Mediterranean Diet) or think that juice cleanses or green powder supplements will fix our problems, when in reality every body is different and has different needs. It’s hard to create a one-size-fits-all plan when we certainly aren’t a one-size-fits-all community. Instead, we should focus on creating healthy systems that work for our personal lives simply because they make us feel our best—not because we’re worried about cancer.
We shouldn’t be scared to eat food. We shouldn’t be scared to eat the beautiful produce that is grown in our country, and it’s repulsive that there’s this narrative out there saying that it’s toxic to eat. It’s not. Eat the strawberries. Yes, even the conventional ones.
Listen, I already removed this idea that eating a single cheeseburger will make me fat and cause me to gain ten pounds. I also don’t want to think about how it’s going to cause a stroke and kill me, too.
On that note, let’s make a Texas Trash Cake.
Really, really enjoyed making this one for The Kitchn this week. It’s an easy chocolate cake that bakes in a 13x9” pan, topped with a chocolate ganache-like frosting and sprinkled with pecans. Currently eating a slice now as I write this. 🤭
Try the recipe now on The Kitchn.
Not as many reads these days! (Sigh.) But hopefully you’ll enjoy these.
8 Conditions When You Might Need a Vitamin D Supplement, According to Health Experts (Eating Well)
16 Fantasy Stand-Alone Books for When You Don’t Feel Like Reading a Massive Series (The Everygirl)
I Tried The Viral Hack for Extra-Fluffy Eggs and Can’t Believe I Didn’t Know About It Sooner (The Kitchn)
📸 Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash