Why Telling People to Eat More Veggies Doesn’t Help Them Get Healthier

To be clear, “eat more veggies” is usually the perfect advice to help make anybody and everybody healthier.

But it’s also not going to work.

My daughter is a young professional dietician, fresh off years of academic study with several degrees and many letters after her name to show for it. She currently works with a range of people, from young women in crisis to adults trying to get their act together.

She said to me recently (paraphrased):

“You, me, them — we all know that we should eat more veggies, and if we did, we’d be healthier. However, I’ve learned working with real people that this isn’t a math formula, nor do people need more scientific information.

Nobody needs to be told to eat more veggies, although that is true. They already know that.

What people need is to explore the emotions associated with their eating. Their personal history. Their feelings about why they like or dislike. How different foods make them feel is likely attached to events in their lives, both positive and negative.

They need counseling to figure out why they feel like they do. Then we can work with the food.”

How true this is for so many parts of our lives — our likes and dislikes, tribes we join, successes and failures — all rooted in our personal histories and the associated emotions.

We rarely need scientific advice about the how. Instead, we should start with the why.