When Lesley Stoyan changed her diet for medical reasons, the last thing she needed was criticism about her food choices. Stoyan, who adopted macrobiotics, a philosophy of eating unprocessed food, did so in an attempt to seek an alternative to western medicine.
While she maintained a strict version of this diet for over a year, she had a constant companion on her road to healing: judgment. No matter how much she explained her decision to strangers, friends and even family, she found herself placed under constant scrutiny about what she ate, who she was and what she believed in.
“I used to receive a lot of skepticism about my personality and who I was,” she said.
“So I started saying I was vegan, which brought on a whole other onslaught of reactions from people.”
It wasn’t obvious at first, but Stoyan discovered that food choice is often interpreted by others as a statement about self-identity.
Jennifer Mills is a professor of psychology at York University and she views people’s dietary choices as a reflection of how they regard themselves.
“Food and eating have become a way for us to express our identities,” she said. “We think of ourselves as people who eat in a certain way, whether it’s for better or for worse.”
Stoyan, who owns Daily Apple, a Toronto-based company which teaches people the benefits of whole food nutrition, said once she told people she followed a certain diet, they started to question her lifestyle choices.
She received questions like, “Why do you only eat that stuff?” or “Why are you wearing leather?” People made assumptions about her because she labeled herself as vegan.
Veganism, a diet that excludes the consumption of meat or any animal product, is also associated with animal rights and social activism.
“It wasn’t for ethical reasons. It was health reasons,” she said. “I always had to explain why I was doing things.
“The number one thing I thought of was why do they (people) care? They don’t have to eat what I’m eating.”
While Stoyan was on the receiving end of much criticism, the roles can easily be reversed.
Craig Copeland is a hiking enthusiast and author from Canmore, Alta., and he considers his thirteen years as a vegan his trip to “planet vega.” He found his diet became less about what he put inside his body and more about the words that came out of his mouth.
“There was great temptation to use my diet as a badge of honour,” he said. “I think the temptation is to feel very self-righteous that your food choices are superior. It’s a huge put-off to other people.
“People will approach you if they are curious,” he said. “If you start clubbing them over the head with it, you will get the opposite effect.”
Copeland recalled a time when his vegan diet negatively influenced his behaviour. Some visitors from Germany were at his house and they wanted to make a traditional meal. Once they told him it contained bacon, he quickly refused their offer.
“We (my wife and I) didn’t even want them to cook it in the house,” he said. “They were hugely offended that we weren’t open to them making us a national dish for us which they saw as a gift. I was as tactful as possible but they were still offended.”
Mills says people can take things personally when it comes to food due to the availability of what is offered around us.
“Eating is such a personal experience since there is so much choice these days,” she said. “There is an abundance of foods … and choice becomes overwhelming.”
She also says it’s a natural tendency to judge one another. However, the act of criticizing may be an attempt to relate to others.
“We sometimes judge other people by what they eat, either by either approving or disapproving it,” she said. “It almost becomes a certain characteristic of compatibility between friends, people who are dating or who are married. It’s easier if we eat similarly to the people around us.”
Both Stoyan and Copeland, who now consider themselves omnivores and are married to like-minded partners, share the same philosophy when it comes to their diets.
They both believe in making healthy choices and eating fresh when possible. Eating meat is something they have incorporated back into their lives, but they strive to support farms that raise and slaughter animals in the most ethical way possible.
“My husband and I choose to eat and live our life the way we want, which is our choice and we don’t put it on other people,” Stoyan said.
While trying to influence another person’s dietary choice has its conflicts, from a psychological perspective, Mills thinks it’s part of everyone’s desire to feel acceptance.
“In general, people have an underlying drive to feel normal and feel what they are doing is OK,” she said. “It might explain why someone would want to recruit a friend or an acquaintance into a way of eating.
“It helps them to bond because it gives them something in common,” she said. “More importantly, it gives them a sense of belonging, since there are other people who eat this way. (And that) makes them feel good about their choices.”