The pandemic should have led to an understanding of how stress affects our eating, but we’re still captured by diet culture
I sort of imagined myself coming out of lockdown like a phoenix rising from the ashes: slim, well-rested, healthy, glowing – my most beautiful self, essentially. Instead, I have wild, almost waist-length hair and a cat on a harness (you can’t choose your destiny, and mine seems to be witch). This past year, people have been very keen to tell us that being alive is enough, and it is, of course it is. Nevertheless, detaching that thought from certain beliefs embedded over a lifetime – that your body must always, always be a project for improvement – is a challenge.
The government’s new resolution to put calories on menus means that when I go to eat in a restaurant I will be confronted by the stark reality of my eating choices, and my response will be, “Mate. Do you think I didn’t know?” Like that toddler who could identify composers by ear, I know the calorie counts for everything, but instead of Shostakovich, it’s sausages. It makes me a bit sad, this space in my brain that has been captured by diet culture instead of, I don’t know, poetry, or theoretical physics. I’m an expert in string cheese theory.
