Whenever I do a lecture on why we need to end diet culture, there is often someone in the audience who asks in a shocked, mocking or accusatory tone, "So, you're saying that people should just eat whatever they want?"
For the record: Yes, yes I am.
They believe that without diet culture - or some set of punitive rules - that human beings would run amok, be uncontrollable, turn into Pac-Man and start eating furniture and buildings and babies. Maybe even become Satan worshipping witches (I'm here for the Satan worshiping witches tbh).
I know why they believe that: because we've been taught that we can't trust ourselves or our bodies. This idea has a long history in religious ideology and also colonialism. Further, we've been taught anti-scientific, bias-driven attitudes and beliefs about the body, hunger and food.
To the skeptic I offer this reframe: It is not the absence of diet culture that creates problems with hunger, food and the body. It is its presence. Enter the Milkshake Study of 1975.
Well, the research paper on the subject - titled "Restrained and Unrestrained Eating" authored by C Peter Herman and Deborah Mack of Northwestern - was published in 1975 in the Journal of Personality, at least.
The researchers were interested in questioning the prevailing presumption that fat people just ate differently than thin people. They were curious if there were other behavioral factors that impacted how much a person ate - regardless of their size. For instance, did food restriction - aka dieting - impact how much a person of any size eats?
Each of the study participants was given something called a Restriction Scale. This questionnaire was designed to determine who in the study was a restrictor (aka someone who diets or restricts food) and who was a non-restrictor. Following that, each person was given zero, one or two milkshakes and then all of them were invited to eat as much ice cream as they wanted.
Who do you think had the most ice cream following the most milkshakes: restrictors or non-restrictors? If you said restrictors, you’re right.
Herman and Mack found that the highly restrained eaters (aka dieters) ate more ice cream the more milkshakes they had had. The researchers hypothesized that this result might be caused by restrictors' perception that they had “broken the rules” or crossed a mental boundary and consequently had become disinhibited.
As a recovering dieter myself, I understand the results of this study implicitly. I remember the deep well of almost unquenchable hunger I used to feel constantly. It wasn’t just a physiological hunger, it was a mental and spiritual hunger as well.
I think this study speaks volumes to the question posed by the aforementioned skeptic. When people don’t feel pressure to impose arbitrary rules to their eating then there are no rules or taboos to break. There isn’t that added layer of pressure to something as natural and innocent as eating. When people apply food restriction principles - aka diet culture rules - to their lives, that’s when the researchers in this study saw the kind of eating behavior that pro-dieters might judge negatively.
At the end of the day, I assign no moral value to the way that anyone in the study ate their ice cream. The people who ate less ice cream aren’t “better” people. Restrictors aren’t “bad” people. That’s not the point. The point is that this landmark study shows that food restriction and control are the likelier predecessors to what some might call "bingeing."
In conclusion, this research strengthens the claim that it is the presence of diet culture rules - not their absence - that leads to the outcomes that my hecklers have such a huge problem with.
Class dismissed.
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