well + good: Why Eating Foods That Are Culturally Relevant to You Is Profoundly Important for Your Health, According to an RD

By Maya Feller, RD
January 24, 2023

Each of us has patterns of eating that are, in many ways, routinized and repetitive. In addition, we have all adopted our own ideas about what foods get categorized as “healthy” and often have binary thinking about “good” and “bad” foods.
Our ideas are shaped by cultural norms. In the United States, dominant wellness culture centers Anglo-American and Anglo-European foodways in relation to healthy eating.

When I was studying to become a registered dietitian, our textbooks used the plate method as the gold standard for eating: We were trained to encourage patients to build a plate that was 50 percent non-starchy vegetables, 25 percent lean protein, and 25 percent starch. The images of the ideal plate were often of brown rice, grilled chicken, and broccoli. Objectively, there is nothing “wrong” with this plate; it does have a nice macronutrient balance and would supply fiber along with vitamins and minerals.

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