"You Are What You Eat"

And thinking critically about food

Whether inspired by healthism or fatphobia, “You are what you eat” has become a popular adage among nutrition and health enthusiasts to help guide the food choices of individuals. Although the use of the phrase is relatively well intentioned- the food that one eats not only affects one's body, but in some ways becomes part of it- it’s often used to fearmonger. 

Many of us born before the new millennium can remember a time when fat was seemingly the worst thing that you could possibly ingest. Now, it’s glorified in most modern-day fad diets such as the mediterranean diet, Keto, and the carnivore diet. The fear of fat was so pervasive in previous decades that in 2018 one of my preceptors, a Certified Diabetes Dietitian, repeated the phrase “fat makes you fat” in just about every counseling session. Over the years, the aphorism has also developed an association with prioritizing minimally processed organic foods, often quoted with “Don’t panic, it’s organic!”

Photo by Ian Valerio on Unsplash

Origins of “You Are What You Eat”

“You are what you eat” can be traced as far back as 1825, when a similar phrase appeared in Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savain’s Physiologie du goût : Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante. “Dis-moi ce que te manges, je te dirai ce que tu es”, which translates in English to “tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” However, according to Eric R. Dursteler, a professor of History at Brigham-Young University, the original use of the phrase was to note the close connection between food and identity (2012).

The modern day American meaning was likely influenced by Victor H. Lindlahr’s 1940 publication You Are What You Eat, a health food book providing nutrition-based cures for a wide range of ailments. Lindlahr’s use of the phrase quickly became widespread, and is currently used by diet leaders to galvanize followers into strict weight loss and diet regimes.

The Rejection of “You Are What You Eat”

But some find the aphorism ridden in guilt. In response, protestors have posted memes on anti-diet and eating disorder recovery social media accounts with phrases such as “I’m not a doughnut Carol!” Although it may seem like the anti-diet movement is ignoring the meaning of the phrase, one who assumes so is overlooking the body of their argument and reducing it to a superficial interpretation of their headline. Just as guilty as those who reduce the meaning of the phrase “You are what you eat.” to moral code.

Anti-dieters' rejection of the phrase is not so much a denial of nutrition as a science, but rather the misuse of this phrase to re-inforce diet culture. Diet culture, according to Christy Harrison RDN, is an oppressive system of beliefs that “worships thinness and it equates it to health and moral virtue” (2018). In other words, making “good” food choices leads to positive social merit and good health. While making “poor” food choices infers a lack of self-discipline and disregard for personal health. According to diet culture, if you’re fat, sick, or especially both, it must be your fault. The individual is solely responsible for all of their food choices and health outcomes.

Harrison, as well as other leaders of the anti-diet movement, believe diet culture puts an inappropriate amount of responsibility on the individual while ignoring social determinants of health. Such indicators include economic status, geographical location, education access, genetics, environmental toxins, food access, influences of food industry globalization, and more. 

Many of us are familiar with the association between weight and risk for developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but what about the association between these diseases and environmental toxins? According to Patel et al.,  “Chronic exposure to air pollution places children at a higher lifetime risk for developing asthma, hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and cardiac arrhythmias” (2021). But when a patient is diagnosed with one of these conditions, doctors, nurses, friends, family, co-workers, and even strangers, condemn their food choices making diet the sole factor in development of the disease. Are the same critics advocating for the regulation of fossil fuels? For more parks and trees in dense urban areas? For increased access to fresh produce in food deserts? Even higher wages? Instead of addressing systemic issues that contribute to poor diet and health outcomes, diet culture punishes those who are at an overall disadvantage by labeling them as lazy and apathetic.

But in my research through social media platforms, I learned that some followers of the anti-diet movement are either misinterpreting the phrase or lacking depth in their online discussions to suggest otherwise. Some truly seem to believe that no food could possibly negatively impact your health, lacking nutrition-informed evidence in their discussion.

As an eating disorder dietitian who also works from an anti-diet, weight-inclusive lens, some of my clients may be shocked to read that I actually disagree with the adage that no food is good nor bad. Although I appreciate the phrase because it removes moral association from our food choices, it is easy to misconstrue. In an effort to remove any guilt or shame around their food choices, some followers end up abandoning nutritional science altogether. 

The phrase is actually quite different from how I try to help my clients challenge their dogmatic food beliefs, which is “Any food can be good and any food can be bad.” Which, if aphorisms are a necessary way to capture an audience, is much more inviting to critical thinking than any of the aphorisms previously mentioned. 

I know what you’re thinking- this is all semantics,  it’s the same sentence reconstructed. It is, and in an age when media is accessible to people of almost all languages, literacy statuses, and social backgrounds, it is more important than ever to leave minimal room for misinterpretation. A misinterpretation of an adage can spread like wildfire overnight, becoming the pillar of misguided movements. Even prior to the age of social media, Lindlahr’s use of the phrase “You Are What You Eat”, outlived Brillat-Savain’s message. Highlighting how easy it is for a single book or statement to become the foundation of our food education philosophies over time.

Thinking Critically About Nutrition

What does the phrase “Any food can be good and any food can be bad.” even mean? Well- it’s complex. Food is complex. And that’s science baby! Social indicators of health aside, when it comes to our individual food choices, how a food interacts with our bodies cannot simply be reduced to whether we eat the food or not but how we eat it. 

Like many Dietitians, when I first gained interest in nutrition, I religiously followed the clean-eating dogma. As a teenager, two of the first health-promoting foods that I became acquainted with were spinach and green tea. It felt like the “right choice” to lug a thermos of green tea to school every morning and eat a bowl full of spinach at every meal. Like many others, my initial interest in nutrition was to avoid weight gain and “chronic disease”.

It was quite upsetting to learn in a Human Nutrition course my sophomore year of college, that despite being dense in antioxidants, both green tea and spinach contain oxalates. When consumed in high quantities, these naturally occurring anions can cause kidney stones, especially when one is predisposed to developing them. 

In that moment, nineteen-year-old felt defeated. My diet could never possibly be “perfect” even as I was trying my best to “eat clean”. What was a perfect diet anyway? And regardless of what I do right, I will still get sick one day and die regardless of my nutrition status. The defeat could have made me ditch nutrition altogether but it actually informed my future food philosophies. 

Slowly, I started letting go of following rigid diet rules. Although many people worry that giving up a firm grasp on food rules may result in a complete collapse of a “healthy” diet, it actually made it much easier for me to maintain one. Breaking up with diet culture dogma helped me see principles of nutrition more objectively as opposed to a means to control my fears. 

As I continued to earn my bachelors in Nutritional Sciences, principles of nutrition transformed from finite to formulaic- outputs changing in response to the vast amount of input variables. The healthfulness of a specific food or habit was no longer right or wrong, black or white, but gray, changing depending on the several other input variables in the lengthy equation that is our diet. 

Many of my clients, as well as those who follow fad diets, also succumb to blindly accept nutrition recommendations as fixed truths. When anti-dieters protest use of the terms “good” or “bad” to define food, what they are actually protesting is the rejection of dialectics that diet culture enforces. The lack of critical thinking used amongst fad dieters is not just anti-diet, it’s anti-nutrition and anti-science. But it does what it’s supposed to do- to make people feel that they do not have the skills to feed themselves appropriately, keeping them reliant on strict diets.

The foundation of my statement that “Any food can be good and any food can be bad” leaves space between the morally defining terms- they become ends of a spectrum as opposed to a destination. The statement acknowledges the vast space between what makes a food “good” or “bad”, forcing us to question what input variables also lie along that spectrum. How we grow food matters. How we transport food matters. How we process food matters. How we cook food matters. How we combine foods into a single dish matters. The methods in which we eat food matters. The context in how we eat food matters. When it stands alone, food can never finitely be anything more than food. If we want people to be confident in their dietary choices, we must leave room for complexity.

Take orange juice, for example, which is demonized by many for having loads of sugar. Drinking it alone can spike one's blood sugar and insulin, resulting in a sharp spike and drop of energy. Continued and frequent patterns of blood sugar and insulin spikes have been closely linked to the development of type 2 diabetes. But for a diabetic who is on insulin and has a sudden, unplanned drop in blood sugar, drinking a cup of orange juice can be a life-saving medical intervention. 

But say you’re a healthy individual with no medical conditions who wants to protect your health. Drinking a glass of orange juice alone may spike blood sugar, but combining it with protein, fat, and fiber can help turn that spike into a curve, allowing your body to absorb the sugar more slowly. 

In reading the above example, many readers may be feeling like some of my clients when they first start to learn about nutrition- feeling that they will never make sense of how much there is to learn. But this is simply another consequence of the framework of most diets- categorizing food into groups as opposed to helping us understand what our bodies do with different foods. You don’t need to have a degree in nutrition to make dietary choices that are supportive to your body. We all eat, likely multiple times a day every day. Our bodies are already experts in nutrition, giving us various cues and signals about how it responds to the food that we eat. If we listen and allow room for gentle life-long learning, we can start to feel like the experts of our own bodies.

Scientifically, Are You What You Eat?

Yes, and no. Again, science is complex. All of the foods that we eat interact with our body. Our bodies break down these foods and some components are converted into energy. Some components flow in and out of our cells to maintain fluid balance. Some trigger hormones to signal messages to different parts of the body. Some components are consumed by gut bacteria, and some components are excreted from the body as waste. Objectively: the food that we eat impacts us, and in some ways it does actually become part of our bodies. 

But how and at what rate or capacity depends on many different variables. For example, when we consume fat soluble vitamins with fat, such as vitamin A in a carrot with ranch dip, our body is able to absorb the vitamin and use it to produce pigment in our retinas. But if the carrot reaches our intestines and there is no fat to support its absorption, the vitamin gets excreted in our waste.

Consider fiber, which is a non-digestible carbohydrate. Due to features of its indigestibility, fiber binds our stool together and coats it in a gel to move smoothly through our bowels. We consume it, it moves through us, it supports our bodies, but ultimately it gets excreted. Does fiber support us? Yes. But does it become us? No. 

Diets Defining Morality

Like other anti-dieters, I also believe that our individual food choices have no impact on our moral status. But that does not mean that there is no morality at all connected to food. The human species has a historic tenacity to weaponize food for political, financial, and social gain. Food crimes and dietary restrictions have been used to enforce ethnic cleansing, forced migration, imperialism, psychological warfare, and more. Food industrialization has led to endemic chronic diseases, enforced onto the population by large corporations.

Take Wal-Mart, for example, who’s penetration into Mexico’s food market disrupted how and where the population sourced food. The superstores loss leader strategy and quick expansion allowed it to gain popularity quickly, becoming Mexico’s largest employer since its opening in 1993 (Gottlieb, Joshi 2013). Local farmers and grocers struggled to keep up with their low prices and popularity, severing local food networks. Wal-Mart now owns most of the supermarkets in Mexico, limiting the population's access to local and diverse food sources (Ali 2022).

Naturally, no amount of market control is enough for a monopoly. In 2008, Walmart was found guilty by Mexico’s Supreme Court for paying employees with coupons only redeemable at Walmart stores (Rosenberg 2008). Not only was the practice exploitative, but it funneled the population's food access even more. 

Would this be a concern to the public's health if Wal-Mart primarily sourced a diverse selection of fresh, local foods? Maybe not. However, walk into any Wal-Mart and you’ll notice the majority of foods sold in its grocery section are ultra-processed. In their 2013 publication “Food Justice”, food policy expert Anapuma Joshi and writer Robert Gottlieb suggest that Wal-Mart’s penetration into Mexico has contributed to the popularity of soda and chip products within the country. With all of the above factors combined, they argue that Wal-mart’s impact on food access contributed to Mexico’s trend toward “diet related disease” (Gottlieb, Joshi 2013). Additional researchers are finding that industrial food globalization is leading to an increase in highly processed food consumption worldwide, linking such dietary changes to an increase in “diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke” (Freudenberg, 2021).

Wal-Mart’s penetration into Mexico’s food market perfectly illustrates why we should hold global powers responsible for the dietary trends of the population. If a single company's pursuit in food globalization limits a population's dietary choices enough to lead to dietary-related endemics, the path in which such food ended up in the hands of patrons is objectively corrupt. For most of the world, individual food choices are severely limited by food access, historically influenced by climate and geography. However with food globalization, many people’s diets are limited by the economic control of global monopolies such as Wal-Mart. Why then hold individuals responsible for their untimely existence during a monopolies global expansion? How can we call these people good or bad when they’re food systems have been erased, food options have been funneled, and the corporation responsible for doing so disrupted their entire economic system?

And if we are concerned about the food choices of those restricted by food globalization, how does judging the food in their cart help them? How does demanding that they choose imported out-of-season produce over a crunchy bag of chips help? Does your judgment give them more time between multiple jobs and limited childcare to cook the produce? Does it improve labor laws, giving them enough time during their 30 minute lunch break in a large warehouse to find a microwave and safely reheat their food? Does it help them maintain the freshness of produce when a  proper grocer is so far away, they can only shop biweekly, or monthly? 

Instead of looking at their shopping carts with judgment, what if we observed them with gentle, objective curiosity? What story could food tell us about the person loading it into their cart? Would we stop seeing their selection as ignorant self-harm? Could we start to see their choices as a means for survival in a system designed to gain profit at the expense of their humanity? 

When we remove judgment when observing what another person eats, what can we see about who they really are? What would this compassion lead us to? Would we then consider replacing all the time we’ve spent judging others food choices with helping prevent the passage of laws that allowed companies like Wal-Mart to take advantage of so many communities?

              Leaning into this more compassionate line of questioning can bring us back to what Brillat-Savain intended in his book- observing food trends to understand the identity of a people. It was intended for us to see beyond responsibilities of individuals and instead to see the food ways of a people. The many characteristics of a communities identity that influence their diet. Economics. Religion. Climate. Geographical Location. Migration Patterns. And More. If we actually care about a community's diet we must first improve the health of its diaspora and healthy food systems will be sure to follow.

Citations:

R. Dursteler, E. (2012). You Are What You Eat. Kennedy Center; Bridges Alumni Magazine. https://kennedy.byu.edu/alumni/bridges/features/you-are-what-you-eat

Harrison, C. (2018, August 10). What is Diet Culture. Christy Harrison - Intuitive Eating Dietitian, Anti-Diet Author, & Health at Every Size Expert - Food Psych Programs. https://christyharrison.com/blog/what-is-diet-culture

Patel, Lisa, et al. (2021). Air Pollution as a Social and Structural Determinant of Health. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 3, 100035. Science Direct. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100035

Rosenberg, M., & Aspen, C. (2008, September 8). Court outlaws wal-mart de mexico worker vouchers | Reuters. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/05/mexico-walmex-idUSN0546591320080905/ 

Ali, A. (Ed.). (2022, March 30). Walmart owns most of the supermarkets in Mexico. Visual Capitalist. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/walmart-owns-most-of-the-supermarkets-in-mexico/ 

Freudenberg, Nicholas, 'Food: Ultra-processed Products Become the Global Diet', At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Sept. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190078621.003.0002, accessed 19 Jan. 2024.