How do you define a healthy relationship with food? It’s a core question, as you might want to cultivate that for your kids. What I notice is that often this definition goes in the direction of being in a relationship with so-called healthy foods – meaning we actively push exposure, and even intake of greens, proteins, and other foods you (not I 😇) label as healthy.
Just like one parent told me: ‘I need him to be exposed to veggies, because every time he’s not eating them, it’s a missed opportunity for a healthy relationship with food’. Another parent told me something that sounded completely different: ‘For me, it’s about balance, enjoy nice things while trusting your body, but don’t go over the top’. I understood exactly what both of them meant. And I recognized the good intentions behind both. It’s easy to recognize, because I was that mother 6 years ago. But paradoxically, as I can see now, my focussing so much on not messing up in the food domain was a symptom of something about my – let’s be real – messy relationship with food.
‘So you’re suggesting that I need to focus on my relationship with food too, Sofie?’ If what I write here feels like you, yes, even if that feels uncomfortable, unnecessary, and even off topic. Maybe especially if that feels uncomfortable, unnecessary, and even off topic. Many of us have done real healing from the diet culture we grew up with – unmasking it, then showing up differently around food. Or maybe you’re new at this. In any case, you may feel like you’re not eating as healthy as you’re supposed to – or your child isn’t. That feeling doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from diet culture – sneaky, sticky, always reinventing itself.
And its most dangerous disguise? The one that’s everywhere. So loud, so repeated by people you trust, that it starts sounding like fact. That’s exactly how diet culture hides in the name of health. Health has always been the joker card, the one that could override your own agency, your own body, your child’s cues – ‘for their own good’. Training yourself to see this disguise can save lives. After all, the rules of the dieting game change every time, auto-justifying themselves. But the underlying system is still the same as it was years ago – making you feel like food is meant to be categorized into either a good versus bad bucket, and based on that, making you feel like you need to find a way to expose, nudge, push, or bribe your child towards the ‘good’ foods.
I know this because I’ve done this. And I also see some of the most popular non-diet accounts on Instagram still doing it – they tell the same narrative with different words. They’ll prompt you to not say ‘cookies are bad’, but ‘cookies only do a few things in the body’, still degrading the cookie as an inferior food, labeling it as ‘it’s only energy’. I mean, providing energy is a good thing. It’s not a side note – it’s the whole foundation of nutrition. We need energy. Full stop.
It may look like a gentler approach – and yes, semantically, it’s so much more graceful to say ‘cookies just do a few things’ than ‘cookies are unhealthy’ – but both the message and the call to action are rooted in the same century-old good-versus-bad food thinking. So we just added more grace to the same old system. Which is annoying, because that makes it so hard to spot. Let’s make it ultra clear – anyone going in the direction of thinking that energy-rich foods ‘just’ do a few things still triggers disordered, low-carb, anti-beige eating – and normalizes it, ironically, all under the label of a non-diet, healthy-relationship account.
This isn’t a coincidence, or a personal failing of any one account or dietitian. Research on nutrition and dietetics students has found that a striking number show signs of orthorexia. I was one of them. I started my own training as a dietitian while orthorexic, deeply convinced that my rigid rules around food were the definition of healthy eating. Nobody around me flagged it, because nobody (including me) saw it. It looked like discipline, not disorder. It was my mission to cultivate a relationship with healthy food – which is paradoxically and fundamentally the opposite of a healthy relationship with food.
I understand you may feel confused. I am often too. But as I have learned over the years, confusion is my friend. Why? Because it is the enemy of my enemy – diet culture. And I say that as someone who is not immune to it either – non-diet dietitian or not. I’ve been a victim of it, more than once, and I still have to actively train myself to keep seeing it. That’s not a one-time unmasking. It’s a muscle.
‘Okay Sofie, got it, so what is that healthy relationship with food about?’ A healthy relationship with food is not about falling in love with healthy foods, or heightening the chances to do so. The goal of a healthy relationship with food is not about food, it’s about freedom. About not setting your child up to feel like food, and their bodies, should not be trusted. About not setting your child up for what I call a reactive choice, a choice that is not about food, but about the rules around food – either a rebellious reaction or a complying one. Neither of these is a free choice. Both are not between your child and that food, but a weird triangulation between your child, food, and the hidden voice making you – and your kiddo – overthink food or a disembodied way of eating. Both are a reaction to the system called Diet Culture Messing Up with Your Life and Choices.
Maybe it’s easier to define what an unhealthy relationship with food looks like than what a healthy one does. For me, it looks like any unhealthy relationship: a power game. A dynamic where you feel like you need to work hard, prove yourself, or earn your place – through eating the right things, saying no to the wrong things, feeling guilty when you don’t. Doing things you wouldn’t naturally do if the relationship was safe. This also means that we need to be safe around food.
Here’s the part that changed everything for me – food is always relational. And whether that relationship is healthy is not about their food choices. It’s about the dynamics. Think of it like this: if you want your daughter to grow into a good relationship one day, you don’t hand-pick a ‘good’ partner, train her on exactly what he should say or do, or insert yourself into the relationship once she’s found someone. Your job was never to manage her relationship. It was to show her, through your own life, what a good relationship can feel like – safe, honest, without conditions attached.
Food works the same way. What you’re shaping is your child’s sense of trust: in their body, in themselves, and in you as a feeder. And that trust gets built with any food, not just the ‘healthy’ ones. ‘So you mean that nutrition does not matter, Sofie?’ I never said that – we need nourishment, of course we do – but it’s just not the thing doing the relational work. As a parent, you’re structurally part of the picture – you decide what’s offered, when, and where, based on your child’s needs in the largest sense of the word. And of course your family has its own food culture – the meals you grew up with, what’s normal in your home, what your family eats and doesn’t, your own taste, your traditions. That’s real, and it’s yours to shape.
When I say the relationship is not about food, I mean it’s not about which specific foods are on the table. It’s about your relationship to whatever is on that table – any food, any choice, any culture – not the content of the plate itself. Actually, that’s the whole point! A healthy relationship means you feel comfortable around food, all foods, not just the healthy or right ones. So when you think you need the ‘right’ foods to shape that relationship, you’re putting that healthy relationship at risk.
Showing up as a parent with a good relationship with food may be one of the healthiest things we can do for our kids. Kids learn more from our actions than from our words. And true, we can’t control every disruptive influence on a child’s relationship with food. But you are your child’s most influential influencer.
I truly hope this empowers you, but I’ll be honest with you too: working on our relationship with food might feel less exciting than making veggies in the shape of a heart or remembering that script about cookies. It’s slower, quieter, less Instagram-able. But I can promise you, it’s oh so worth it.
If this resonated, I’d love to hear where your family is at right now. I’m doing a bit of research to shape what comes next – a short survey, and everyone who fills it in by August 2 (midnight) can win a free 1-1 session with me. Of course you can also fill it in anonymously! It’d mean a lot to read your take on things!
