It’s hard to know if a resource is okay to use and what’s not okay, and if we are totally honest teacher friends, we aren’t used to looking for this! You have million other things to look for and think about. Screening for diet culture is one.more.thing.
Your health and food lessons are only a tiny part of your year, but they have the potential to do some significant (unintended) harm. Let’s catch it, shall we?
It pops up in other lessons too! I’m looking at you, math and science. Feel free to use this for any lesson/activity.
Here’s what I suggest focussing on when scanning a document:
- Can you tell who made it?
- Spoiler alert. Even if it’s a reputable group/person, it can still be all kinds of harmful.
- Can you tell when it was made?
- A lot has changed in our understanding of food, bodies and health so our resources should too. Have you been using this one for “ever and ever?”. Time to switch things up!
- Does it contain unsafe or non-inclusive messages about food?
- What do I mean by this? Focusing on one what of eating, talking about good/bad foods (or any of the ways we split foods into two groups), references to some foods contributing to weight loss or gain. Talking about “healthy eating” and only showing vegetables and fruit. As a reminder, only eating fruit and vegetables is NOT a healthy eating pattern for anyone, but especially not kids.
- Does it contain unsafe or non-inclusive messages about bodies?
- Does it talk about health or weight in a way that prioritizes thin bodies? Does it reference bigger or fat bodies as the consequence of “bad” nutrition? Does it discuss food “fueling” activities only available to non-disabled students (i.e. running at recess)? Does it assume that thinness is what all of us want?
- Do the images show more than just veggies and thin bodies?
Why check your resources for diet culture messages?
- To keep kids safe
- To keep building your own awareness of diet culture.
- To remind yourself of what’s in here before you are plugging along, and oh darn… there it is.
- To invite pause ad reflection to allow intentional choices.
- To weed out pesky resources that probably deserved a trip to the bin in the late 90s.
If I find one I don’t love, do I have to ditch it? Maybe not!
In the resource I Included, it says “stop- don’t use,” but really that’s all that would fit on a stop sign. You have options!
- Leave out part of it (sharpies, photocopy with a sticky on top, white-out, remove a page)
- Keep it in and call attention to it – “Hmm, look at this. Does anyone have any good ideas of what we could write instead?” “Okay, everyone, grab your pencils, and if you could, please scratch out _____ and write this question instead! There! Much better!
But if in doubt, ditch it! Cleanse your google drive or resource binder, my friends.
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