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“You are what you eat.” It’s a saying that’s been repeated so often it sounds like common sense. We’re taught that if we eat healthy food, we’ll be healthy; whereas, if we eat “junk,” we’ll feel like junk. On the surface, it seems harmless—just a reminder to eat healthily. But scratch beneath the surface, and it reveals a troubling myth with real-world consequences.
For starters, the idea that our food choices ultimately define our health is scientifically flawed. While diet does contribute to health and wellbeing, it’s one of many factors that influence our disease risk and risk of death.
The Global Burden of Disease study, published in 2017 in The Lancet, found that dietary risks were responsible for 22% of deaths and 15% of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Flip that upside-down and it also reveals that non-diet-related risk factors are responsible for 78% of deaths and 85% of lost years of healthy life (or DALYs).
Furthermore, our health is shaped by far more than personal choices. While factors like exercise, sleep, alcohol use, and stress management matter, others, such as genetics, age, sex, and ethnicity, impact health but are beyond our control. Childhood trauma, including abuse or neglect, also increases lifelong disease risk. New Zealanders currently seeking redress for harm suffered in state or faith-based care now live with the health consequences. A government apology doesn’t undo that damage.
However, many of the strongest influences on our health lie beyond personal choice. Income, housing, education and access to healthcare are shaped by policies, systems and social structures, not just individual effort. We can’t control the air we breathe, how close the nearest hospital is, or whether we have safe places to rest, move, or care for our children. Cultural attitudes, public funding and systemic inequality all shape who gets sick and who gets care. While individuals do what they can with what they’ve got, real progress depends on governments, health systems and communities creating environments where healthy choices are possible, affordable and fair for all.
Despite the evidence, Western cultures cling to the myth that health is a matter of personal responsibility. If you’re unwell, it’s assumed you’ve made poor choices, especially about food. This thinking reflects healthism, a belief system that shifts all responsibility to the individual, conveniently depoliticising and ignoring wider systemic issues. Instead of holding governments accountable for clean water, nutritious food, and healthcare, individuals are blamed – even those living with the effects of trauma and abuse.
“You are what you eat” does a disservice not just to individuals, but to public health as a whole. Not only does it oversimplify the challenges people face, but it also heaps guilt and shame on to those who are already struggling.
“You are what you eat” doesn’t just suggest a nutritional outcome, it makes a moral judgement. Foods are labelled “good” or “bad”, and people are then typecast based on their food choices: the person who eats kale is “disciplined” and “healthy”, while the one who eats cake is “lazy” or “undisciplined”. These assumptions can have lasting effects, including contributing to disordered eating, body image issues, and a shame-based relationship with one’s food and body.
The truth is that no single food defines your health. It’s your overall dietary pattern over time and the broader context of your life that matters, along with a host of other risk factors – some of which you have little or no control over, except when it comes time to vote. This doesn’t mean nutrition doesn’t matter. It means that it’s not helpful or accurate to suggest that people’s health is entirely in their hands, and that all they need to do is eat more salads and hit the gym.
A more compassionate, realistic approach recognises that health is shaped by far more than individual effort, that access to nutritious food is unequal, that stress and trauma have real physiological effects, and that wellbeing is the result of complex social, environmental, and biological forces – not simply what’s on your plate. So the next time you hear “you are what you eat”, take it with a grain of iodised salt.
As well as Jennifer Bowden’s columns in the NZ Listener, listener.co.nz subscribers can access her fortnightly myth-buster column which explores food and nutrition myths.
