Dietitians against extreme diets on TikTok: “To feel good you need to eat”

Nutritionists, dieticians and dieticians on TikTok in protest against influencers, models and actresses who flaunt perfect physiques as a testimony of good health: Enough! By not chasing thinness at all costs you are necessarily fine. This was reported by CNN according to which the number of food professionals who urge a significant increase be wary of unbalanced diets. Those aimed at achieving small sizes and which, for this reason, would force people to drastic food restrictions.
The recommendation always one: when you want to undertake a diet, you must always consult a specialist. He will make the necessary assessments and cut it to the patient’s size, taking into account age, sex, any existing pathologies, intolerances and / or allergies, lifestyle in general, and wishes.

More than due recommendation considered the audience of the social network in question: mostly children and young people with age included between 16 and 24 years, even if it is also, and above all, the very young who benefit from the platform. The concern that certain messages may have a psychologically negative impact, with dramatic drifts in terms of eating disorders, a lot. It is urgent to do something. And if some aim to demonstrate that boasted perfection, in general, is the result of strategic poses, photographic tricks or filters, others rely on scientific studies. And they warn against dangerous weight loss with all in all well-known advice. Flag on social media, with the authority of those who chew the materialthey have for another take.

The protest of dieticians on TokTok, the testimonies

Sarah Williams

American dietician, creator and editor of the app Nutritionalsarah, CNN reports, argues that many of the workout addicts are the first to demonize food. And he never misses an opportunity to point out that the distinction between good and bad foods is not so sustainable. What matters, on the table, are just in case the variety of foods and the balance of nutrients consumed. If you get used to eating always different foods and in a balanced way, you can also afford the cheat, without obsessions.

To echo her Sam Previtecolleague and founder of Find Food Freedom, which brings another theme to the table. According to him, those who feel guilty about food can also eat properly, but it will be completely useless because that sense of guilt psychologically destined to leave its mark. Thus there is the restriction which, the more mortifying and prolonged, the more it harms the organism.

Steph Grasso: As a dietician I am against diets. Here’s why

According to CNN, for years many nutrition specialists have supported the idea of intuitive nutrition, based more on listening to the body’s wishes than on correct dietary rules. In other words, according to some dieticians, being indulgent with ourselves and enjoying the food we eat would not only be fun, but more functional.
Thus a vicious circle is created – it disassembles Steph Grasso —. I eat what I like and how I like, so then I start to stick. I lose weight and start eating again, always as I like. And I’m full stop. That is why the diet industry, which multimiliardaria, is so successful: people follow them, fail and come back to follow them. As a dietician, I am paradoxically anti-diet, where diets are unregulated, fast and trendy.

In this regard, according to a study dated 2017, a drastic weight loss usually followed by a new increase. On the contrary, slow and well thought out slimming is more successful. My recommendation, based on this research, is to try to build a habit of healthy and consistent eating, argues Emily Feigamong the authors of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital. This would reduce the so-called yo-yo effect and help patients lose kilograms more consistently, albeit at a slow pace. For Steph Grasso we need to make gradual changes, always putting new foods on the table. also a question of culture. Here, that’s exactly what I would like: to make people understand how wonderful food culture is. And how much taste it can add to our psycho and physical well-being.

Extreme diets and eating disorders, the WSJ investigation

That diets and weight loss ends in themselves could cause disturbances in the very young users of TikTok had already reported, last March, the Wall Street Journal (and even before the Guardian). An investigation conducted by the international newspaper had focused on the disturbing trend of drastic diets among the youngest, victims, as a consequence of this, of food pathologies that are harmful to health.
Thanks to the creation of a hundred fake accounts, some journalists of the newspaper have come to discover that the TikTok algorithm, in the For you section, preferred videos aimed at weight loss.
At the conclusion of the study, of the approximately 255,000 videos that artificial intelligence had examined, 32,700 contained descriptions or metadata corresponding to about a hundred key words related to weight loss. Of these, 11,615 videos contained keywords relevant to eating disorders, while 4,402 had a combination of keywords that cleared them, passing them off as normal.

There is more: in order not to be banned from the social, the descriptions of some contents used deceptive tricks. For example, some keywords related to eating disorders featured numbers or asterisks in place of a few letters. To the WSJ investigation, TikTok replied that it was working to allow users a safe use of the social network and its contents: the idea was to develop a video content recognition strategy that they may not violate TikTok’s policies, but could be harmful if over-looked; in addition, we think of a tool that allows users (or their parents, in case of use of the social network by minors) to prevent videos containing certain words or hashtags from being displayed in the For You section.

Although the experiment conducted by the Wall Street Journal does not reflect the experience that most people have on TikTok – the spokesperson for TikTok had pointed out -, a person who must have that experience however one person too many. We allow the use of educational or recovery-oriented content because we understand that it can help people see that there is hope, but contents that promote, normalize or glorify disordered eatingare and will continue to be prohibited.