Have we started fearing food?

What you can expect in this blog?

This blog about food does not dive into the technicalities of macros or micronutrients.
Instead, it focuses on something equally important the mindset behind our growing fear of food, and how we now choose “healthy food” more out of anxiety than understanding.

This blog also talks about the growing craze of fad diets and how we unknowingly punish ourselves in the name of health. I’ve touched upon how easy it is to fall for overwhelming, often contradictory content on social media about dieting and “eating right.”

What is all this fuzz about dieting? 

Personally, I feel that most of us didn’t start dieting to be healthy but we started because we were scared. At some point, eating stopped being instinctive and started feeling like a moral decision.

Have we forgotten the times when we ate without worrying about calories? Without stressing over how many grams we were eating, or whether that food was “good” or “bad” for every organ in our body?

Carbohydrates are labelled “bad,” fats are “dangerous,” sugar has turned into a villain  and suddenly, every meal needs justification.

This obsession with dieting didn’t appear overnight. It grew out of a culture that glorifies quick results, aesthetic bodies, and instant transformations.

Social media constantly feeds us before-and-after pictures. Influencers sell “secret formulas.” Diet plans promise control, discipline, and self-worth, all wrapped in attractive labels like clean, detox, or fat-burning.

Restriction starts looking like discipline until it starts breaking people.

What about Fad diets? 

Fad diets are something that are short lived, promises weight loss and nudges health benefits without a backing scientific evidence . It's basically a crash diet which is not sustainable.

Before diving into the topic, lets remember this : Quick results often come with long-term costs.

Today, fad diets thrive, not because they promote health, but because they simplify a very complex subject and make it look easy. They sell certainty, not sustainability.

Instead of educating people on how food actually works, fear is created and fear makes people cling to extreme solutions. To be honest, blindly following fad diets does more harm than good. The idea isn’t to stop eating or to label foods as forbidden. 

Yes, even sugar doesn’t need to be demonised.

Most fad diets work on one core idea is to eliminate an entire food group and call it discipline.
Hunger becomes productivity and discomfort is mistaken for progress.

 For example : 

1. Keto - carbs are completely eliminated.

2. Blood type diet - Eat foods only based on your blood type

3. Detox or cleanses  - only liquids/juices to cleanse the toxins 

Sometimes, we believe the hardest path must be the most effective one, when in reality, the smartest path is often the most sustainable.

Many fad diets do show short-term progress mainly due to calorie restriction but they rarely teach nourishment, balance, or long-term health.

Note : What often goes unnoticed in all these, is the psychological cost. Constantly labelling foods as 'good' or 'bad' creates guilt, anxiety, and a broken relationship with eating. 

So if fad diets are not to be followed, then what has to be followed is the question.
Let's shift our focus to the simplicity of food, without drowning ourselves in technical jargon.

What to and how to eat ?

Sometimes, the answer is simpler than we think.

Eat healthfully, mindfully, and happily.
Eat the foods you enjoy but know where to draw the line.

The real intelligence lies in knowing how much pickle to eat and how much rice and dal to eat. They are not interchangeable but both can coexist.

Traditionally, our eating patterns were naturally balanced:

• A majority of energy-giving foods (60 percentage: carbs)

• A good portion of fibrous, vitamin- and mineral-rich foods (20 percentage: vegetables and fats)

• And some body-building foods (another 20 percentage : protein)

All of this assumes, one important thing that we remain active most of the time.

No food is inherently 'good' or 'bad'. Eat all that you like. Eat the food that you grew up with. Eat the food that you don't get to devour at home occasionally. Eat that food that is locally grown.

You can eat whatever you like, the real question is always 'how much?'

How much to eat ?

The key lies in not overeating.

When I say “eat everything,” there’s an important condition attached:
Eat only as much as you need and as much as your body can comfortably handle.

Overeating is the real problem.
Not carbs. Not fats. Not sugar.
So when you eat more than what you want or more than your body can digest, you store it as fat. It neither gives you the extra nutritional benefit nor happiness. 

Even the world's most healthiest food, eaten in too much quantities will not benefit you in any way and ends up sitting as fat in your body. So be it oranges or burgers, have it mindfully.

Appreciate the abundance of food around you but consume only what truly serves you.

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Gone are the days when we lived in stone age, with no guarantee of the next meal and the tendency to overeat in order to build fat reserves. 

Even if we ended up sleeping on an empty stomach, those reserves kept us going . Also if you pay attention to these words, you might notice that restriction or avoidance often leads to overeating. 

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Tips:

Don’t obsess over results, goal weight, ideal size, or timelines.

If you focus on the process, results follow naturally.

Almost anything becomes achievable when you enjoy the process instead of constantly worrying about the outcome.

Next Up:

I will talk about the technicality of each food group, how it works and how the myths are linked to them