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0:00
This episode of Food Psych is brought to you by
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my intuitive eating Fundamentals online
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course. If you're ready to break free
0:06
from diet culture and reclaim the life it
0:08
stole from you, learn more and sign up
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at christy harrison dot com slash course.
0:13
That's christy harrison dot com slash
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course. Welcome to Food
0:17
Psych, a podcast dedicated to critiquing
0:19
diet and wellness culture and answering
0:22
your questions about intuitive eating and
0:24
the anti diet approach. I'm
0:26
your host, Christie Harrison, and I'm a registered
0:29
certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist
0:31
and author of the book's anti diet, which
0:33
is available now, and the wellness
0:36
trap which will be out in early twenty twenty
0:38
three. And by the way, on this
0:40
show, I avoid saying diet culture
0:42
stuff like weight and calorie numbers, but
0:44
we don't censor swear words or other adult
0:47
language, so listener discretion is
0:49
advised. Hey
1:15
there. Welcome to this episode of Food Psych.
1:18
I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and today
1:20
I'm gonna be answering an audience question
1:22
about how processed foods and the
1:24
food environment interact with intuitive
1:26
eating. I answered this question
1:28
on the podcast before years ago,
1:30
but I wanted to circle back to it now
1:32
because diet season is upon
1:34
us. And I feel like a lot of questions
1:36
about processed food come up around this time
1:39
of year. Before I get into all
1:41
that, just a few quick announcements. This
1:43
episode of Food Psych is brought to you by my eating
1:46
Fundamentals online course, which
1:48
is a three month immersion in intuitive
1:50
eating with dozens of hours of content,
1:53
helping you learn this anti diet approach,
1:55
troubleshoot common sticking points, and
1:57
get to a place of greater peace with food.
2:00
It also has a huge library of q
2:02
and a's from me and my team to help answer
2:04
all the frequently and not so frequently
2:07
asked questions that come up for you
2:09
when you're learning or relearning intuitive
2:11
eating. If you're ready to break
2:13
free from diet culture and reclaim your
2:15
right to peaceful, easy relationship with
2:18
food. Learn more and sign up for
2:20
the course at christy harrison dot com
2:22
slash course. That's christy harrison
2:24
dot com slash course. This
2:27
episode is also brought to you by my first
2:29
book diet reclaim your
2:31
time, money, well-being, and happiness through
2:33
intuitive eating, which is available wherever
2:36
books are sold. It's a great companion
2:38
to this podcast because it goes into
2:40
depth about diet culture and the ways that
2:42
it harms us with hundreds of scientific
2:45
references and resources to help
2:47
you make the anti diet case to the people
2:49
in your life. It also
2:51
lays out the foundation of intuitive eating
2:53
and helps you start making peace with food
2:55
in your body. And if you get the audiobook,
2:57
you can hear me read it to you. Just
2:59
go to christy harrison dot combook to
3:02
order it now. That's christy harrison
3:04
dot combook. Now
3:06
without any further ado, let's get into this
3:08
week's question. It's from Laurie
3:10
who writes, hi, Christy. I'm a fellow
3:12
eating disorders dietitian, and I'll be
3:14
leading a discussion with my staff based on
3:16
your podcast number one twenty seven. First
3:19
I've listened to, which I very much enjoyed.
3:21
I had some thoughts that I didn't hear addressed
3:23
and suspect will be raised by my staff,
3:26
so I'm wondering if you can address them. Intuitive
3:29
Eating and the self regulation that should result
3:31
surely requires overcoming deprivation.
3:34
I'm with you two hundred percent. But
3:36
someone whose diet is almost exclusively fast
3:38
food for instance or largely
3:41
highly processed foods isn't intuitively
3:43
shifting choices when factors beyond deprivation
3:46
play a role. Think of Brian
3:48
Wansink's research and impact on
3:50
how foods are presented, sensory triggers,
3:52
etcetera. Why don't you as
3:54
a dietitian and health adviser direct
3:57
individuals to shift food selection
3:59
without a black and white approach, of course,
4:01
or shame regarding these choices.
4:04
It seems to me from the work I've done
4:06
that discussion of hunger awareness as
4:08
well as the role of other triggers to eating,
4:10
needs to be addressed to start the discussion
4:13
of internal versus external cues
4:15
to self regulation. Looking forward
4:17
to your thoughts. So thanks,
4:19
Laurie, for that great question. And before
4:21
I answer, I'll just give my standard disclaimer
4:23
that these answers and this podcast in general
4:26
are for informational and educational purposes
4:28
only, aren't a substitute for
4:30
individual medical or mental health advice,
4:32
and don't constitute a provider patient
4:34
relationship. Also, this is just
4:36
my take as one dietitian and journalist,
4:39
and I hope you'll seek out other perspectives
4:41
and consult your own inner compass as
4:43
well. So this is a great question
4:46
and I can definitely see why you or your
4:48
staff would wonder about it. First,
4:50
I want to discuss what the science
4:52
says about processed foods and our
4:54
ability to self regulate around them. And
4:56
then I want to talk about why we're so
4:58
quick to believe the worst about our food environment.
5:01
And why I as a dietician and journalist
5:04
reporting in this space don't tell
5:06
people how to shift how they eat,
5:08
even in a very non black and and
5:10
non shaming way. And why this
5:12
culture makes it really tough to have those kinds
5:14
of conversations without a voking
5:16
shame? So first,
5:18
we'll talk about the science. A
5:20
few years ago, there was a really interesting review
5:22
of the scientific research on how
5:24
restrained eating also known
5:26
as chronic dieting, affects
5:28
food consumption. And this review
5:30
found that not only do chronic dieters
5:32
tend to eat more in response to
5:34
food related advertisements and large
5:37
portion sizes, but they also
5:39
eat more of both high fat foods
5:41
and foods that are labeled as quote unquote
5:44
healthy or quote unquote low calorie
5:46
even if those labels are actually false.
5:49
So in other words, chronic dieters are
5:51
highly susceptible to both food industry
5:54
and diet industry marketing. Non
5:57
dieters or unrestrained eaters
5:59
in contrast aren't swayed
6:01
by food advertising or portion
6:03
sizes in that way. They tend to
6:05
eat similar amounts no matter the context
6:08
because they're driven by internal rather
6:10
than external cues. And
6:12
what's more when people are deprived of particular
6:15
foods? They tend to develop
6:17
outsized cravings for those foods.
6:19
In anti diet, I reported on a randomized
6:22
controlled trial showing that
6:24
women who were deprived of chocolate for
6:26
a week had more cravings for
6:28
chocolate and ate more chocolatey foods
6:30
when the study period ended, then
6:32
those who weren't deprived. And this
6:34
response to deprivation was significantly
6:36
stronger among the restrained eaters,
6:38
AKA chronic dieters, in
6:40
this group. What's more
6:42
of the restrained eaters also reported
6:44
more frequent food cravings in general
6:47
than did the unrestrained eaters. Of
6:49
course, there's nothing wrong with food cravings in
6:51
and of themselves. Right? But it's just interesting
6:54
how dieting and deprivation can trigger
6:56
them. So what I take
6:58
from all that research is that the
7:00
food environment doesn't seem to affect
7:02
unrestrained eaters the way
7:04
it does chronic dieters or people
7:06
who are deprived of food. In
7:08
other words, maybe the deprivation is
7:10
really the driving force here. Rather
7:12
than the abundance of delicious processed
7:14
foods in large portion sizes or
7:16
the way those foods are advertised. You
7:19
may have heard a different story about food
7:21
cues because of Brian Weinstein's research.
7:23
Right? For anyone not familiar
7:25
with him, Brian Wansink is a
7:27
researcher who is largely responsible
7:29
for the widespread belief that people
7:32
eat more in response to larger portion
7:34
sizes and cues from their food environment.
7:37
He did a bunch of buzzy studies that got a
7:39
lot of media attention over the past couple
7:41
of decades, and his studies have been
7:43
cited more than twenty thousand times
7:45
in scientific journals and books.
7:47
But OneSync research has subsequently
7:50
been discredited. Many
7:52
of his studies were retracted by the
7:54
journals they were published in, and numerous
7:56
other journals had to issue corrections. Cornell
7:59
University where Wansink used to work,
8:01
launched a year long investigation and found
8:04
that he, quote, committed academic misconduct
8:06
in his research and scholarship including
8:09
misreporting of research data,
8:11
problematic statistical techniques,
8:13
failure to properly document and preserve
8:15
research results, and inappropriate
8:18
authorship, end quote. In
8:20
twenty eighteen, he resigned and disgraced
8:22
from his post at Cornell University. So
8:25
we need to be very skeptical of any
8:27
of Wansing's findings, as
8:29
well as those of the researchers who worked with
8:31
him at Cornell's Food and Brand Lab
8:34
many of whom colluded with him in his
8:36
scientific misconduct. And
8:38
better quality evidence shows that restrained
8:40
eating and deprivation are
8:43
likely the reason that some people might eat
8:45
bigger quantities when presented
8:47
with larger portion sizes or
8:49
other cues from the food environment. When
8:51
people are driven by external cues
8:53
like diet culture rules, they're
8:55
more likely to respond to other
8:57
external cues like food available or
9:00
advertising and marketing. But
9:02
when they're driven by internal cues,
9:04
right, when they're intuitive eaters and
9:06
not dieters, They're not as likely to
9:08
be swayed by those messages from outside
9:10
themselves. They don't need to be
9:12
told to quote unquote make better choices.
9:14
Right? And they're not likely to listen to that outside
9:16
advice anyway. Now,
9:18
let's get into the why behind all of
9:20
this. I think one of the
9:23
reasons Wonsink's research had so many
9:25
people convinced is that it
9:27
seemed to reinforce what diet culture
9:29
has already told us. And what it's
9:31
already made us believe in fear, which is
9:33
that our food environment is
9:35
making us eat too
9:37
much of the quote unquote wrong types
9:39
of foods. Right? Diet
9:41
culture demonizes our food environment
9:43
as the latest culprit in making us
9:45
quote unquote overeat and gain
9:47
weight. And demonizing certain foods
9:49
and ways of eating is a hallmark of
9:51
diet culture. You know, in my definition of
9:53
diet culture, it's the third pillar,
9:55
along with lionizing supposedly
9:57
healthy foods. Deminizing
9:59
the food environment and highly
10:02
processed foods is also a convenient
10:04
way for diet culture to deflect
10:06
from the real culprit, which is itself.
10:09
Right? It's driving people towards
10:12
responding to cues in the
10:14
food environment in a way that they
10:16
wouldn't do if diet culture and
10:18
deprivation weren't present. And
10:20
when we jump to blaming the food environment
10:22
and the food industry tree for all of
10:24
Western cultures, ills, as so
10:26
many people do these days. We're
10:28
actually reinforcing the diet culture
10:30
beliefs that drive people
10:32
into disordered eating and eating disorders
10:34
in the first place and that make
10:36
them lose trust in themselves and they're
10:38
really chip with their bodies. Right?
10:40
When we repeat diet culture's rhetoric
10:42
without questioning it, we end up
10:44
colluding with the diet mindset. And
10:46
eating disorder professionals in particular,
10:48
I think need to be incredibly
10:50
vigilant against these kinds of arguments
10:52
and not simply repeat them.
10:54
Unless we reinforce the beliefs that are driving
10:56
our clients' eating disorders. Now
10:59
all that being said, I will acknowledge
11:02
that the tenth and last principle of
11:04
intuitive eating is to use
11:06
gentle nutrition awareness to help
11:08
care for your body. So there's a
11:10
place for nutrition in intuitive
11:12
eating. And if someone is eating
11:14
only fast food or convenience
11:16
food, it's true they might not feel
11:18
so great. And they might benefit from
11:20
bringing some other kinds of foods into their
11:22
life to the extent that that's
11:24
economically available to them, sometimes it's
11:26
just not. And that could
11:28
be part of gentle nutrition for them,
11:30
perhaps. But gentle
11:32
nutrition is the last principle of intuitive
11:34
eating for a reason. That
11:36
is people can't really engage with nutrition
11:38
in a way that's outside of
11:40
the diet culture paradigm until
11:42
they do the work of breaking down the
11:44
diet mentality making
11:46
peace with food, learning to
11:48
honor their hunger, stopping
11:50
restriction, all the other principles
11:52
and approaches of intuitive eating,
11:54
which you know, to me is really the
11:56
antidote to diet culture. In
11:58
my view, the most important thing for
12:00
putting people back in charge of their own
12:02
food choices and helping
12:04
them follow their own internal cues
12:07
is to help them stop restrictive and
12:09
restrained eating and break free from the
12:11
diet mentality. So when I'm
12:13
speaking to a large audience, like I am
12:15
with this podcast or in my
12:17
writing, I never jumped to the Gentle
12:19
Nutrition Principle. Right? Because
12:21
it's again, it's the last principle for a
12:23
reason, and the overwhelming majority
12:25
of people that I'm talking to
12:27
are in a place where they really need help with
12:29
the earlier principles. Especially
12:31
breaking down the diet mentality and making
12:33
peace with food. So working through
12:35
all of those other principles really has
12:37
to come for Nutritionist we're gonna
12:39
have a hope of it being gentle,
12:41
right, and not being just
12:43
another form of diet culture, another
12:45
diet to beat ourselves up
12:47
with. Another thing I think
12:49
is important is that, you know, as I
12:51
alluded to earlier, if someone's
12:53
eating nothing but fast food and
12:55
convenience foods It may be
12:57
due to poverty and the inability
12:59
to spend time or money required
13:01
to cook from scratch. Right? Because
13:03
even if someone can afford to buy the ingredients
13:06
to cook, They also need the time to
13:08
prepare them. And both time
13:10
and money can be scarce for lower
13:12
income people. Right? Many of whom
13:14
have to work multiple jobs and
13:16
just don't have the time to be preparing
13:18
meals from scratch whenever
13:20
it's time to eat. You know, as
13:22
someone who has a master's in public
13:24
health nutrition and worked in
13:26
more traditional public health settings for several
13:28
years before doing the work I do now.
13:30
I really have come to believe that the
13:32
public health field needs to
13:34
stop talking so much about food and
13:36
weight and start focusing
13:38
more on ending deprivation in all
13:40
its forms, whether that's deprivation
13:42
due to poverty and food insecurity,
13:45
deprivation due to diet culture
13:47
or both. And in
13:49
fact, there's compelling research showing
13:51
that often it is both. There is a
13:53
groundbreaking study in twenty
13:55
seventeen and a replication study from
13:57
twenty nineteen by Carolyn
13:59
Becker and colleagues. And
14:01
both of those studies found that food insecurity
14:04
is associated with significant
14:06
levels of disordered eating and
14:08
clinically diagnosable eating disorders
14:10
and that the people with the greatest degree of food
14:12
and security also had the highest
14:14
levels of disordered eating, not
14:16
just binge eating, which is what you
14:18
might think and they did have that,
14:20
but also compensatory bulimic
14:23
behaviors. Remember, these are people
14:25
with the highest levels of food insecurity
14:27
and they're doing these compensatory behaviors. Right?
14:30
The twenty seventeen study also found
14:32
that those with the highest levels of food and
14:34
security reported the highest levels of
14:36
internalized weight stigma. So
14:38
this means that even if binge eating
14:41
begins in response to the deprivation of food
14:43
and security rather than the deprivation of
14:45
dieting, which it definitely
14:47
can. Dioculture beliefs
14:49
about body size can
14:51
still come into play even for
14:53
people who are food insecure. So in
14:55
other words, food insecurity and diet
14:58
culture are not two separate
15:00
silos. They're interconnected
15:02
and they both are linked to disordered
15:04
eating. Now, if I'm
15:06
working with someone one on one and I know
15:08
their history, I know, you know, what
15:10
they're going through in terms of like a history of
15:12
food and security, and I've worked
15:14
with them through rejecting the diet
15:16
mentality, overcoming
15:18
deprivation, all the other principles
15:20
of intuitive eating, then maybe
15:22
at that point, I will talk with them about
15:24
food selection and, you know, how
15:26
the foods they're eating or sitting with
15:28
them or energizing them and how
15:30
they might diversify their eating so that
15:32
they're getting a range of foods
15:34
beyond just fast and convenience foods.
15:36
But That's usually a conversation
15:38
for very far along in our work together.
15:40
Once people have really stepped outside of the
15:42
diet culture paradigm, and are no
15:44
longer having, you know, negative
15:46
reactions to any talk of nutrition or
15:48
health or getting triggered into
15:50
orthorexic behaviors. And that
15:52
can take a very long time and it really
15:54
depends on the person. So I hope
15:56
that helps give you a window into my
15:58
thinking about these topics. And
16:01
into what I believe all eating disorder
16:03
professionals and public health professionals
16:05
would do well to consider when they're
16:07
framing discussions about that
16:09
is, you know, we need to make sure we're helping
16:11
people reconnect with their own internal
16:13
cues before we start throwing a
16:15
bunch of nutrition information at
16:17
them. And the evidence shows that when
16:19
people are in touch with their internal
16:21
cues, they're not as likely to be
16:23
swayed by outside forces anyway.
16:26
I talk more about all this in my first book anti
16:28
diet as well, so you can check that out for
16:30
more. This is already kind of a long episode,
16:32
and I will leave it there, but I
16:34
hope that helps answer your question, Laurie,
16:37
and thanks again for asking.
16:39
To submit your own question for a chance
16:41
to have it answered, either here or in
16:43
my Food Psych weekly newsletter or
16:45
both, you can go to christy harrison
16:47
dot com slash questions. Thank
16:49
you so much for listening. And if you found
16:51
this podcast help I'd be so grateful if
16:53
you take a moment to subscribe, rate
16:55
and review it on Apple Podcasts or
16:58
wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
17:00
see all the places to do that at christy
17:02
harrison dot com slash subscribe. This
17:04
episode was brought to you by my online
17:06
course intuitive eating fundamentals.
17:09
If you're ready to break free from diet culture and make
17:11
peace with food, learn more and sign
17:13
up at christy harrison dot com
17:16
slash course. That's christy harrison
17:18
dot com slash course.
17:20
For full show notes and a transcript of
17:22
this episode, go to christy harrison dot
17:24
com slash 305 And
17:26
to get the transcript, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter
17:28
your email address. Big thanks
17:31
as always to our editor and sound
17:33
engineer, Mike Lalande. Community
17:35
and content associate, Vinci Chuay,
17:37
an administrative assistant, Julian Wojtaszek,
17:40
for helping me out with all the moving parts that
17:42
go into producing this show.
17:44
Album art was photographed by Abby Moore Photography,
17:46
and the logo was designed by Melissa Alam.
17:48
Our theme song was written and performed by
17:50
Carolyn Penny Packer Rigs.
17:52
And I'm your host and producer, Christie Harrison.
17:55
Thanks again for listening and until
17:57
next time, stay site.
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