Health shaming: the social stigma of eating healthy
I think I’ve said this line more than a thousand times the last 10 years. It follows the question: ‘why don’t you eat meat (or cake or dairy or processed foods or junk food, etc)’. I usually take a deep breath, take the emotional hurdle that’s still there and say: ‘In 2009, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a chronic autoimmune disease that disables the nervous system. To not wind up in a wheelchair, I stopped eating saturated fats and refined oils, meat and anything with milk protein in it.’ — I exhale.
I basically eat a whole food plant based diet with fish. It’s maybe the healthiest diet in the world and helped me overcome my MS and because of it I’m confronted with the social stigma surrounding a healthy diet. I’m getting covertly health shamed by dairy lovers, the French and my (former) neurologist.
1# Dairy lovers
The first person I informed of my diagnosis was my father. He was set back a little to the say the least. Luckily, my message also carried some hope with it: ‘I have Multiple Sclerosis, but if I follow this diet the disease will settle down’. My father read up about my new lifestyle and got back to me with the reassuring words: ‘seems valid’. In the years that followed he managed to cook for me accordingly: tasty and fat free. But as time went by, he started to offer me cake now and then, pastries at tea time and what not. I let it pass, not wanting to insult him. Still naively my belief that he knew remained unchallenged. Until recently that is. When visiting, I asked him what’s for dinner. ‘fish with avocado salad’ he replied. Great! However, I got a little suspicious when I saw him passionately stirring Greek yogurt into the salad. The following dialogue unfolded:
‘Dad, I don’t eat yogurt. I thought you knew that’.
‘But it’s healthy; it’s full fat’
‘…’
I felt bad telling my father that I don’t eat yogurt, that I ate healthy. But how come my dad forgot in the first place?
Two things are at play here. Of course, as time went by and I wasn’t showing any signs of MS anymore, he just wasn’t reminded about my disease. It kind of became a non topic to me as well. On top of that the fact or rather belief that (over) consumption of dairy promotes good health has been present in the Netherlands (where I grew up) since 1934. Promotional campaigns, mostly targeting children, have had their effect over the course over generations. My grandfather, born in 1923, was exposed to propaganda linking milk and good health starting age 11; my father, born 1948, was influenced by the campaign ‘3 pints a day’ and of course his father’s beliefs about milk, so no wonder he opted for school milk subsidised by the European Community when I started to attend school in the 1980’s. We are indoctrinated that 3 pints of milk a day, keeps the doctor away. So my dad just switched to his regular belief system after ‘forgetting’ about my MS diet.
2# The French
Eating cakes, candy and other savories is intertwined with memories from our childhood. Take for example Marcel Proust’s novel In Search Of Lost Time in which the narrator involuntarily recalls an episode from his youth after dipping a madeleine in his tea and taking a bite of it. We have an emotional bond with sweets; we were rewarded with candy when we were good, we received biscuits and cookies when were having tea at our grandparents, when we ate cake on our birthdays, at our wedding, even at funerals every country has its own dish. When we think about pastries we think emotionally, not logically. We think about all those other times we ate cake, not about our daily calorie intake that just doubled, all the trans fats we are eating, the sugar rush we’ll have and the low afterwards, our arteries clogging up, the skin rash we will have and the cavities in our teeth down the road. We just think about the joy sweets give us and that we can share with others.
I am not part of that joy. Of course, when it’s my birthday I make sure there’s MS friendly cake and other great and healthy treats. Nonetheless, when somebody has their birthday at work, there’s no joy for me. While people are feasting on the cake, revelling in past emotions like the narrator In Search Of Lost Time and sharing how good it is, I feel more like Rémi in that other popular French novel with the self-explanatory title Alone in the World by famous novelist Hector Malot. While feeling excluded, unable to engage in cake conversation, people start to inquire when they see me ‘cake less’:
‘You’re not having cake? Did you miss your turn?’
‘No, I don’t eat cake…’
‘Oh my god, why?!?’
‘Um, I have some allergies.’
‘Oh, but it’s soooo good. I couldn’t imagine living without cake.’
‘Ya…’
It’s one of those times that I feel (a)shamed for eating healthy.
3# The neurologist
After I was informed that MS was suspected, I started to research online like crazy. It was only when a colleague told me about a diet that benefited an old friend with MS that I started to get on the right track. It turned out that renowned scientific journal The Lancet had published an article by a Canadian neurologist named Roy Swank, who in 1990 reported on 144 multiple sclerosis patients that had been on a low-fat diet for 34 years. Of those patients who started the diet with minimum disability at the beginning of the trial, 95% survived and remained physically active (excluding those who died from non-MS diseases). More than ten years later, Swank’s findings were rediscovered by Australian MD George Jelinek, who was busy with a meta-analysis of 20.000 scientific articles after he was diagnosed with MS himself. Departing from Swank, Jelinek arrived at the overcoming multiple sclerosis lifestyle that focuses on diet, regular exercise, stress relief, and getting enough vitamin D3 (from supplements or sun light). Furthermore, he doesn’t exclude medication, while at the same time pointing out that up until now drugs have only relieved the symptoms of MS, but not the physical and cognitive decline that comes along with it.
I was well on my way with my new healthy diet when I received the definitive diagnoses from my neurologist in the Dutch National MS Centre, after a spinal tap, MRI and a series of other tests. My neurologist, a renowned university professor, was surprised to say the least when I told him I would refrain from taking medication for a year while I see if this ‘diet’ would have any effect. My decision was not only influenced by the positive effects a lifestyle change would have after 9- 12 months, but also by the fact that the medication at that time would only start working after 6 months, only reduced symptoms and had severe side effects. However, the conversation with my neurologist did not go as I had planned. As soon as he heard the word ‘diet’ he added ‘not proven’. I referred to Swank’s article in The Lancet (to no avail), to Jelinek’s holistic approach and later research (which fell on deaf ears). I understood then that not proven didn’t mean disproven. It meant: I never read anything about this and what I don’t know, does not exist to me (but still I have an opinion about it). It was great health advice to hear from my MD: eating healthy does not affect your health.
I once read an article along the lines of ‘ten situations when you were fat shaming and didn’t know it’. It was about how we unconsciously make fat people feel bad about themselves. I wonder how many people have been health shaming and didn’t even know it.
Read more
Multiple Sclerosis? You can do this! Overcoming multiple sclerosis in practice
Multiple Sklerose? Du schaffst das! Überwinde Multiple Sklerose im Alltag
