How Food Shaming Impacts your Health

Food shaming has gained much momentum in recent years. Similar to body shaming, food shaming is judging and considering the local and native food and food practices as low. It is equally biased, unhealthy and discriminatory as body shaming. This has become famous as various people simply think local foods like ghee,parantha,makkhan embarrassing and due to the introduction of fancy cuisines in the food industry local food looked down by many people. Food shaming originates with the very basic motive of swapping local and natural foods with exotic foods and glamorous cuisines. Much like body shaming, food shaming is becoming a matter of growing distress as it brings various problems along with it. Food shaming can take away proper health, sources of nutrition and overall well-being.

What leads to Food Shaming?

• The traditional perception of food faith is tried-and-tested by the Modern-day facts and figures, but in a disguise. For instance, Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants and is good for brain health. But an age-old tradition of eating gond laddu or pinni is just as good for heart and brain health as it is also rich in antioxidants.
• Receiving a negative comment from a stranger from social media or in-person also creates Food shaming. Rather making a person feel discouraged about eating any junk food like burgers, one must educate about eating healthy ways of eating habits.

Impact of Food Shaming on People

• Our age-old food heritage, crop cycle, and agriculture have lost connection with our recent daily routines. Simple home-style cooked meals are now being replaced with packaged and processed food. Easy to use products are creating havoc in the mind-set of young adults in their busy schedules, and thus disturbing their regular ways of eating food.
•  By criticizing someone for eating something that doesn’t match his or her own definition of what kind of food is good, is not a positive way to react on food. Thus, lack of seasonal foods in one’s own diet has resulted in a widespread increase in non-communicable diseases like fatty liver disease, diabetes, obesity, heart issues or cancer.
• One must understand the fact that it is better to be in touch with eating how much our body wants rather than mechanically eating or filling their plates unnecessary.

Over to you

Food choices come with a lot of judgment- healthy or unhealthy, organic or non-organic, plant-based or vegan, gluten-free or not. Food shaming has silently crept its way into our lives and the only way to beat it is to know that every food unless it’s processed or refined is somewhere good for someone. Don’t force upon your choice on anyone and stop #foodshaming.