The Body Politics of Returning to the Office—and What It Means for Our Health

You’re on the 36th floor of the large corporate building where you work. The open-concept nature of your workstation is distracting, and your wandering eyes often flit over to the corner of your desktop computer. The emblazoned time is 12:45 p.m., and your stomach has a Pavlovian response. You notice your hunger and anxiety simultaneously, and the anxiety asks questions. Where do I eat? What do I eat? How much money should I spend on food? What will people say about what I eat?

Regardless of the professional setting, many of us ask these same questions daily. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, workers across the country were forced to turn from eating out to searching their fridges or clicking open food apps in the privacy of their homes. Communal dining threatened our public health. We increasingly unwrapped, fried, boiled, chopped, and chewed in our homes. And for the nearly 30 million Americans who struggle with an eating disorder or the estimated 133 million Americans who struggle with chronic health conditions, a private space to eat helped them manage their conditions away from scrutiny.

With more employers requiring their employees to return to the office either full-time or part-time, questions about the effects of working in an office on communal and individual employee health resurface.

Dining Under Scrutiny

Let’s return to that office setting. You’re taking your lunch out of the refrigerator when a coworker you mildly tolerate enters the break room. There are several empty seats, but your coworker decides to sit uncomfortably close to you instead. Instinctively, you hunch yourself over your meal, shielding the contents of your Tupperware from your colleague’s gaze. The gesture is futile because as you shift, they immediately remark, “You’re eating all that for lunch? I wish I could! All that food would just leave me feeling sluggish at my desk.”

Your colleague’s backhanded comment seems to roll off their tongue, revealing the ease with which they make such statements. The critique of your meal sends you down a spiral of doubt. Instead of feeling nourished by each bite, the flavors of your food taste like the difficult relationship you’ve had with your self-esteem.

When conversations about microaggressions occur, race, gender, and sexual orientation discrimination understandably tend to be the first topics addressed. However, the increasing number of articles addressing fatphobia in the workplace has helped highlight microaggressions directed not only at people’s bodies, but specifically at what they eat.

A timely example of this behavior is evident in a viral video featuring self-proclaimed coach and influencer Stormy Wellington. In the video, which was posted in early October, “Coach” Stormy chastises her mentee for the amount of food servers put on her plate at a buffet. Although she has a plastic plate with a smattering of chicken wings, skewered shrimp, and corn on the cob in her hand, Coach Stormy points at another woman’s plate in disgust. She declares, “I would never eat a plate that looks like this. … It’s low vibration.”

Upon release on TikTok, the video made the rounds on various social media sites and immediately became the subject of memes, podcasts, and hot takes. Although it seemed like the event surrounding the “low-vibration” plate was voluntary for the participants, Coach Stormy revealed that the event’s purpose was professional development and career coaching. In short, millions of people have now seen a woman bullied and berated for how she chose to nourish her body.

The sad reality of Coach Stormy’s conduct is that it occurs in other semi-professional and professional spaces. The effects this behavior has on employees’ mental health and how it fosters a culture of disordered eating in work environments are rarely studied en masse.

How Disordered Eating Hurts All of Us

For people living with HIV, the impact of eating disorders on treatment efficacy has received scant attention in medical literature. A search of the National Institutes of Health’s website reveals only one peer-reviewed study from 30 years ago investigating the effect of eating disorders on HIV treatment. Furthermore, although the data exploring workplace triggers of eating disorders is limited, a 2017 study in the journal Obesity Science & Practice revealed: “As hypothesized, stress in the workplace was related to eating both more food in general and more junk food specifically. … Coworker behaviour and work stress influenced eating behaviour negatively, and this was particularly true for individuals with low weight-related self-efficacy and greater work impairment due to binge eating.”

The implicit bias against or perception that people are overeating can further harm people who do not fit the mold of our society’s body politic. It is behavior that hurts people living with HIV (PLWH)—particularly women—on various antiretroviral therapies (ART).

Results of a 192-week study presented at the 24th International AIDS Conference in Montreal found that people taking a tenofovir alafenamide–containing antiretroviral formulation were twice as likely to develop clinical obesity as those taking a regimen with efavirenz and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. And regardless of the regimen, women developed clinical obesity more frequently than men. Is it fair to further vilify the body’s response to lifesaving treatment at the workplace?

Instead of fostering a positive work environment, regular conversations about food, diet, and exercise at work can create interactions fraught with tension. When employees are unwilling to engage in seemingly “casual” banter, they are less likely to participate in post-work socializing with colleagues, which can then affect potential career advancement.

What about the management of chronic conditions? Employees with chronic conditions often find it difficult to disclose their needs to colleagues and supervisors out of fear of discrimination and job insecurity.

A recent study found that employees with chronic illnesses experience stigmatization at work and have a harder time finding new employment after being laid off. These individuals tend to report lower levels of job satisfaction, have higher levels of work-related stress, and experience more absenteeism than those without chronic conditions.
Like many chronic illnesses, HIV is often labeled an “invisible” ailment because it may not demonstrate visible physical impairments. When advocating for reasonable accommodation for an employee with HIV and a nutritional challenge, it can be challenging to prove that a remote work environment is necessary if it means avoiding food-related triggers—though other health conditions have shown that change is possible.

In the years before the pandemic, many employers recognized dietary allergies as potentially life-threatening and accommodated them through flexible schedules and telecommuting options. Additionally, a 2020 study by the Job Accommodation Network revealed that 56% of the accommodations made for employees with a disability involved no direct cost to the employer.

Today’s work landscape has changed. If employers express reluctance to be part of that change, they may not be doing so for their employees’ benefit but rather to maintain a semblance of power. For people managing a chronic condition, the data suggests a fundamental question:

Can diversity, equity, and inclusion exist in companies that don’t give their employees the freedom to customize their work environments and nourish their bodies as they see fit?

We’ve got to answer that question together.