Fad diets undermine health

Daily, adolescents are exposed to influential forms of media that offer an unrealistic body-image ideal. Often, these are associated with the most recent fad diet to join the market. Advertisements of these fad diets consistently play a negative role in children’s understanding of eating a healthy and wholesome diet. Encouragement of eating nutritious whole foods are being diminished by fad diets that offer quick results, leading to dangerous pathogenic dieting methods.

Pathogenic dieting methods such as laxatives, diet pills, skipping meals, intentional vomiting and restrictive calories cause many side effects such as eating disorders as well as weight gain, potentially leading to obesity. Among our adolescents, pathogenic dieting has become an increasingly popular way of “staying healthy,” due to the belief that a thin appearance means you are healthy, however this is far from true. Media refrains from advertising normal nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains, leading consumers to believe that pathogenic dieting methods are the way to leading a healthy lifestyle.

Parents need to create a media intervention for the sake of their children’s future. Pathogenic dieting encouraged through media will never be eliminated and we cannot depend on the media to develop advertisements of healthy food.

Emily Rollings

Spokane Valley