by What is your relationship with food these days? For many of us, the honest answer is “it’s complicated.” Maybe you eat more stress than you would like to admit or you are always on the latest diet. Maybe you spend too much mental energy on food and have the horrible feeling that it’s supposed to be, well, easier.
If you’re looking for a reset, maybe start with some reading – we’re looking forward to books about food and body. We asked nine experts in psychology, nutrition and body image for their recommendations. These options will help you understand why many of us relate to food the way we do, and how we can think about healthier food.
Most of the practitioners we consulted cited this Bible in relation to intuitive eating. “It’s a classic for a reason,” said Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian and author of the podcast “Rethinking Wellness.”
The authors are dietitians with a bold claim: We are all born knowing how to feed ourselves, and we get into trouble when we start trusting the voices around us instead of our bodies. They walk readers through the unlearning process of “dieting mindset” and reconnecting with their internal cues about hunger and satisfaction.
Although intuitive eating is well-known today, the book was highly controversial when it was first published in 1995, said Shelly Russell-Mayhew, psychology professor and director of the Body Image Research Lab at the University of Calgary.
Part intuitive eating guide, part cookbook, “Gentle Nutrition” teaches readers to care for their bodies through nutrition that strict rules or dietary dogma. “This is one of the few nutrition books I can recommend with confidence,” said Alissa Rumsey, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating consultant.
“It’s full of accessible information about health and nutrition science,” said Ms. Rumsey with it, along with 50 nutritious recipes – without calorie counts or restrictive ingredient lists.
In this practical follow-up to “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” journalist Michael Pollan expands on his nutrition mantra: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” He also makes an elegant critique of “nutrition,” or the widely accepted modern notion that the value of food can be reduced to its nutrients.
That mechanistic view of food is what keeps so many of us confused about what to eat, said Christopher Gardner, a nutrition researcher and professor of medicine at Stanford University. Pollan’s book points out that there are flaws in this approach and promotes a way of eating where we are not “at the mercy” of complicated diets and conflicting headlines, said Dr. Gardner.
Four of our experts have endorsed this accessible academic title by sociologist Sabrina Strings; The book “artfully traces the history of fatphobia and its intersections with anti-Black racism,” said Alexis Conason, a clinical psychologist and board-certified specialist in eating disorders.
Dr. Strings a much cited case that modern society’s idolization of thinness is less rooted in medical science than in racial ideas born during the Enlightenment. “Spoiler alert: It’s not all about health,” said Dr. Conason.
The best-selling anthology from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (and former Times investigative reporter) reveals how the processed food industry manipulates our taste buds and exploits our biology to keep us eating unhealthy foods on us. Translation: Polishing off a cookie sleeve when you’re barely hungry isn’t a personal moral failing—it’s a carefully engineered outcome.
Understanding this can help us offload some of our food guilt, said Dr. Gardner. “It’s not just that I have no willpower,” he said, explaining that “the food industry is doing this on purpose.”
Writer and podcaster Aubrey Gordon brings a social justice lens to our treatment of people who inhabit larger bodies. And she points out how much we relate to food that our health is not so much about our culturally indoctrinated fear of being fat.
Questioning the default rejection of fat is a critical step if we hope to gain a less inclusive perspective on food, said Virginia Ramseyer Winter, director of the Center for Body Image Research and Policy at the University of Missouri. “When we can come to terms with our own internal anti-fat, we can approach food in a different way,” said Dr. Winter. What’s more, she said, Gordon is “a really great writer”.
Jenna Hollenstein is a nutritional therapist and meditation teacher. (She also shared recommendations for this list.) Here, she follows the Four Foundations of the Mind, a classic Buddhist teaching, as a framework for eating with contentment, peace, and joy.
The awareness and curiosity fostered through mindfulness can support us on our food healing journey, said Ms Rumsey. It’s a fruitful path — and we don’t have to walk it alone.
