The Formation of “Food Tribes”

According to Randy Sun over at The Vancouver Sun, you may just be adhering to the latest “food tribes.” The theory suggests that people decide to eliminate some specific from their diet, not because science tells them its necessary, but rather because it makes them feel a smidge better than everyone else around them.

In most cases, the science is pretty conclusive — gluten won’t hurt you, meat is safe, organic is pricey marketing, and food dyes are just pretty. But lots of people want to pretend otherwise. Think about it: why do we feel special when we’re cutting out certain foods from our diets, especially when we know deep down that we don’t need to? 

It could just be we want to belong….to a food tribe, that is:

Can we all just agree that sugar, fat, wheat gluten, dairy, meat and salt are poisons that are killing us?

If you read the newspapers, browse the Internet or watch television news, you could very well draw that conclusion. And there are large numbers of people who make the avoidance of one or more of those items a central element of their lives. We are becoming a nation of food tribalists, defined not by where we live or the language we speak, but by what we don’t eat.
Don’t believe me? Try planning a dinner party and ask your guests if they have any food allergies. The tribes will rise up and declare their intolerance for at least one or more of these poisons.

Finish reading here.