A Brief History of Diet Culture and Eating Disorders

Trigger Warning: This article deals with difficult topics such as dieting and eating disorders.

Diet culture has undeniably intertwined with our society in America. It got to this point through centuries of growth, from the creation of the word “diet”, to the first diet influencer. 

The word “diet” stems from the Greek word “diaita,” which means a way of life, but its current meaning has shifted to weight loss and food restriction. The word’s first appearance in the English language was in the thirteenth century, and it meant “habitually taken food and drink.” This was until the nineteenth century when it took on the more modern definition of restricting (often dangerously) for the goal of weight loss and changing physical appearance. 

The Western diet culture that we know today also has significant roots in early Christian ideologies: The ideas of gluttony and regarding the body as “the enemy of the soul” grew in popularity after the establishment of Christendom, which is the collective culture and ministry of Christianity. These ideas formed many harmful diets based on religion, like Anorexia Mirabilis and asceticism, which then began the dangerous Western ideology of attributing morals to food (“good foods” versus “bad foods”). While Anorexia Mirabilis was extremely popular in the Middle Ages, the earliest recorded medical case of an eating disorder separate from religious hysteria or biological eating problems was in 1689 when Richard Morton described two cases of “nervous consumption.” 

During the French Revolution, in the late 18th century, Romanticism, a movement centered around the emphasis on personal expression and the rejection of neoclassicism, with significant art showing women falling and extremely ill. While this ideology was gaining traction, tuberculosis was killing thousands, and the disease conveniently became a source of inspiration in Romantic art and literature. The idea of tuberculosis symptoms (such as flushed cheeks and a skeletal figure) became fashionable. It became a “Romantic” disease, and the effects of this started to change the majority’s idea of the “ideal body type”. The body type based around Romanticism was the idea of looking extremely thin and sickly, as it was what tuberculosis did to the body. The ideal body types change constantly, but this one has had a detrimental impact on Western culture.

The continued creation of the diet culture we know today was massively impacted by the 1800s when the first diet influencer originated. Lord Byron, a sort of “celebrity” for his writing, became an influencer through his own diet, and several women died as a result of following his displayed actions. His diet consisted of drenching food in vinegar, eating magnesia, and smoking. He constantly spoke out against women, who, in his opinion, consistently ate “in excess.” While his actions were significantly drastic compared to current diet influencers, he still influenced many people and paved the way for the diet fads we now know. While these diet fads were originating, the term anorexia nervosa was coined in 1873, and was accepted as a psychological disorder shortly after.

In 1918, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters wrote a book called Dieting and Health: With Key to the Calories, which sold over two million copies. The book’s main premise was that being fat was sinful (a reference to early Christian ideologies). This was one of the first and most popular books that advised others to count calories, one of the most popular and destructive diet forms in current diet culture.

Along with several other books similar to Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters’, Hollywood began to promote slimness, and fat shaming became more popular and normalized in the 1920s. Then, in 1929, the Great Depression made people declare overindulgence insensitive as others were starving, so the demand for diets increased.

In the 1950s, waists got slimmer and diets got progressively more concerning as film stars like Elizabeth Taylor were praised for their hourglass body types, similar to current beauty standards. Ads for diet cures aired more and more on television. While these diets and workouts grew in popularity, anorexia nervosa was previewed in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) as the first eating disorder to be shown in the manual. 

While there were several cases of binging and vomiting that line up with our modern definition of bulimia nervosa before Gerald Russell, the first medical definition of bulimia nervosa was described in 1979 by Gerald Russell, and it was believed to be a variant of anorexia nervosa (which has since been disproved.)

In the 80s, as Jazzercise, Jane Fonda, and jean jackets began to grow in popularity, an estimated twenty-five million adults took up running during this iconic decade. Celebrities began to publicize their eating habits— Elizabeth Taylor wrote a book about her (extremely dangerous) weight loss, Liza Minelli did the Beverly Hills diet, and Oprah Winfrey pulled a wagon full of animal fat on live television in 1988, which represented the amount of weight she lost on a liquid diet. 

More and more questionable diet products became readily available in the 1990s at your local supermarket, like Atkins low-carb entrees, bulgar wheat, and quinoa. More workout products were advertised, the most famous being the 1994 “thigh master.” The majority of 90s diet fads were spin-offs of previous existing fads like the Atkins diet, the high-carb diet, and numerous others. 

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, diet culture had turned into American culture as a society. Tabloids shoved weight loss down the public’s throats, praising “weight loss journeys” and new diets every other week. Weight and food intake were once again attached to morality and value, referencing early Christian ideologies that have been crucial in the public’s idea of a “healthy” lifestyle.

And now, in the 2020s, we have not made much progress. Social media has multiplied the number of diet fads, but it has also multiplied the amount of information spread about harmful diets and eating disorders that go along with them. 

Throughout history, diets have evolved and will continue to do so. But will our culture ever outgrow the harmful diet culture we have today? The diet culture that is seen in today's society took centuries to cultivate and has changed the way people look at themselves and others, which I am no stranger to. 

My life has been significantly impacted by diet culture and an eating disorder. When I was younger, I was surrounded by an unhealthy diet culture that I still struggle to get away from. Food shaming, diet cupcakes (that taste disgusting), and weight loss apps plagued my mind for a significant portion of my life. It is no surprise that my entire life eventually devolved into an obsession with eating. These diets that are advertised seem great until you are losing your hair, dignity, and health– until you have lost your identity because your self-worth is attached to the scale. In a study of fourteen to fifteen-year-olds, the ones who dieted moderately were five times as likely to develop an eating disorder compared to their non-dieting peers, and those who restricted and dieted excessively were eighteen times more likely to develop an eating disorder. Is it really worth losing everything– possibly your life– to lose a few pounds? I would have said yes. When diet culture is a part of your everyday life, you do not consider the impacts of your decision to go on a diet. In order to escape this mindset, we have to work hard to dig out the toxic diet culture ideology from our lives.

By Caroline Lackey