Is it just me, or does diet culture push everything EXCEPT the diets that make the most sense? No wonder eating disorders and obesity are so rampant. It’s almost as if diet culture and the junk food industries were secretly in cahoots with each other while pretending to be at war with each other.
I’m not a strict disciple of any one diet, but the Mediterranean, DASH, and MIND diets make the most sense to me and are closest to my eating habits. These diets are so superior to everything pushed by diet culture for these reasons:
* You’re encouraged to consume a wide variety of real foods and thus cover a wide variety of nutrients. Getting enough fiber, magnesium, and potassium is fairly easy. You don’t really need supplements other than the ones that are difficult or impossible to get enough of from food, such as Vitamin D3 and Vitamin B12.
* There’s no need to count calories, carbs, or Weight Watchers points. I’ve used Cronometer to track my food intake on a few select days out of curiosity. It’s SO much hassle to do it for just one day. I cannot imagine having to do this every day of my life.
* There’s no hard limit on calories, carbs, or Weight Watchers points. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do if you get the munchies but you’ve reached your limit for the day. Are you supposed to go to bed hungry? Are you supposed to eat cotton balls to fill your stomach? (OK, OK, I got that idea from certain dysfunctional characters in the TV series *Scream Queens*.)
* There’s no need to starve yourself or go to bed hungry. I remember when skipping meals was the mark of anorexia. Now it’s called “intermittent fasting”, but it still doesn’t pass the smell test. Being ravenously hungry promotes binging. Worse yet, being so desperately hungry makes deep-fried foods and other nutritional train wrecks MUCH more appealing.
* There’s MUCH more flexibility instead of the you’re-with-us-or-against-us mentality. You don’t have to be 100% compliant every day of your life. If making all the improvements you need to make is too much at once, you can just focus on one or two of the easiest and most impactful ones first. Once you’ve normalized those changes, you’re in a stronger position to turn your attention to the more difficult ones.
* It’s mostly common sense. The only foods you’re strongly encouraged to avoid are the ones that everyone agrees are unhealthy. Even the average person on the street recognizes Doritos, Cheetos, Twinkies, McDonald’s, and Kentucky Fried Cholesterol as unhealthy junk foods.
* You don’t have to weigh yourself every day or lose a minimum of X pounds per week or month. When you consume a healthy diet, your weight largely takes care of itself. If the Mediterranean Diet were the norm instead of a radical fringe idea, the obesity rate would be MUCH, MUCH lower. Take that, Biggest Loser!
* You don’t have to run marathons in 100-degree heat or vote someone off the team. You can tell Jillian Michaels to go pound sand. Take that, Biggest Loser!
* You don’t have to cut out entire food groups that have been recognized as real food for thousands of years. Take that, Keto Diet and Carnivore Diet!
* You can be vegan, but it’s not required. You can compromise by reducing your consumption of meat/dairy/eggs/fish. If the vegans are right, you limit the damage. If the vegans are wrong, you’re not missing out.
* You don’t have to bankrupt yourself by buying special proprietary food. OK, OK, this does work for losing weight. The idea is to lose weight by having no money left for buying food. Comedian [Sinbad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVsdvElYcRg) can attest that NutriSystem really does work.
by jhsu802701
19 Comments
Because they’re jealous of it
Because they’re either addicted to red meat and high fat dairy (hence rise of keto) or they have eating disorders and find diets that play into that.
As someone who has been thoroughly in diet culture since I was like, four (and I’m now 51), I’ve read a few books on the Mediterranean Diet and I find it overwhelming. It is MUCH easier to count carbs or calories. Also, it involves a lot of prep and cooking and at this point, I am so completely over planning, shopping, and freakin cooking food. If I could exist on nutrition pills, I would. As the person in my family who does 100% of the food planning, shopping, and cooking, even though I fully believe the Mediterranean Diet is healthy and beneficial, sometimes I need a shortcut (or five) that my family will also eat.
I think there are probably a lot of people in the same situation. It’s overwhelming and it looks like a lot of work.
You can’t really make money off of the MD. It also doesn’t fit the ” everything you have been taught is wrong, they have been lying to you!!!” narrative that fringe diets love to use.
I think it’s mostly becauase MD really has no hard rules. When I first started, I was super hung up on what it meant to enjoy a treat every once in a while. What did that mean?
*1 piece of chocolate a day? 1 pastry a week? Would 3 pastries a week be too much? I can eat red meat if I want to, but very rarely and in limited portions. But what does it mean to eat it rarely and what is a limited portion?*
It’s hard to convey the ideas of MD and it takes patience to get into the flow of things. This is opposed to other diets like Keto where it’s very clear that you cannot eat sugar, high-carb things, etc. and it’s black and white whether you are succeeding at a diet or not.
MD, or eat your vegetables isn’t going to get views like some rando 6 pack guy says veggies are bad eat meat will.
People love to hear their bad habits are good.
People will listen if the are worried it might be true and it effects them.
MD is just harder to get views with
No ‘secret cahoots’, just seems that way because they’re just both incentivized by short term profits. The food industry makes their products as addictive as possible because it maximizes profits. There are other factors, like in the United States in particular everything is designed around cars instead of walking, but corporate greed is pretty much the root cause of the obesity epidemic.
Because people want to believe they can make temporary changes and have permanent results. And it’s difficult to monetize eating and exercising like a sensible person.
Almost every MD/DO and RD pushes med, its the default option for healthy diet. USDA do too.
> potassium is fairly easy.
Potassium not so much. I use potassium salt rather than sodium salt which covers the difference but even eating a plant first diet doesn’t mean you get enough. IMHO easily the hardest nutrient to meet RDA for, nearly everyone is deficient in it.
> Vitamin B12
B12 is super easy with seafood. Also keep in mind you do not need to hit RDA for this one every day as your body has capacity to store a couple of months worth via bile cycle (why people who need B12 shots get them every 4/6 weeks). 3oz of clams is 3500% RDA, if you eat 3oz monthly you have met your requirement.
You can also add nutritional yeast to food (anything that needs cheese you can sub with nutritional yeast for a similar flavor) which gets you lots of the B’s too.
> There’s no hard limit on calories, carbs,
Same thermodynamics rules apply, calories tend to be more satiating so you are less likely to overeat but you can certainly overeat. There are also idealized ranges for the macros, carbs should be ~50% calories for instance.
> You can be vegan, but it’s not required. You can compromise by reducing your consumption of meat/dairy/eggs/fish. If the vegans are right, you limit the damage. If the vegans are wrong, you’re not missing out.
You should not cut your consumption of fish. Fish is how you live forever.
I imagine it’s because people want a DIET. They want rules. They want to know exactly what to eat. They WANT to weigh every day because instant gratification feels good in the moment. To have the freedom of such a range of foods, to not count calories, over-exercise…. I guess it’s just counterintuitive to diet culture. “we” want it off and we want it off fast. “We” are not really looking for a way of eating we can implement for the rest of our lives.
I lost my weight with Weight Watchers about six years ago. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2020. Doctor mentioned the Mediterranean diet. I started it the very next day.
It’s such a beautiful way to eat. I still absolutely love food, and from time to time I allow myself to go out of the mediterranean diet boundaries. I have kept ALL of my weight off, I eat what I enjoy, and along with medication I’ve been in remission for years now. And my biggest accomplishment? I am not a binge eater anymore.
Wish more people realized the value of this lifestyle!!
Because there is no for profit MD entity – else they would.
BTW, these are all things we teach in public nutrition education; MyPlate.
I find it difficult to get enough protein with reducing it from animal sources as MD recommends. My nutritionist said fish no more than twice a week, chicken twice a week, and eggs twice a week. That’s 8/21 meals of animal protein, so that leaves about 13 meals a week plus snacks from plant sources. Honestly, that’s not super easy for a lot of people, especially for if you need a lot of protein. That’d be a lot of whole grains and beans and nuts to compensate and meet caloric plus nutritional daily goals. While nuts may be easy, complete meals from whole grains aren’t convenient enough to make this diet work seamlessly.
Personally, I was given the choice of this diet or a “paleo” like diet with higher meat content and lower grains, to treat my Crohn’s disease. The whole grains and veggies of the MD are harsh on my gut so I opted for the paleo one. But I still try to swap some of the fish and chicken/egg ideas from MD and this sub.
Same reason you don’t ever see “expend more calories than you consume” or just “eat less” pushed as a diet. No one can sell that, but also people don’t want to hear it. No one wants to feel like it’s their fault they’re overweight, so it’s more pleasing to hear that actually if you just go into ketosis you’ll lose weight and that’s why nothing has worked before or whatever the hell they say.
Because it’s not a “weight loss” diet that will produce quick results.
There are no “cheat foods”.
Thats why it’s really a “way of eating” vs a “diet” (since diet often implies a short term effort with a definitive stop and end)
Yes I know this is nonsense, but that’s why it doesn’t get enough love in American culture.
There is no way to exploit it for profit.
Most doctors are not nutritionalists. And our health care system doesn’t prioritize preventative care, much less nutrition. Our education on nutrition is sorely lacking also.
It’s an investment- Whole grains, unprocessed foods, and herbs and spices are harder to find and more expensive. Especially if living in the American Northern Midwest Winter, none of it is local, so has high environmental impact along with expenses. (I saved money while eating better in France.) Also more kitchen equipment and places to store ingredients and equipment.
The American culture has people working long hours, commutes, piss poor vacation policy, and social expectations that make it hard for a lot of folks.
It takes a lot more time to plan, prepare, and clean up meals. It requires some basic cooking skills, or the bandwidth to learn.
There are no set rules, so it requires some baseline nutrition knowledge, especially if you have actual health concerns like diabetes, you might need rules and concrete numbers to start out.
There are also no set markers of success or failure and that can be overwhelming for a lot of people.
Culturally in the méditerranée there are a lot less barriers to eating healthy.
because we don’t know what it is?
if Italy and Greece are ok, what about France, Spain?
what about Egypt, Albania, Croatia, Tunisia, Turkey? Albania is right next door to Greece and just over the water from Italy.
Is it just olive oil? When we look at diet compositions of all these disparate countries they don’t fit the narrative of what the “Mediterranean diet” is.
We can look up the average diet compositions using UN/faostat data which i have handily compiled some of in a spread sheet.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Og2S7-gOtsgV0hb2o8YpS1D3FOCWZKqqZ9sdgEijkUI/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Og2S7-gOtsgV0hb2o8YpS1D3FOCWZKqqZ9sdgEijkUI/edit?usp=sharing)
We can look at site like these
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/mediterranean_diet](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/mediterranean_diet)
“The most prominent source of animal protein is fish, rather than meat”
but Greece eats 3x as much meat as fish a day, France and Italy 2x meat than fish
and not really get an idea of what’s going on
fish is apparently more important than red meat but the data from foastat says the opposite
moderate dairy? the average worldwide dairy consumption is like 279 is grams a day but France/Italy/Greece are eating 600-700 grams a day
sites like this say
[https://www.heartuk.org.uk/healthy-diets/the-mediterranean-diet](https://www.heartuk.org.uk/healthy-diets/the-mediterranean-diet)
low intake of dairy and meat but Greece/Italy/France eat 218/206/220 kg a year of meat each.
the world average is 134 kg a year
France for example eats more meat per year than VEG and Fruit combined and is 9th in the world for alcohol consumption at 12 litres a year each, twice the world average, Greece isnt far behind at over 10.
Whilst I am all on board with wholefood, low processed foods (which is where i think the biggest gains are to be had) the narrative of what the diets are said to be and what they are in actuality are at odds. They are poorly defined.
So we are supposed to believe that at some ill defined point in history is where its at but nobody can tell where that point is.
Dont get me wrong, France, Italy and Greece have some pretty good longevity stats worldwide at 82/82/80 but are they doing better than say Switzerland/Sweden/Norway at 84/83/83 and they dont border the Mediterranean at all.
I think it boils down to
People want some kind of “secret”, some code to follow, instead of “eat real food, a variety of food, and more plants than meat”
You can’t make a lot of money off the MD so there is less incentive for various companies and influencers to promote it.
Some people *want* to have a highly restrictive and hard to follow diet. They feel they are accomplishing something or in control of something when they do this. You can see some people like this move to ever more absurd diets and brag about how hard it is to follow or how much discipline they have to have.
When I started this diet I learned that Americans typically exceed protein recommendations every day by around 30%. And we still get the post every other week about how do you get enough protein on this diet. It’s to the point where people literally fear carbohydrates even though most of our diet should be comprised of them (in the form of fruit and veg and whole grains). It’s bizarre!
I do think that it’s partially been pushed upon us Americans because of the beef and dairy industry are mega politically players in this country. If you think that I’m being paranoid google the cheese caves (we have like a billion pounds of surplus cheese underground).