In today’s media landscape, there are constant and ongoing food trends, with each influencer telling us what the next best health food is, whether it is going gluten-free, dairy-free, eating no seed oils, or being vegan. The food trend one chooses to follow is never “clean” enough because of how the media shapes it. In this op-ed, I will argue that the media’s constantly shifting views of what foods count as “healthy” in the media are unrealistic and deeply influenced by the corrupt food system, and that this uncertainty causes negative body image and food issues.
Dietary health issues have caused me to be gluten and dairy-free since I was fifteen years old. In the US, being gluten-free is seen as being healthy. Over the years, I have had to fight the urge not to feed into the fad trend of eating healthy to stay skinny, but to eat healthy to stay nourished. People’s mindsets are constantly influenced by the media’s interpretation of body image, and we have not begun to realize until recently that food is not the problem; the ingredients are. Lots of gluten-free individuals are able to eat the bread in Italy. Vitina Feo from Papa Vince found that Italy respects their wheat process much more than the States because they do not process it with sulfites, bleaching, unnatural levain, etc. The processed additives in wheat are what cause so many people to have issues that aren’t directly caused by gluten itself. If this is found in wheat, then what can we infer about how other additives in our food are altered and processed? This point also brings awareness to how the media shapes our perceptions of these foods, and how often food trends are promoted, rather than what is healthy.
Fad diets have reoccurred over decades, the point of these diets being that what you are doing for your health is not enough. Every few years, a new food trend in the media arises. In 2020, during COVID-19, the food trend was from fitness influencers hitting their protein goal, even if it was through unhealthy means of protein. By unhealthy proteins, I mean protein powders, protein chips, protein bars, etc. that were marketed as good for you, but in reality are full of additives that ironically harm your gut. Fast forward to 2024-2025, we have seen an increase in people caring about their gut health because of how much it is talked about and marketed in the media. Society is influenced by the food products displayed in the media, just because they are portrayed as healthy. You can still follow food trends whether that is for a healthy gut or focusing on a protein goal, but you must also not just rely on a specific food because the media tells you it is good for you. While all of these influencers are telling you to focus on protein to lose weight, what they will not say is that excess protein leads to bloating, which may lead to a negative body image.
The media makes obesity out to have a strong correlation with overeating; however, Anna Lamb from the Harvard Gazette found that obesity and the rise in disease in the U.S. are linked to overconsumption of ultra-processed foods. This research points out how weight has everything to do with the ingredients in our food, rather than how much food we eat. More than half of the ingredients we put in our foods are banned in the EU because they contain chemicals that harm us. Alana Semual from Times magazine pointed out how potassium bromate is banned in the U.K. and many other countries because it has been linked to cancers in humans and gut problems. No matter what food trend the next best health influencer is telling you to follow, you will never be able to live up to it, because every day, people keep learning more and more about how corrupt our food system is.
Ultimately, uneducated influencers who promote food trends are not making you healthy; they are doing the opposite. Our health narratives are shaped around the media’s narrative and by a corrupt food system. As more people realize the consequences of ultra-processed ingredients, it leads them to understand how they contribute to their body image issues. The media has started to promote foods that contain fewer additives and more whole ingredients, and it is time that, as a society, we stop taking advice from uneducated influencers, and seek out valuable nutritional advice from health workers, not the media.