“We had to put healthy foods on one plate and unhealthy foods on the other,” she told me. Her teacher, who was standing next to us, looked at the photos and told Madelyn that the chicken nuggets probably should have gone on the unhealthy plate and not the healthy plate.
I saw the confused look on my 7-year-old daughter’s face and was taken back in time to my seventh grade health class, where I learned to categorize foods as good and bad . The teacher taught us that we should be healthy by eating fruits and vegetables, and that we should avoid eating too much “junk food” as this would make us unhealthy.
I was in a vulnerable situation, having just lost my mother to metastatic breast cancer a few months prior. I had seen my mother’s body deteriorate over the three years she was ill, and after she died, I became afraid of doing something that was deemed unhealthy. Soon after learning how to label foods in health class, I began to worry that eating “unhealthy” foods might make me sick like my mother. And as a perfectionist, straight-A student, I thought I had to follow my teacher’s directions by avoiding them. I started restricting my food intake, first slowly, then drastically. Within a year, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa – a disorder that wreaked havoc on my mind and body for many years.
The health class wasn’t the only cause of my eating disorder, but it was one of the contributing factors. Twenty-five years later, it’s still common for schools to teach children to label foods, even though research has shown that such exercises can trigger eating disorders.
“I feel like the schools are doing the best they can and I think they’re doing what they believe is the right step to help people make good food choices,” said Robert Mendiola, a registered dietitian nutritionist. based in Austin and specializing in food. eating disorders. “But I also think it starts to plant these seeds that will grow into the way we think about food for a long, long time.”
Mendiola suffered from an eating disorder as a teenager and now considers himself fully recovered. Although he has never been the victim of damaging lessons about “healthy eating,” he has seen patients with eating disorders who have been.
A review of the files of young patients treated for anorexia in a hospital from 2015 to 2020, found that healthy eating education was a trigger for 14 percent of patients and that young adolescents were particularly vulnerable.
“The most common origin I hear from parents for their child’s eating disorder is an attempt to eat ‘healthier,’ often based on messages they receive from school and culture in general,” said Oona Hansonfamily mentor to Equip, an eating disorder treatment program. “Apart from an anaphylactic allergy, nothing in a food can harm a child more than fear of food. The intention of getting kids healthy is great, but unfortunately, much of what we do is counterproductive.
Some children who are taught to avoid “bad” foods, for example, may end up being more attracted to them. “Forbidden fruits taste the sweetest,” Hanson noted. On the other hand, kids who tend to be more anxious or rule-followers may become afraid of “bad” foods and stop eating them altogether, just like me. “That can really lead them down the path of more and more restrictions,” Hanson said, “and that’s where we see kids at younger and younger ages developing eating disorders like anorexia.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Nutrition education should be an essential part of health education programs because it “gives children the knowledge and skills to make healthy food and drink choices.” Some would argue that this is especially important at a time when an estimated one in five American children are obese. But while nutrition education is a good idea in theory, in practice it often fails. Many nutrition education exercises are rooted in diet culture and anti-fat bias, with an emphasis on “healthy eating,” food labeling exercises, and food diaries in which students are asked to record how much they eat and exercise.
Gabi Dobrot’s daughter Ana was asked to keep a food journal as part of a high school PE class in 2020. Shortly after Ana began tracking her food intake and exercise, she insisted on cooking her own meals. Dobrot was initially relieved that one of her children wanted to help her prepare meals. But as the weeks went by, she noticed that Ana — a competitive gymnast and straight-A student — was eating a lot less and exercising more. Ana tracked these behaviors in her food journal and ended up getting an A+ on this assignment.
“We assume that due to the pandemic-induced chaos she was graded late and her actual numbers were not verified, but getting an A+ for exhibiting obvious symptoms of restriction and overexercise reinforced her behaviors,” said Dobrot, who lives in Farmington, N.Y. A few months after completing her mission, Ana was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and hospitalized.
The mission came at a crucial time, when Ana “was worried about losing her gymnastics skills during quarantine, becoming sedentary and not eating ‘well’ or ‘healthy,'” said Dobrot, whose daughter now 18 and recovering. . “The school assignment confirmed exactly what the disease she was predisposed to was hoping for: a very low food intake and a large amount of intense exercise was a great idea and that it was healthy and necessary to have such a diet .”
Dobrot wants school curricula updated to include more education and awareness around eating disorders. She also encourages teachers to think about key questions before teaching children about nutrition, including: What motivates me to teach these lessons about “healthy eating”? Do my own food choices trigger feelings of fear, shame, or guilt? If so, can I explore these feelings before teaching children about food choices?
Shannon Gillikin, a kindergarten teacher in Charlottesville, said she used to police her students’ food choices by telling them to bring healthier snacks and to drink water instead of juice. But she stopped doing it in recent years.
“I think it has a lot to do with my personal journey of unlearning diet culture for myself and learning what intuitive eating is for myself,” said Gillikin, who is entering her 14th year of eating. ‘education. She also recognizes that it’s not fair to criticize kindergartners for their food choices when they’re not the ones shopping or preparing meals. “As a privileged white person, I learned more about all the structures that surround my students’ lives, like: Are they living in a food desert? Do they receive federal assistance for food, which limits what they can buy? I want my students to feel good about the choices they can make and also honor their parents’ contributions.
While teaching a “Happy Healthy Me” unit, Gillikin was supposed to read a series of books focused on healthy living, including “Edible Colors” (a book about eating produce); and “Jack and the Hungry Giant” (a retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk” in which the giant uses the USDA’s MyPlate nutritional model to prepare a meal for Jack). Gillikin was concerned that the books would lend themselves to food labeling. With permission from her school’s literacy director, she removed them and instead read culturally inclusive fairy tales.
Throughout the school year, Gillikin tries to give her students a richer vocabulary to describe foods by encouraging them to focus on their texture and taste, rather than their “healthy” or “unhealthy” qualities. “I tell my students that no food is inherently good or bad,” Gillikin said. “I tell them that food is fuel and you need different types of fuel at different times. » She also encourages conversations around students’ own food traditions and embraces the phrase “don’t make fun of my yum.” “We teach them to respect each other’s food choices so that as adults they are more curious than critical.”
On a call with my daughter’s daycare director, I shared some of Gillikin’s ideas and talked about my own experiences with anorexia. I have spoken freely about the harmful effects of food labeling – both as a woman recovering from anorexia and as a mother who wants to protect my son and daughter from this disorder that has robbed me of so much years of life. I know that no matter how hard I try to protect my children from an eating disorder, there will always be external factors beyond my control: schoolwork, social media, genetics. Sometimes the list seems unbearably long. My husband and I try to teach our children as best we can at home, avoiding food labels, refraining from negative comments about our bodies, and eating together as a family.
A few days after my daughter’s mission, I bought a few pints of ice cream and made homemade sundaes for Madelyn and my son Tucker.
“It’s so delicious!” » Madelyn said as she licked her sticky fingers.
“So delicious!” » Tucker repeated, his blue eyes shining.
“You are so right!” I agreed.
I dug my spoon into my salted caramel ice cream and enjoyed every bite.
Related Resources: The National Eating Disorders Alliance and Sunny Side Up Nutrition I created five letters that caregivers can download, personalize, and share with teachers to raise awareness and address potential issues related to nutrition education.
Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the upcoming book, “Slip: Recovery, Sickness & the Space in Between,” an examination of the under-discussed complexities of eating disorders and recovery.
