In the age of social media and cancel culture, influencers promoting healthy eating have been subject to backlash for the opinions they share online. Already a subject of debate, the contrasting public opinion on healthy eating and influencers is an added challenge in making the right choices for your family.
Canceling healthy eating: Understanding social media and cancel culture
Eating healthy is a valuable goal. Getting the right nutrients — and avoiding large quantities of unhealthy ingredients — is essential to feeling good, staying physically fit and promoting long-term health for your family.
Yet some social media influencers who promote healthy eating, home-cooked meals and unprocessed ingredients seem to be getting canceled. Certain viewers are taking issue with the fake lifestyles, unrealistic standards and extreme opinions that social media can lead to.
How cancel culture is affecting lifestyle influencers
Gretchen Adler, an influencer with nearly half a million followers on Instagram, promotes made-from-scratch food and eschews all processed products. Her videos of making Goldfish crackers and Cheez-Its from scratch received backlash for what some commenters see as overly restrictive views on food.
Hannah Neelman, a homesteader and social media influencer in Utah, raises her eight children while also participating in beauty pageants. For many, Neelman embodies the idea of the trad wife, a recent cultural phenomenon describing a woman who centers her life on being a mother and homemaker. She, too, advocates for healthy, home-cooked food for all her family’s meals and has experienced social media storms herself.
This backlash is part of the larger cancel culture that has affected dozens of influencers and celebrities in recent years. According to Vice, cancel culture involves boycotting a person or brand, and using social media as a platform for additional commentary about the issue.
Selecting healthy foods for your family has already been a fraught discussion for many years. With the phenomenon of canceling someone for something objectively good, like eating healthier foods, a new perspective can make these decisions still more challenging.
How influencer culture pushes for healthy eating
Health influencers have a large audience on social media platforms. Forbes notes that #health on Instagram has over 165 million posts. Many of these conversations can be valuable. They promote change, share important information and market helpful products and services.
But there are no requirements for being an influencer. Anyone can share information whether they have factual knowledge to back it up. Influencer marketing can further skew the quality of content as companies pay influencers to promote their products.
The reality of healthy eating with busy lives and grocery budgets
There is an underlying sense of frustration among the different concerns viewers raise over health food influencers. In recent years, there has been a pushback against social media for the unrealistic standards it creates. Hannah Messinger at Penn Medicine News talks about how the curated nature of what people post on social media has led to false perceptions of everything from body image to standard of living.
When it comes to healthy eating, many influencer videos and blog posts don’t show what goes on behind the scenes to create homemade meals. Published content is often carefully edited, removing any context for how the influencer lives in reality.
For instance, Neelman’s husband is the millionaire son of JetBlue founder David Neelman. Their family also employs a house cleaner. This lifestyle is far from the reality of many American mothers who have to work to support their families, limiting the time they have to source out specific ingredients and bake meals from scratch.
In her video about making homemade Cheez-Its, Adler reveals that the process takes 18 hours. She also uses einkorn flour, which costs about three times as much as wheat flour. This timeline and cost are not feasible for many American families regularly and some people are fighting back against social media influencers who seem out of touch with reality.
Influencers may share inflammatory opinions as well, whether they believe them or use the controversy for views and engagement. When it comes to healthy foods, this can come off as attacking parents who do not have time, money or energy to match the lifestyles that these influencers portray.
Striking a balance for healthy eating
Baking your own bread, raising cows for milk, refusing any processed foods and other dedicated practices depicted on social media are more than many families can manage. In reality, it is possible to eat clean on a budget and make healthy choices with limited time. Small changes to your family’s routine can provide many of the benefits that social media influencers talk about without an entire lifestyle change.
Recipes for soups, salads and casseroles require little prep time and can provide your family with a nourishing, homemade dinner. Chicken wild rice soup is packed with lean protein and replaces white rice with nutrient-dense wild rice. With complete control over the recipe, you can choose ingredients you feel good about.
Other small swaps, like switching traditional produce or meats for organic options or adding whole grains to recipes, let you customize your food to meet your budget and your family’s tastes. As an example, coconut oil popcorn swaps butter for coconut oil with its healthy fats, letting you continue to enjoy your favorite snacks with a healthier spin.
Incorporate more vegetables and fruits into favorite meals as well. Avocado tuna salad or spinach in boxed mac and cheese provides the convenience of grocery store foods with an added boost of vitamins with minimal extra effort.
Finding your own path to healthy eating
Social media has made healthy eating a performance. While making healthy food choices remains important, the public debate between realistic options and influencer extremes makes those choices harder.
In the end, each family deserves to make decisions about their own health. However, this shouldn’t happen out of context on social media. Choosing how your family eats should take into account time, finances, culture and advice from health professionals. With all of these different variables, health goals will look different for every family. Social media can be a source of inspiration and community but it is not a definitive guide to raising a healthy family.
Sharon Rhodes is the creative force behind the food blog The Honour System. Passionate about all things homemade, Sharon is a seasoned recipe curator focused on making healthier cooking and baking accessible to all.