James Heathers, PhD has written a post at precisionnutrition.com in which he discusses the way we in the health and fitness community talk about food. James has a background in psychology, and this discussion opened my eyes, to say the least. James points out the propensity for us to describe food in emotional language rather than descriptive language. “Clean Eating” is the phrase he concentrates on here in this post but there are a multitude.
The Current State of Diet Discussion
So here is where we are today, talk to ten people on the street about what to eat and I bet at least one of them will say something like this: “you hear so many different things that contradict one another, first it is bad then it is good, I don’t worry about it and just eat what I want.” In other words, these folks telling me what is good for me don’t know what the heck they are talking about! This is why this image goes viral, people connect with the implied sarcasm. Quoting from the article:
The point should be painfully obvious.
The way the health and fitness industry talks about food, weight, and eating is in shambles.
We paralyze ourselves with set after set of new rules.
We make these rules from contradictory systems that we don’t understand.
We feel a creeping cynicism: No-one who tells me what to eat actually knows what the hell they’re talking about.
It is all about Associations and Judgments
James’ main point here is that people have a tendency to have an emotional reaction to these negative descriptors. For instance, if a food does not qualify for clean eating, then it must be dirty if it is not clean. People have a natural tendency to avoid things perceived as dirty. He explains it with this example:
In psychology, this is called the contagion heuristic.
There are lots of examples of it. Most people wouldn’t, for instance:
- drink apple juice out of a perfectly sterilized bedpan;
- drink juice from a glass that previously held a perfectly sterilized cockroach;
- eat soup that was stirred with a brand-new comb; or
- eat chocolate fudge shaped like a pile of doggy doo.
In other words, we feel like “impurity” or “dirtiness” can “infect” or “contaminate” objects, regardless of whether those objects are actually clean.
As I look through a lot of my past posts I don’t seem to be as guilty of this king of writing as I initially thought I might be. This did make an impression on me though and I will strive to be more factually descriptive and stay away from hot button emotional descriptors.
Enjoy the article.