Why the Term ‘Healthy Food’ Isn’t Helping Our Children
2/06/2025
Written by Dr Stephanie Damiano, Manager of Butterfly Body Bright, Butterfly Foundation
When you think of ‘healthy food’ what comes to mind? Fruits? Veggies? The food pyramid or healthy eating plate?
When asking Google, the generated response was “healthy food provides the essential nutrients your body needs for optimal health, including energy, growth, and overall wellbeing.” It goes on to define healthy food as nutrient-dense, low in added sugars, saturated and trans fats, sodium, and ideally whole or unprocessed.
Children are often taught, through schools, families and health promotion initiatives, about healthy food to encourage ‘better’ choices. But if it were that simple, a recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report wouldn’t show that 96% of children and adolescents – and 94% of adults – fall short of the recommended veggie intake (1).
Healthy may be a synonym for nutritious – but context matters. Take the TikTok trend where young women ate excessive amounts of carrots to achieve a ‘carrot tan’ (i.e., tanned skin/glow). Carrots are nutritious, but eating so many that your skin changes colour? That can be harmful. So, the idea of ‘healthy food’ is more complicated than nutrients.
For far too many people, the basic human need of eating has become incredibly complex, confusing, and all-consuming in our image-obsessed, health-confused world. The term ‘healthy’ carries heavy moral weight, especially in a society saturated in diet culture. Where food choices can spark judgement or shame about someone’s health or body size, and where eating can feel safer in secret or with heavy restrictions.
Weight stigma, fat phobia, and some fearmongering from the ‘wellness’ industry are driving people to make food and exercise decisions not in pursuit of actual wellbeing, but in the name of chasing a narrow ideal for body size, shape, or weight under the guise of ‘health’. Ironically, this can lead to disordered eating.
What is diet culture?
Diet culture is an ever-changing set of social beliefs and expectations about food and bodies, that essentially at its core values thinness, leanness and musuclarity above all. It links being thin and muscular with being healthy – and wrongly assumes the health status of, and attaches stigma to, large bodies.
It pushes the idea that there’s a ‘right’ way to have a body and a ‘right’ way to eat to get there. This thinking has become so normalised that disordered behaviours are often seen as simply ‘looking after yourself’, ‘being healthy/disciplined’ or ‘achieving wellness’, and there are many companies and businesses globally that are making enormous profit from these goals.
Diet culture ignores the complexity of health – including genetics, social factors, mental health, and chronic disease. We respect that there are important and valid public health concerns in our society, but we also face a mental health crisis, with rising rates of eating disorders and disordered eating. Globally, 1 in 5 children and adolescents are engaging in disordered eating (2). Butterfly’s recent Paying the Price report revealed an alarming 86% rise in eating disorders among 10- to-19-year-olds since 2012.
So, what do children actually need to hear about food?
From an eating disorder prevention perspective, it’s important for children to learn that all foods have a place in healthy eating (aside from where allergies are present, of course). No single food is inherently unhealthy. All foods have something to offer, whether that’s nutrition, fuel, joy, comfort, culture, or social connection.
One simple shift is to rethink how we talk about food. In fact, we should try to avoid using the term healthy when talking about food (particularly to children) because the term automatically creates the opposite dichotomy of ‘unhealthy’. We know that referring to food as unhealthy or toxic or junk, doesn’t make people desire them any less or eat them less, but it can make them feel guilt and shame when they do. This can also lead to preoccupation with certain foods and disordered eating behaviours, such as restriction and binge eating.
Nutrition and healthy eating education programs often focuses on the ‘what’ – food groups, vitamins, nutrients. While this has a place (though perhaps not in childhood as it’s rather complex), we also need to teach the ‘how’ of eating to support children and young people to have a broader perspective on what is healthy and develop a positive relationship with eating and their body.
This may include supporting mindful eating (i.e., listening to their internal cues of hunger and fullness), eating at regular intervals, eating from all the food groups to nourish a growing body and mind, and fostering curiousity about a range of foods.
How do we promote healthy eating while supporting body image in children?
Drop the labels. Avoid calling food healthy/unhealthy, clean/toxic, good/bad, or junk. In classrooms avoid activities that sort foods this way. Instead, call food simply by its name. Broccoli is just broccoli or a vegetable, it doesn’t need to be defined as a ‘healthy food’. Chocolate is just chocolate, it doesn’t need to be referred to as a treat or unhealthy food.
Encourage curiosity. Explore the sensory properties of food. What does it taste like (is it salty, sour, sweet)? What colour is it? Does the colour change if we cook it? What’s the texture like (crunchy, soft, mushy)? Curiosity supports exploration – and children are more likely to try different or new foods when it’s not a pressure-filled experience.
Broaden the definition. No food is ‘unhealthy’ in isolation (unless a person is allergic to it). Let’s talk about nutrition and fuelling our body (which is incredibly important for physical and mental health), BUT also for enjoyment, culture, and social connection. Eating for pleasure is just as valid as eating for nutrients, and encouraging this is likely to foster a far more positive relationship with food and help to reduce the risk of disordered eating.
Take the pressure off. Nutrition is of course important for growth and development, but remember that nutritional intake isn’t dependent on each individual meal but spans two weeks (or beyond). So, take the pressure off children eating a perfectly balanced meal or having a perfectly balanced lunchbox every day, because if provided with enough variety over a longer period, their bodies will absorb the nutrients it needs to grow and thrive. And variety doesn’t mean every vegetable, just a range across food groups.
Support regular and mindful eating. Encourage all neuro-typical children to eat at regular intervals and when eating, to tune into their body’s cues of hunger and fullness. More on this at Ellyn Satter Institute or the RAVES Eating Model.
Be neuro-affirming. Some neurodivergent children experience food, hunger cues, and openness to trying new foods differently. It’s important to validate their experience and find out what works for them – try to be flexible. Find out more for carers and school personnel from Eating Disorders Neurodiversity Australia or the SAFETY model, as an alternative to the RAVES Eating Model.
Avoid linking food intake to body size. When children view a healthy body as one that is thin, and achieved by eating (or not eating) certain foods, that can cause unintentional harm to their physical and mental health, and lead to disordered eating.
Add, don’t take away. Want kids to eat more nutrient-dense food? Add it in. Don’t restrict the other stuff. Adding increases nutrition and promotes a healthier relationship with food without causing cravings and negative feelings that can come with restriction.
Register your primary school for Butterfly Body Bright. Through the THOUGHTFUL theme, the program supports staff and students to explore the concept of healthy eating, curiosity around food, and mindful eating, promoting a healthier relationship with food and body. Learn more here. Or families can use this template to invite their school to join, or check out Body Bright Family resources.
For secondary schools, check out BodyKind Schools for access to student presentations, professional development, and free resources through BodyKind August.
Special offer for primary schools!
Register your primary school before 4 July 2025 to enter the draw to win 1 of 5 Body Bright Book Packs (valued at over $150), specially curated to support a positive body image in students and support classroom delivery of some Body Bright lessons.
References:
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/food-nutrition/diet
Lopez et al. (2023) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2801664