The Starvation We Choose, The Starvation We Ignore
On the eery similarities of diet culture and food insecurity.
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the position I’m writing from. I’ve never experienced food insecurity. I’ve had access to recovery, to nourishment, to safety. I live in a body that is largely accepted by our culture. These truths shape the way I’ve come to understand hunger and healing — and I hold that awareness close as I write.
There’s something unbearably cruel about living in a world where millions of people go hungry because they have no choice, while millions more go hungry because they’ve been told they should. In a society that refuses to feed those who cannot afford food, the very same society turns around and tells those who can afford it: “You should eat less. Go on a diet. Shrink yourself. Be good.”
I’ve lived on the second side of that line — and I’m conscious, always, of how much I’ve been shielded from the first. This piece isn’t about comparison, it’s about connection. And about how all forms of hunger — chosen or imposed — are shaped by systems of control.
Note: I don’t believe dieting or disordered eating are actually things we “choose”…more to come.
“You don’t deserve to eat.”
This message lives in the air we breathe. It’s in the glossy language of “clean eating,” in the silent shame of skipped meals, in the underfunded pantries and empty fridges, and in the gutting of SNAP and school lunches.
Depending on who you are and what you have access to, it may show up in different forms, but at its core, it’s all about control. And it’s important to ask: who, exactly, is being controlled? It’s disproportionately those already pushed to the margins — people in larger bodies, people living in poverty, Black and brown folks, children, elders, trans people, disabled people. This control is not randomly distributed, because it targets those society already deems “undeserving.” Anti-fatness plays a major role here — bodies deemed “too large” are denied care, blamed for their hunger, and shamed for feeding themselves at all.
We don’t often place food insecurity and disordered eating side by side, but maybe we should. Both are forms of deprivation. Both are ways hunger is used as a weapon. And both are the result of systems that treat hunger as something shameful — something to be ignored, micromanaged, or punished. And of course, these experiences can overlap, because food insecurity and diet culture are not mutually exclusive.
But they do differ in how they’re perceived, because one is praised while the other is pathologized.
For example, a person who restricts food in pursuit of thinness is called disciplined, while a person who goes without food because they can’t afford it is called irresponsible. Yet in both cases, the outcome is a body denied nourishment.
Diet culture tells us that hunger is a moral failure. Poverty tells us that needing help is a moral failure. The difference isn’t in the body — it’s in how we judge it. And both tell the same story: You don’t deserve to eat.
Hunger Isn’t Always About Food
Dieting is marketed as health. But it’s often sanitized suffering — a way to make deprivation look noble; a way to make obedience look like will power. Food insecurity is seen as a personal problem. But it’s actually structural violence — the result of policy decisions, racialized poverty, and economic systems designed to withhold.
Dieting and food insecurity are effective tools of control. Because an under-fed brain is a brain that cannot think clearly, a hungry body is easier to silence, a person obsessing over food or body image is less likely to revolt, to resist, to rest.
When we’re deep in it — whether the hunger is self-imposed or system-imposed — it’s hard to remember that this is not our fault. But it’s not. None of it is natural. None of it is neutral.
If we trace the roots of hunger and control far enough back, we arrive at colonization. From the beginning, food has never just been food — it has been a deliberate tactic to keep people weak, dependent, and easier to dominate. When we talk about caloric control, we’re not just talking about personal choices or individual willpower. We’re talking about legacies of power. How hunger has been used to manage bodies, silence voices, and maintain systems of oppression.
(Highly suggest these books for more: Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison, It’s Always Been Ours by Jessica Wilson)
Which is why healing from disordered eating is not just personal — it’s political. Food justice is body justice, and the fight for liberation includes everyone’s right to eat.
To those recovering from diet culture: you are unlearning control disguised as care. To those navigating food insecurity: your hunger is not your failure. You should never have had to earn your meals. These are not two different fights — they are the same fight.
I want a world where food is neither a reward nor a punishment. A world where hunger is not a success or failure. A world where eating isn’t framed as indulgence — but as human.
Hunger is not something to conquer, it’s something to listen to. And yet here we are, still debating whether it’s “radical” to make sure everyone gets to eat.
Disordered Eating and Guilt
These questions — about hunger, justice, and who deserves to eat — don’t just live in theory. They show up in recovery. In grief. In guilt. In moments when the world’s pain meets the personal struggle to nourish ourselves.
Whenever I write or speak about the overlap between food justice and disordered eating, I’m deeply aware of how it can bring up guilt or shame — especially for those in recovery. I’ve felt it myself. In the midst of my eating disorder, I remember thinking: How can I be having such a hard time eating more, when so many people in the world don’t have enough to eat at all? My own privilege only intensified the feeling — having financial security, access to food, and a body deemed “acceptable” by society made the guilt feel sharper and harder to untangle.
Recently, a client wrote to me about the guilt they’ve been carrying during their recovery. They described how difficult it has been to eat while witnessing the horror of starvation in Gaza, and the ways in which their pain is further magnified by watching the U.S. government strip away access to food, housing, and medical care—turning scarcity into a policy decision.
Here is what they wrote (slightly paraphrased and adjusted for anonymity):
Something has been weighing on me deeply and I felt compelled to reach out. Recently, I saw devastating footage from Gaza—children facing extreme starvation, their bodies visibly wasting away from a complete lack of food. It brought me to tears. And alongside the grief, I felt a deep and complicated guilt.
I’ve lived with anorexia for several decades, and sometimes even the idea of adding a snack to my day feels unbearably hard. But then I think about not only the global crisis I just witnessed, but also the food insecurity that exists right here in our own communities—families skipping meals, kids going to school hungry. And I can’t help but feel guilty that I struggle to feed myself when so many people are desperate for food they simply don’t have access to. How can I care so deeply about justice, equity, and human rights, and still be caught in this disorder that leads me to restrict something so fundamental?
Is it hypocritical to advocate for food justice while withholding food from myself? How do I navigate these emotional contradictions?