Glossary

  • Body image – the subjective picture or mental image of one’s own body.  Research sometimes refers to 4 specific components:
    • Perceptual – the way you see yourself
    • Affective – the way you feel about yourself
    • Cognitive – the thoughts and beliefs you have about your body
    • Behavioral – the things you do in relation to the way you look
  • Positive body image –
  • Negative body image –
  • Body ambivalence/body neutrality –
  • The thin ideal – the societally-constructed concept of the ideally slim female body
  • Diet culture – a belief system that focuses on and values weight, shape, and size over well-being. Variations of diet culture also include rigid eating patterns that on the surface are in the name of health, but in reality are about weight shape or size.
  • Normative discontent – the general idea that it’s normal to be perpetually dissatisfied with one’s weight/shape/size
  • Food insecurity – a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life (USDA definition)
    • Food justice movement – a grassroots initiative emerging from communities in response to food insecurity and economic pressures that prevent access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods.
    • Food desert ­- a typically urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.
    • Food swamp – A food swamp is a place where unhealthy foods are more readily available than healthy foods. (Unhealthy foods include those that are dense in calories, high in sodium, and high in sugar.)