Food and guilt are definitely intertwined.
This is where the cultural norms of women 'being kind' are relevant too.
Its important to recognise this. Simply doing stuff like offering others food once and then accepting someone's first answer or not haranguing someone for refusing by being a Mrs Doyle makes a difference here.
We had friends around the other week for dinner. We ended up having a really interesting conversation about the word fat. She is fat and isn't afraid of the word and thought it curious that people avoided the word. She doesn't think it's helpful. She also doesn't think of the word fat as necessarily insulting. It's a descriptive word which can be used as an insult but it depends on the intent.
We definitely have different attitudes to food. She knows this but crucially she also recognises it puts her at increased health risks and she can't blame anyone.
The problem tend to be other people projecting their own insecurities and prejudices onto other people. This prevents us from having some of the crucial conversations and honesty we need around food.
It is the business of everyone to talk about a public health issue. The majority of the population being overweight is a public health issue. Covid should highlight this; age and weight were two of the biggest factors in determining how severely ill you might get. We should be talking about this and using the fat word rather than euphemisms. Using euphemisms is avoiding reality. If we see fat as a neutral word more often it also helps to have these conversations.
My friend laughed at me and how uncomfortable I felt about the word and why I didnt use it. But she does. It was interesting.
But yes, cultural creep into normalising 'body beautiful' probably isnt helping matters unfortunately.