I think it’s fair to say that I know more about food than most people do. I did, after all, grow up in the apartment above my families’ small seafood restaurant. My brother and I had instant access to the amenities and distractions provided by the food, employees and customers of the busy restaurant. A lot of times that meant sneaking downstairs after our parents had gone to bed and filling giant glass bowls with eight scoops of vanilla ice cream and handfuls of homemade chocolate sauce. A lot of times it meant my dad calling up to my bedroom to see if I would be willing to shell shrimp for a few hours because another “dip-sh*t prep cook no-showed” on a Saturday night. Mostly, though, it meant that I was given an appreciation of food – from the details of preparation to the joy of sharing a good meal with friends and family.
Either it is very strange or makes perfect sense that now, as a young adult, I work with adolescents with severe eating disorders. Girls who won’t eat (who in a way can’t eat) and girls who throw up every time they eat. Girls who mix broccoli and orange juice so that they won’t enjoy the taste of the food, or who refuse to shower because they can’t stand the sight of their own naked bodies. These girls are regularly hospitalized and force-fed because they are literally starving themselves to death.
Eating disorders are caused by a wide and complicated web of factors, which can range from the societal norms that glorify thinness, to a genetic predisposition vulnerability to emotions, to feelings of loss of control over one’s life. I’m going to put these issues aside for now and focus on my expertise: food.
When I talk to people with little experience with eating disorders (my dad, for example), I find that they often ask something like, “Well, have you tried cooking them a really delicious gourmet meal?” Experts on eating disorders laugh at this suggestion, “The food itself isn’t the real issue,” they may say, “The obsession with food is a manifestation of deeper psychological problems.” I think that this is a valid answer, but it leads me to another question: What does the food we eat, and the way we eat it, have to do with eating disorders?
Let me start by looking at my own eating habits. My love of food is centered around enjoying basic whole foods with the company of others. To me, “whole food” means fresh, unprocessed ingredients. Whole foods have a lot of protein, fiber, vitamins and unsaturated fats. They generally take more time to prepare and a lot of times they’re more expensive than processed foods, but they’re also more satisfying for longer and, well, they keep you regular. So I tend to eat whole foods.
Sharing our own food with someone else, or eating the food a friend or stranger may offer us, is an act of very basic respect. Food is at once a strange and intimate thing – we put this stuff into our bodies not just to enjoy but to survive. To reproach another person’s food is the ultimate insult (to put it dramatically, it is like saying, “The substance you put in your body is not worthy of my body.”) So I tend to eat food with people.
I think that our culture widely eats processed foods and that we frequently show disgust towards each other’s food. Note increasing unhealthiness and lack of respect for food.
What is surprising to me is that the treatment center I work in neglects to address or even recognize these issues. For example, the meals are strictly regulated in terms of calories and food groups (each meal must include a grain, vegetable, fruit, protein, and a glass of water and milk), but no attention is paid to the quality of the food (the grains are refined and devoid of fiber, the fruits and vegetables often canned, and the proteins precooked and frozen). The residents are given laxative-drinks at night to keep them regular.
Further, though the residents are required to eat dinner together every evening they do not all eat the same food, and I have often seen staff members wait until after the group meal to grab their Panera salad from the fridge and scarf it down in the back office. And don’t think the residents don’t notice.
I’m not sure that I’ve clearly answered my question of what food has to do with eating disorders, but I do think that it would be a wonderful thing to spend a bit more time preparing our food and rejoicing together in its consumption.
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