Food Issues: Telling a Truer Story About Our Relationships with Food
Take a moment to think of the last time you saw “food issues” portrayed on television or film. No, I’m not talking about the most recent season of the Great British Baking Show. (Although I’m certainly open to talking about it.) When I say “food issues,” picture a character with an emotionally laden relationship to food. Someone for whom a slice of cake is not just a slice of cake.
Think back. If you can remember a time at all, I’m guessing food issues looked one of two ways: Perhaps it was someone who refused to eat. Alternatively, perhaps it was someone who ate with abandon. Either way, I bet she was young, I bet she was straight, I bet she was white – and I bet she was a she. I bet she was either very thin or very large, and nowhere in between.
If you yourself have food issues, or if you have friends and family members who do, you already know that this picture isn’t quite right. In reality, the presentation of food issues varies as much as the people they afflict. The question for storytellers is this: How can food issues on-screen look like those in real life? How can we get it right?
What are food issues?
Food issues are not eating disorders. (Eating disorders have quite strict diagnostic criteria.) That being said, food issues are similar to eating disorders in that they may include cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. Food issues frequently develop during adolescence, when greater cognizance of social, cultural, and familial pressures collides with the reality of changing bodies. In the scientific literature (this article, for example), food issues are sometimes defined by behaviors - things like fasting or eating very little, skipping meals, vomiting, abusing laxatives, or over-exercising. But there are also cognitive and emotional components: guilt, preoccupation, dissatisfaction. There’s the process of second (and third, and fourth) guessing before putting something in your mouth. (Am I really hungry? Maybe I’m just bored! Or thirsty!) Often, there’s hunger – hunger that’s more emotional than physical, hunger that results from not just days but years of distrusting one’s own appetite. Those are food issues, and each component – behavioral, cognitive, and emotional – belongs on-screen.
Actionable Insights
Here are three ways storytellers can more accurately depict food issues.
Show diversity and intersectionality. While the portrayal of food issues on television might suggest otherwise, food issues do not predominantly affect white, straight, young, cisgender women. Although food issues often develop in adolescence, they are also common in postmenopausal women. Further, research suggests that food issues disproportionately affect historically marginalized groups, such as sexual, gender, and racial minorities. Although cisgender men are affected at lower rates, their odds increase as they age. Building intersectional portrayals of food issues will not only improve the accuracy and relatability of your characters but may further empower diverse audiences to examine their own food-related thoughts, feelings, behaviors.
Show what food issues actually look like. Evidence suggests that food issues will be supremely relatable to your audience. Seventy-five percent of women endorse the idea that their weight or shape directly impacts their happiness. About half of US adults dieted in the last year (including over 25% of those who are at a “normal” or below-normal weight), and at least 30% of people resort to unhealthy methods of weight loss, such as fasting and purging through an array of compensatory behaviors.
However, food issues don’t often get a fair cameo. They don’t have to involve sneak-eating in the middle of the night or disappearing to the bathroom after a meal. Rather, perhaps your characters simply feel shame around their appetite (no surprise, when the diet industrial complex uses words like “guilty” or “sinful” to describe food). Perhaps your characters are “good” throughout the week, in order to “afford” a “cheat meal” or “cheat day” on the weekend. Perhaps they have internalized the toxic idea that a good meal is something one must “earn” or “budget for” through tracking steps or counting calories. Perhaps they turn down social invitations simply because the proposed restaurant doesn’t have low-carb options or hasn’t posted their nutrition information online. These are examples of realistic and nuanced ways to portray food issues.
Show that “not bad enough” is bad enough. Food issues need not progress into a full-blown eating disorder in order to suck the joy, spontaneity, and inspiration from life. Take it from me: About two years ago, I tried my hand at “intermittent fasting,” or the practice of eating all of one’s daily calories in a relatively short window of time. A podcast or two had claimed that intermittent fasting would “heal my gut” by giving my organs a “rest” – but of course, I was unconsciously hoping for weight loss, too. Nearly every day for nine months, I spent the workday hungry. I got winded on the stairs to my office. In afternoon meetings, I worried whether I’d be too hungry to think. When anyone (a friend, a partner) offered me food outside my allotted eating window, I made up a lackluster excuse to avoid it.
In short: while I didn’t qualify for any specific eating disorder, food issues rendered my life in grayscale. To appease my food issues, I was quite literally sacrificing my performance in the two areas that mattered most to me: work and relationships. Portraying a more subtly problematic relationship with food can convey an important message to your audience: “not bad enough” is plenty bad enough. “Not bad enough” still takes our freedom away.
Why get it right?
As a storyteller, you might be asking yourself this: If food issues aren’t real eating disorders, and if food issues really are as common as this article states, do they really deserve their own storyline? Why bother with these painstaking and nuanced portrayals? Aren’t there more important things to do?
Only you can answer that question. Perhaps there are better uses of your time. For me, there aren’t. As a storyteller myself, I have found immense relief and gratification in telling real stories (often my own story) about food issues. I have heard from readers, friends, and fellows in diet recovery that the stereotypical eating disorder narrative just doesn’t cut it; more often than not, it leaves them feeling ignored, unseen, or needlessly triggered.
I have also experienced it from the other side. That is, I have experienced the transformative power in hearing my own food issues told by someone else. For example, when I learned that my two favorite authors - the late Caroline Knapp, and the bestselling author Glennon Doyle – have themselves struggled with food and body, I was forced to face a key question: How much freer would these women be if they’d made peace with food? And more importantly: How much more free will I be when I do the same?
Give your audience the gift of this question.
Anna Joliff, she/her/hers, MS Counseling Psychology
Research Specialist for the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT)