Living Lexicon

Eating Orders and Eating Order Theorizing

Critical Eating Dis/Order Studies challenges the popular pathologization of people as “eating disordered” and moves our collective attention to questioning the normalization and celebration of eating orders that are hurting us. We have all experienced being ordered regarding what, how, when and why to eat, whether by family members, friends, social media, psychiatric “treatment”, public health campaigns, architecture, celebrities, casual conversations, clothing, teachers, cultural norms, or billboard advertisements. What, how, when, and why we eat also orders us on hierarchies of privilege and worth/value (i.e., superior vs. inferior). For example, we are told on mass scales that if we eat “right” we are “smart”, “good”, “civil”, “clean”, “responsible” and “healthy”. What do these “you are what you eat” mass messages say about those of us who are deemed to eat “wrong”? Who don’t have access to eat “right”? Who desire and need to eat differently? And who gets to eat who, how and for what reasons?  What are these eating orders doing and what do they make possible? 

Conventional conceptions of and responses to who and what are named “eating disorders” are shaped by, and shape, multiple, interconnecting marginalizing systems.  Eating orders also produce, support, and are made possible by, the systemic dominance of particular groups (e.g., thin people; humans; adults), sets of ideas and practices (e.g., diet culture; eugenics; factory farming), systems (e.g., sanism; ableism; fatmisia) and institutions (e.g., universities; capitalism; patriarchy). Although eating orders harm all of us, they injure us unevenly as they work together with other hierarchical orders such as white supremacy and much, much more.