Is your kid learning diet culture at school?
The short answer is yes. But don't fire off that angry email just yet.
There are so many reasons families feel anxious at the start of a new school year, and I don’t want to add another worry to your list. What I hope to do is offer information and practical support for handling the inevitable: your kid will learn something about food and/or bodies that makes you cringe or freeze or maybe even panic.
Where does diet culture show up at school?
Where doesn’t diet culture show up at school? Diet culture is baked into our education system because of the way state standards are written—and because curriculum developers are steeped in diet culture just like the rest of us. As you might expect, science, health, and physical education classes tend to have the most overtly problematic content; students are often taught explicitly to demonize certain foods, limit calories, and fear weight gain. If those sound an awful lot like eating disorder symptoms, you’re not wrong. And don’t even get me started on the districts still weighing kids in school and issuing “BMI report cards.”
You might be surprised, however, by the way diet culture shows up across the curriculum—from preschool sorting activities, language arts assignments as early as kindergarten, 4th grade math problems, and even in world language classes. In other words, diet culture can creep into just about every class and across all grade levels.
And then there’s the “unofficial curriculum”
In addition to classroom content, diet culture messages are often woven into the fabric of school life. “Healthy snack” policies, lunch monitoring that requires kids to eat foods in a certain order, and signage in the cafeteria are just some of the ways kids are taught to put food and bodies in a hierarchy.
Anti-bullying programs in schools often fail to address weight-based cruelty even though it is the most common form of bullying. Kids learn diet culture from their peers in subtler ways, too, especially during conversation at the lunch table (“Eww, you’re eating that? Don’t you know it’s toxic?”).
Typical nutrition lessons backfire in so many unhealthy ways
What we’re currently doing isn’t working.
Let’s remember that kids aren’t usually in charge of the food they have access to. And some evidence suggests kids are less likely even to try the so-called “healthy” food because they assume it will be less tasty.
Like the old adage “the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest,” the foods deemed off-limits for being “bad” may actually drive kids to fixation, sneaking, and bingeing on those very foods.
Most nutrition curriculum simply isn’t developmentally appropriate. Kids are more concrete thinkers and so are more at risk for rigidly applying oversimplified and abstract messages about nutrition.
One thing we know: school lessons about nutrition haven’t resulted in children eating “healthier,” just as “childhood ob*sity” prevention campaigns haven’t made kids smaller. And instead, we’re seeing ways in which these efforts are more likely to produce the opposite of the intended effect, along with plenty of collateral damage that’s only adding fuel to the fire of the adolescent mental health crisis.
We have growing evidence that common nutrition lessons, however well intended, are contributing to eating disorders. I see it every day in my work with families. Students who change their eating habits according to school lessons can quickly become nervous around food, develop health anxiety, and get into caloric deficit that can catalyze an eating disorder. Mallary Tenore Tarpley wrote about this topic so powerfully for The Washington Post, and I was grateful to have my perspective included in the piece.
Dr. Charlotte Markey, who writes the newsletter
, and I co-authored a piece about the dangers of food journal assignments for US News & World Report (note: the algorithm may serve up weight-loss ads alongside this piece).These food diary assignments are notorious for encouraging eating disorder behaviors, and yet they continue to be used in classes meant to teach adolescents about health.
This isn’t about blaming teachers
I want to be 100% clear: Teachers are always, always doing their very best for their students. And this is in spite of a growing tide of disrespect, unrealistic expectations, and a shameful lack of resources—not to mention compensation that it woefully insufficient. (In case you didn’t already know, my first career was as a classroom teacher.)
Teachers are not out here trying to give kids eating disorders or body image hang-ups. And of course schools aren’t the only source of diet culture messages. The doctor’s office, TV, social media, peers, friends and family members can all perpetuate anti-fat bias and food rules.
I also know this: teachers have a special impact on kids, and educators tend to be lifelong learners themselves. Teachers are eager for ways to support their students’ wellbeing and would never want to do harm. It’s unfortunate that most professional development hours get devoted to things like test prep strategies, reviewing policies, and learning new technology platforms.
Back to that angry email….
It makes sense to be scared or angry when your kid comes home with some concerning behaviors around food, especially if you’ve been working really hard to create a safe haven from diet culture in your own home. I get it. You can feel a powerful urge to write an intense link-filled email to the teacher or maybe even the principal. (Note to parents: do not go over the teacher’s head!)
But here’s the thing: I’ve never seen this approach go well.
In fact, it often makes it even harder to work toward making whatever changes may be needed. Fostering a positive, working relationship with your child’s teacher is going to be more important than proving yourself “right” about a homework assignment the teacher probably didn’t even create themselves.
But you know what? You can still write the fiery email—and then not send it.
This process can be a great way to get those feelings out so you don’t roll up to the classroom door sounding like you just came from a book-burning “parents’ rights” meeting.
Of course, there are situations in which a calm, courteous email does end up being the best way to communicate your concerns or your child’s specific needs. And lucky for parents, there are some fabulous evidence-based letter templates co-created by Sunny Side Up Nutrition and The Alliance for Eating Disorders.
What else can parents do?
There is no one size-fits-all answer because every kid and every situation is different. Depending on your own resources, your family’s specific needs, your relationship with the teacher, and so many other factors, this can go a lot of different ways.
One option is to observe your child and say nothing at all to the teacher, at least not yet (more on talking to your kids in a moment). A debate about whether chicken nuggets are a “healthy lunch” may not be the way you want to start off the year. And if it’s a one-off assignment that your child has already forgotten, it may not be the hill you want to die on. But if your child has ARFID or another feeding challenge, and nuggets are the only way your child can eat at school, then of course you’ll need to say something (more on handling eating disorders below).
If you get the sense that your child is taking these lessons to heart or that it’s going to be a months-long struggle to swim upstream against a teacher’s deeply held beliefs about food or weight, one of the best ways is to reach out to the teacher to ask for a few minutes to talk, ideally in person.
And when you do talk with the teacher, try to remember these three things: assume positive intent, focus on describing what you’re observing at home, and let the teacher have the first shot at proposing next steps.
The most important conversations happen with our kids
Our kids need to learn to recognize diet culture, to build their critical thinking skills, and to know they can talk to us about uncomfortable things. One of the silver linings of tricky school assignments is that they provide our own curriculum for parenting without diet culture.
So let’s say your kid comes home saying they “can’t eat dessert anymore because it’s unhealthy” or insisting they read every food label in the cupboard for an assignment.
Take a deep breath. And then approach with as much calm and genuine curiosity as you can muster. Some lines you might use during one of these conversations:
“Tell me more about that assignment.”
“What does ‘healthy’ mean to you?”
“In our family, we know that all foods fit. How do you want to handle this nutrition unit?”
“Why do you think some people recommend we limit certain foods or study labels?”
“Can you think of any foods that could be healthful for one person but not for another?”
But what if your child has an eating disorder?
If your child is in treatment for an eating disorder or in the early days of recovery, navigating diet culture at school is a different ballgame. Recovering from an eating disorder is hard enough. Having your trusted teacher accidentally reinforce your illness is the last thing you need.
For this reason, many families request their child be exempt—at least temporarily—from any assignments or activities that could aggravate their illness or increase their risk for relapse. In public school, this might look like putting together a 504 plan with the necessary accommodations or modifications.
When I work with families on developing their 504, there is often a moment when a parent will say, “You know. I really don’t think any kids should be doing some of these assignments.” What really breaks my heart is how often I hear parents say, “it was an assignment like this that started the whole thing.”
If your child is in an independent school that isn’t required to implement a 504, your best bet is to meet with an administrator and ask for their help navigating the curriculum land mines.
How can teachers cover the required curriculum without perpetuating diet culture?
If your child’s teacher asks you for some more resources (or if you’re an educator yourself), there are some great folks out there providing support for educators. I’ve gathered a few resources here that focus on providing realistic, practical alternatives to traditional nutrition assignments:
Resources for Educators:
Dietitians 4 Teachers by dietitian Gwen Kostal
Ditching Diet Culture at School by language arts teacher Cait O’Connor
Teacher’s Toolkit by nonprofit Be Real
Podcast about Weight-Neutral Schools featuring Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew
Podcast about Food Education featuring children’s education nutritionist and teacher Kelly Fullerton
Rethinking the way we talk about body size, nutrition, and health by health educator Drew Miller
The big picture
The way we tend to teach nutrition assumes children are empty vessels waiting for the sage on the stage to provide information. And voilà! Learning! But it doesn’t work that way for most of the things that matter.
Some of the deepest learning happens when children discover and create their own meaning and understanding (the fancy term for this theory of learning is “constructivism”). It’s why the “egg drop” challenge is so much more powerful than listening to lectures and memorizing physics formulas.
We know that making space for hands-on exploration and connecting content to personal experience is what helps kids engage with topics and build deeper learning. (Note to teachers: food diaries might seem like a way to personalize nutrition learning, but now you know the risks of those assignments.)
We can tap into kids’ natural curiosity about food without shaming a child’s way of eating or a family’s food culture. We can teach kids life skills around food, such as how to read a recipe and prepare a meal. We can ask students to describe what makes a meal satisfying—a great way to talk about macronutrients and nutritional variety with adolescents. We can discuss what can make eating pleasurable—a way to honor preferences and how our environment can affect our eating experience. We can teach kids to develop critical thinking skills so they can be savvy about diet culture and click-bait nutrition headlines. We can encourage kids to be skeptical of oversimplified, one-size-fits-all “solutions” to health risks that focus only on food restriction. We can build kids’ media literacy around messages from social media influencers and food marketers.
Food is cultural and deeply personal. And add in any number of special considerations (food allergies, eating disorders, GI conditions, physiological differences, etc.) and what makes sense for one kid doesn’t apply at all to another. One-size-fits-all lessons about nutrition just don’t make sense, and they can end up doing a lot of harm.
There are huge systemic forces contributing to diet culture in schools, and there is no quick fix. But starting conversations—with our kids, their teachers, and fellow parents—can begin to change our little corner of the culture.
PS: As I was about to hit “publish,”
’s latest Burnt Toast Guide to Diet Culture in Schools arrived in my in-box. It’s chock full of great resources!
I was an elementary school teacher and once I'd gone through my own learning about diet culture and disordered eating (through my own recovery with it) I can't stop seeing it everywhere at schools. Informally, as a substitute teacher I would visit various classes in different schools and almost all of them have some sort of "healthy snack" campaign. Or students are only allowed to eat during instructional time if it's "healthy". So many little things that add up. Formally, the curriculum here in Ontario dictates that we must teach the current nutrition recommendations of the government, so it is formally put into effect as well. It always ground my gears as a vegan who had to teach certain dietary practices I don't believe in anyway, but I'm legally obligated to do it.
Excelent! I am reading you from Argentina :)