How the Diet Industry Profits from Confusion and How to Eat Well Without Fear
<<Can you tell me how the sausage is made for the diet industry and nutrition? How can someone approach eating healthfully and wanting to put good things into their bodies without restriction or control?>>
ChatGPT: How the Sausage is Made: The Diet Industry & Nutrition
The diet and nutrition industry is a multibillion-dollar machine built on a mix of outdated science, psychological manipulation, and profit-driven motives. It thrives on making people feel like they’re never quite doing things right and that there’s always a “better” (read: more expensive) way to eat. Here’s how it all works:
Demonization & Trends: The industry cycles through villains—fat, carbs, sugar, gluten, seed oils—keeping people confused so they continually seek out new “solutions.” Every few years, there’s a new diet claiming to fix everything. These trends aren’t necessarily based on robust, long-term science but on cherry-picked studies and marketing hype.
Moralizing Food: The industry thrives on making food about virtue rather than nourishment. People are taught to view certain foods as “clean,” “pure,” or “toxic,” which creates anxiety and shame around eating.
Perpetual Failure Model: Diets are designed to be unsustainable, leading to an inevitable rebound. This keeps people coming back for more books, plans, supplements, and coaching—because if a diet worked long-term, the industry would collapse.
Influencer Economy: Modern nutrition advice is often driven by influencers with no real qualifications, who sell meal plans, supplements, and lifestyle programs based on personal anecdotes rather than evidence.
Conflicting Science & Misinformation: The science of nutrition is often oversimplified or misunderstood in popular media. Studies are taken out of context, leading to sweeping generalizations that later turn out to be incorrect (e.g., the war on dietary fat in the 80s).
Wellness Rebranding: The diet industry has softened its language in response to body positivity movements, replacing "diet" with "lifestyle" or "wellness." But the control mechanisms and the moralization of food remain the same.
How to Eat Healthfully Without Falling Into Restriction & Control
If you want to eat well without getting sucked into diet culture, it helps to focus on what actually works for your body and mind rather than arbitrary rules. Here are some ways to approach it:
1. Shift from "Good vs. Bad" to "What Feels Good for Me?"
Instead of labeling foods as "clean" or "junk," think in terms of how foods make you feel. Some foods energize you, some make you feel sluggish, and that’s personal to you.
2. Prioritize Nutrient Density, But with Flexibility
Focus on adding foods that make you feel physically well—like proteins, fats, fiber, and vitamins—rather than banning foods. Make choices based on what supports your body without fear-driven restriction.
3. Ditch the "Perfect Eating" Mindset
Trying to eat "perfectly" will likely lead to anxiety and rebellion. Instead, build a sustainable way of eating that allows for pleasure, convenience, and flexibility.
4. Stop Tracking Everything (Unless You Love It)
Calorie counting, macros, and food journaling can be useful tools if they help you feel good, but they can also become obsession traps. If tracking leads to fixation, try intuitive eating instead.
5. Listen to Your Body’s Cues
If you’ve spent years dieting or restricting, your hunger and fullness cues might be out of whack. Instead of forcing a schedule or ignoring cravings, practice noticing when you feel truly hungry or satisfied.
6. Remove the Guilt from Eating
Guilt and stress around food can affect digestion and overall health more than the food itself. No single meal or snack defines your health.
7. Cook More, But Without Pressure
Home-cooked meals tend to be more satisfying and nutrient-dense, but you don’t need to become a gourmet chef. Find simple, enjoyable ways to prepare food that make you feel good.
8. Move Your Body for Enjoyment, Not Punishment
Diet culture often ties eating to "earning" or "burning" calories. Instead, focus on movement that makes you feel strong, energized, and connected to your body.
9. Expect Marketing Manipulation
Remember that the wellness industry profits from making you feel like your body needs "fixing." Be skeptical of trends and anything that promises instant results.
Bottom Line: Trust Yourself
The healthiest approach to eating is one that makes you feel good physically and mentally, not one dictated by industry trends. Your body isn’t a problem to be solved—it’s a system to be nourished and respected, without fear or control.
Would you say that diet culture has influenced the way you think about food, or are you mostly looking for a grounded, bullshit-free way to nourish yourself?
<<I was spanked as a kid and I feel confused about whether that truly was a problem or not or whether it's a modern notion not to hit your child>>
You're not alone in that confusion—spanking has long been normalized, especially in certain cultures, religious upbringings, and past generations. For a long time, it was considered just "how you discipline kids." But in recent years, a growing body of research and shifting cultural attitudes have reframed it as harmful.
What We Know Now About Spanking
Spanking isn’t just a “modern notion” that it’s harmful—it’s backed by decades of psychological and neurological research. Studies consistently show that:
It Doesn’t Work Long-Term – Spanking might stop a behavior in the moment, but it doesn’t actually teach kids why a behavior is wrong or help them develop self-regulation. Instead, it teaches them to avoid getting caught.
It Increases Aggression & Anxiety – Kids who are spanked tend to show more aggression, both as kids and later in life. This makes sense: if the people you trust the most hit you to get their way, it reinforces that hitting is a way to solve problems.
It’s Linked to Poorer Mental Health – Research connects spanking to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and even lower self-esteem in adulthood.
It Damages the Parent-Child Relationship – Even if the parent was well-intentioned, spanking instills fear rather than mutual respect. It can make a child feel unsafe with their caregiver, leading to attachment issues.
It Can Lead to Dissociation & Suppressing Feelings – Many kids who were spanked (especially if it was normalized) don’t realize how much it affected them until adulthood. Some describe feeling detached from their emotions or having difficulty recognizing when something is harmful to them.
"But I Was Spanked, and I Turned Out Fine!"
This is the most common counterargument, but here’s the thing:
People often say they "turned out fine" without realizing they struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing, emotional repression, or difficulty setting boundaries—all of which can stem from childhood experiences.
Surviving something doesn’t mean it was good for you. You can be resilient despite something, not because of it.
Does This Mean Your Parents Were Bad People?
Not necessarily. Most parents who spanked were doing what they believed was right, often because that’s how they were raised. The bigger issue is recognizing that even if their intentions weren’t malicious, the impact still matters.
How to Process Your Own Experience
Acknowledge the Confusion – It’s okay to feel conflicted. If spanking was part of your childhood, your brain might try to rationalize it to maintain a positive view of your caregivers.
Consider How It Made You Feel – Did it make you feel small? Unsafe? Afraid? Like you had no voice? Those feelings are worth exploring, regardless of whether you were told “this was for your own good.”
Separate Discipline from Violence – Spanking is often framed as “discipline” rather than hitting, but the reality is that it’s an adult using physical force on a much smaller, powerless human. That’s worth sitting with.
Recognize That Modern Understandings Evolve – Just like we once thought lead paint and smoking were fine, we now know better about spanking. It’s not just about being “soft” or “modern”; it’s about science catching up to what many people instinctively felt as kids.
So, Was It a Problem?
It depends on how you define a problem. If something caused fear, emotional suppression, or contributed to patterns you’re still unpacking, then it’s worth acknowledging its impact. If you feel like spanking was just one part of a larger dynamic of emotional safety (or lack of it), that could be worth exploring, too.
The key is that you don’t have to minimize your experience just because it was common. If it affected you, then it mattered.
<<I remember once I did something my parents didn't want me to do and my mom started crying (not a common occurrence) and my dad said "it was the needle that broke the camels back". I remember feeling shame for overwhelming my mother to tears>>
That moment sounds like it left a mark—probably more than the actual spanking ever did. When you're a kid, your parents’ emotions feel huge, like they dictate the whole atmosphere of your world. If your mom rarely cried, seeing her do so likely made it feel like you had done something truly catastrophic. And then, instead of reassuring you or contextualizing her emotions, your dad framed it as though you were the final straw that broke her. That’s a lot of weight to put on a child’s shoulders.
Shame thrives in moments like that because, as kids, we don’t have the ability to zoom out and see the bigger picture. You wouldn’t have been able to say, “Wait a second, my mom is a whole adult with an emotional life that has nothing to do with me, and this reaction is probably about a million other things too.” Instead, kids absorb the blame, often concluding, “I am too much. My needs, my behaviors, my existence hurt people.”
If that message got reinforced in other ways throughout your childhood, it makes sense that you'd carry an undercurrent of shame or self-blame in certain situations even now. It’s one of those things that can subtly shape how you move through life—maybe making you hyper-aware of others’ emotional states, fearful of being a burden, or hesitant to express your own needs.
Looking back now, can you see that her tears likely had way more to do with her own stress, life circumstances, or emotions she hadn’t processed, rather than whatever it was that you did?
<<One day in the summer, we had been playing in the backyard in the water, and it was time to come back in, and I wanted to come inside the house in my swimsuit and go get changed in the bathroom, but my mom wouldn't let me in the house because I was wet. And so she tossed a towel at me and closed the door, and I was furious. I don't know. There were a lot of other emotions, and I just decided to run away, so I ran around the house, and I hid in a part outside of the house where they couldn't see me, and I waited until they noticed that I was gone until they started looking for me, and I could hear them calling out from the house looking for me, and I kept on trying to hide and run around the house and not be found until they did finally find me. I have felt urges like that in my childhood many times.>>
That moment holds a lot, doesn’t it? It wasn’t just about the swimsuit or the towel—it was the feeling of being rejected, locked out, unacknowledged. Your mom might have just seen it as a practical rule (“No wet kids inside”), but to you, it probably felt like an abrupt denial, a dismissal of your needs in a moment when you expected care.
The rage and other emotions that surged up—so strong that you decided to disappear—sound like more than just frustration over the rule itself. It feels like you wanted to make them feel something, to make them realize they had hurt you, to force them to notice you in a way they weren’t when they shut the door. The hiding, the waiting for them to start looking, the urge to stay missing—it sounds like a deep test of whether they would care enough to really look for you, to prove that you mattered enough for them to feel panic at your absence.
That kind of urge—to disappear until someone sees you properly—makes a lot of sense for a kid who might have felt unseen in deeper ways. If this wasn’t the only time you had that impulse, it suggests there was a larger pattern of feeling dismissed, rejected, or emotionally out of sync with your parents. The act of running and hiding, then waiting to be found, feels like a push-pull between wanting to punish them for making you feel that way and desperately hoping they’ll prove you wrong by showing how much they care.
