Toxic Tracking: Students should not be asked to track their food habits

Three cups of vegetables. Two cups of fruit. Eight ounces of grains. Three cups of dairy. Six and a half ounces of protein. 

Every day teens are supposed to intake this many servings of each food group, according to MyPlate. The government tells us this. Our parents tell us this. And now our school quizzes us on it. 

A few classes at East have required assignments where students must record their eating habits and intakes for several days in a row. The data is then used and processed to find various calculations. 

In some health classes, the data is collected, categorized into different food groups and then compared to the United States Department of Agriculture’s recommendations for daily number of servings, which varies for each person and is not accurate for everyone’s health and body.  Biology 1’s biochemistry unit asks students to record the macronutrients they ingest over a period of 24 hours and then calculate the number of calories and macronutrient ratio.

While activities like this can provide insight into students’ daily eating habits, logging one’s food habits can be a slippery slope. Any analysis of eating can trigger thoughts of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and more. Analyzing food can make students feel poorly about themselves. Each student has a different relationship with food that should be respected and not forced to be exposed for the sake of a grade. 

According to the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, one in 10 young women suffer from an eating disorder. When eating disorders are prevalent in teens more than any other age group, food tracking is not something that should be recommended, let alone required for a class. 

Teens often hyper-analyze their actions and compare themselves to others and their eating habits, with 25% percent of teenagers having some form of anxiety, according to Promises Behavioral Health. Decisions, like questioning if one should skip breakfast or cut out added sugars, can plague students in the way it affects themselves, physically and mentally. Then to turn in their log to be graded by their teacher can make them feel judged for their eating habits as well. 

During a study conducted by the Duke Health Center for Eating Disorders, participants used an app to track their fitness and food habits. Of those who used the app as a calorie tracker, around 73% identified it as a contributor to their eating disorder.

There is no way to cater to all the different relationships with food. The solution is not to avoid talking about nutrition entirely, but to allow students to share their habits with food when, and only when, they feel comfortable to do so. 

If logging their food is truly crucial for educational purposes, then students should instead be able to opt out of submitting the actual log and write a conclusion of their thoughts at the end of the activity. Reflection is the ultimate form of self-improvement and would impact a student more than a grade. 

In some biology classes, the food tracking data is used to calculate food group servings or calories from different macronutrients. The raw data for the calculations does not need to be collected by the students but instead could be taken from past year’s results as another solution. 

Chemistry classes will sometimes use data from other lab experiments because of time or cost restraints. The classes may pull data from a previous year’s lab experiment and ask students to graph the data. When the assignment is focusing on drawing a graph, does it matter whether the student collected it themself if the end product will be the same?

Likewise, students should be able to use sample data sets instead of having to record the data, which can be uncomfortable and isn’t necessary to apply the same skills. The application skills will remain constant however the wariness that is associated with food tracking won’t follow. 

In the end, the data the calculations are based on isn’t just “data.” The “data” is food which affects your body, which makes you feel better after a bad day, the recipes that you’ve modified to make your own. It’s also the food that can make someone feel bad about themselves. 

Food habits are personal information that teens shouldn’t have to disclose, as many struggle with eating disorders and feel uncomfortable examining their eating habits closely. 

One assignment isn’t worth furthering an eating disorder. It’s not worth a negative relationship with food, or teens questioning their relationship with food.