How TV and Movies lie to us about food

And why it's so insidious

If any of you have ever tried to diet to lose weight, heal some chronic illness, or just feel better, you probably have at least some idea of what food not to eat. For instance, ice-cream, takeout, and sodas are probably discouraged.

For me, eating on the Paleo diet, I’ve resigned myself to not eating 90% of what’s sold in a modern-day grocery store. All the packaged, processed, sugar-added foods, all the grains, and all dairy. That’s a LOT of food I can’t eat.

I’ve also mostly stopped eating out. Even if I can find a restaurant that has the correct macro-nutrients and food categories (e.g. a steakhouse), the food is still laced with pesticides, or has incorrect fatty-acid ratios from the meat being raised on grain (leading to too much Omega-6), or given antibiotics, or any number of other issues. If you want to eat organic vegetables and fruits and pasture-raised meat, it’s virtually impossible to find a restaurant that can cater to that.

Of course, since doing that, I feel much better, and I’ve lost weight.

But then I sit down to watch some TV show or movie and invariably, some healthy-looking, or even athletic actor is eating the worst junk imaginable on screen.

From ubiquitous takeout to indulging in massive amounts of ice-cream with whipped cream on top and drinking it down with a soda, the food you see people eating on screen is almost never even remotely healthy. And healthy food is somehow frowned upon, like the ubiquitous “kids won’t eat broccoli” meme that’s been floating around for decades. Are you sure? My kids love broccoli. I also don’t feed them a bunch of sugary snacks though, so their palette isn’t completely messed up. That probably helps.

The funny thing is, Hollywood isn’t a big fan of overweight people. Aside from comedies, I almost never see overweight people on TV. The average actor is skinny and attractive, and then there’s all the body-builder action-hero types who obviously spend a great deal of time in the gym.

I can guarantee you that none of these people are eating ice-cream at home every night like the characters they portray. They couldn’t. If they did, they’d look like the average American, and not a fit, healthy man or woman.

This insidious propaganda creates a subconscious association in our minds that you can eat crap and, somehow, miraculously, turn out to look and feel healthy - when nothing could be further from the truth.

Have you ever been bothered by this unrealistic portrayal? And do you think this is intentional propaganda?