Viva Vitality: A Healthy Relationship with Food

By Julia Rowland

A healthy relationship with food is a perspective on eating that includes physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual health around eating. Indicators of a healthy relationship with food include eating foods that fit a person’s spiritual or cultural need, eating foods without guilt or shame, eating with others, and choosing foods that provide the energy necessary for the day.

A healthy relationship with food is going to look different for each person, just like what, when, and where a person eats will look different for each person. Many factors influence eating such as culture, available money, daily activities, taste preferences, family dynamics, and more!

Current social norms tend to emphasize thinness, appearance, and shape of an individual. Have you seen a celebrity or influencer sell a certain tea/drink/food that helped them get a flat stomach? Or seen someone selling a protein powder or supplement that helped them grow their muscles? These are examples of how the culture and social norms are emphasizing people’s thinness, appearance, and shape. This can lead people to put these ideals above health. Beyond physical health, health includes dimensions such as spiritual, emotional, social, and mental. We can’t measure someone’s health, physical or otherwise, by their body size or weight, nor should we make assumptions about the health of ourselves or someone else based on the size of their body. When we focus too much on physical health and look to outcomes such as weight, health can get worse not better.

How can a person develop a healthy relationship with food?

Instead of looking to weight or size as an indicator of healthy eating try looking at these other dimensions of food to expand your food skills and lean into having a healthy relationship with food!

• Learn about where food comes from, how it gets to the grocery store, and how the agriculture system works.

• Learn how to cook a new dish or a new ingredient.

• Focus on eating a variety of different foods from all colours of the rainbow and food groups.

• Limit distractions like having the TV or a cellphone on at mealtimes.

• Eat with other people when possible.

And most importantly: choose foods that fit your budget, cultural preferences, taste preferences, and that fill you up so that you can enjoy food.

Julia Rowland is a Registered Dietitian with Alberta Health Services Nutrition Services.