I never used to understand why people went to the effort of controlling their food intake and how they have the willpower. I tried to comprehend the popularity of dietary fads through one of Andy Warner’s ideas: that we accept non-complex solutions simply because they are easier to understand. I do admit to sometimes being bored with difficult science and preferring the next, shocking news update on how burnt toast gives you cancer.
But I believe that this itself is a simple solution to understanding why people diet. It is more than just an individual decision because our perspective on health is heavily influenced by a media induced moral panic.
Primarily amongst Western society, there is public anxiety towards the “threat” of bad health – and the nutritional scientists are our saviours. We were saved from cancer through their warning against burnt toast as if anyone ever ate it in the first place. With every new nutritional science article posted to the internet, the narrative that we should worry about the food we eat and the right way to be healthy is continued. As more people buy into this fear, the demand for these articles as solutions increase.
Everyone has the right to diet for whatever reason, but it is clear we learn from panic-inducing media frenzies to see food as a troubling topic. I can understand diets because I acknowledge that I, and many others, have all at one point been caught up in a public panic about our health.
I agree with you, media has so much influence over our ideas and perceptions of food. It can inform us about a range of ideas, some contradictory, some valid, some clickbait. In some cases, a media report will not present the whole story of a nutritional study, cherry picking ideas, more simple than complex like you said, that will attract the most attention. And these simpler ideas are much more easier to digest and put into action.
Fad diets are very one dimensional and simple to understand, which makes them all the more alluring. If a study says ‘burnt toast gives you cancer,’ it’s much easier to cut out toast all together than to consider all the environmental variables, like other foods and lifestyle, and pure luck of the draw that leads to cancer. The reality now is that there is a high demand for easy shortcuts for extreme, and often unrealistic, results in terms of health and wellbeing.