Workplace nutrition seminars are a wonderful way to empower staff to make positive changes to their eating and health, and to improve engagement and morale. If not done well, however, they can unfortunately decrease the psychological safety of the workplace and leave staff feeling judged, unsupported, misunderstood, or demotivated to make positive changes.

What can go wrong?

Issues tend to arise when seminars and presentations frame things with a diet culture lens. That is, a lens that:

  • Equate thinness with health and self-worth
  • Implies someone is morally superior if their body conforms with a certain ideal size/shape
  • Implies that there is one “right” way to eat and therefore eating in a different way is “wrong”
  • Normalises the notion that foods are “good” or “bad”
  • Normalises the notion that a person is “good” or “bad” for eating/avoiding said foods
  • Encourages food rules and restrictions
  • Implies someone has personally failed when these rules and restrictions aren’t strictly upheld

This lens erodes body trust, self-efficacy, and self-worth. With these worn down, it’s hard to feel empowered to make positive change.

What type of topics are prone to this lens?

While diet culture can pop up in many various and unexpected ways, there are some topics that are more likely than others to be problematic. These include:

  • Weight loss
  • Anything that brings in competition or comparison to health/nutrition
  • Focussing solely on calories
  • Lists of food you should and shouldn’t eat
  • Prioritising eating less
  • Dieting – whether fad diets or otherwise
  • Any topic that promotes black-and-white thinking and rules

How can we avoid this?

Have a look at the topics on offer – are they automatically screaming problematic based on the above information? Then, have a chat to the presentation provider. Are they concerned by diet culture messaging? Have they made sure that their presentations take a health-first approach? That their presenters use weight-neutral, inclusive language?

Here at The Healthy Eating Hub we are concerned by diet culture messaging. We know we can’t change an entire, embedded culture, but we can do our best to avoid adding to the negative noise. We strive to provide engaging, evidenced-based presentations without judgement or hyperbole.

We make sure our presentations take a health-first approach, empowering people to make changes to their nutrition in relation to the health and wellbeing goals that matter to them.

And as for our presenters? They are nutrition professionals that take a weight-neutral approach to their practice – both with clients one-on-one and in group settings – and respect the diversity of their audience.

Keen for high-quality nutrition seminars at your workplace? Get in touch to organise a session with The Healthy Eating Hub.