I know you. We have a lot in common. You have been doing some reading and now you are pretty sure everything in the grocery store and your kitchen cupboards is going to kill you.
Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:
I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli. I am actually pretty into clean eating.
After Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:
Those crackers – gluten, baby. Gluten is toxic to your intestinal health, I read it on a forum. They should call those crackers Leaky Gut Crisps, that would be more accurate. That veggie burger in the freezer? GMO soy. Basically that’s a Monsanto patty. Did you know soybean oil is an insecticide? And those prawns are fish farmed in Vietnamese sewage pools. I didn’t know about the sewage fish farming when I bought them, though, really I didn’t!
The broccoli, though..that’s ok. I can eat that. Eating that doesn’t make me a terrible person, unless….oh, shit! That broccoli isn’t organic. That means it’s covered with endocrine disrupting pesticides that will make my son sprout breasts. As if adolescence isn’t awkward enough.
And who pre-cut this broccoli like that? I bet it was some poor Mexican person not making a living wage and being treated as a cog in an industrial broccoli cutting warehouse. So I’m basically supporting slavery if I eat this pre-cut broccoli. Oh my God, it’s in a plastic bag too. Which means I am personally responsible for the death of countless endangered seabirds right now.
I hate myself.
Well, shit.
All you want to do is eat a little healthier. Really. Maybe get some of that Activa probiotic yogurt or something. So you look around and start researching what “healthier” means.
That really skinny old scientist dude says anything from an animal will give you cancer. But a super-ripped 60 year old with a best-selling diet book says eat more butter with your crispy T-Bone and you’ll be just fine as long as you stay away from grains. Great abs beat out the PhD so you end up hanging out on a forum where everyone eats green apples and red meat and talks about how functional and badass parkour is.
You learn that basically, if you ignore civilization and Mark Knopfler music, the last 10,000 years of human development has been one big societal and nutritional cock-up and wheat is entirely to blame. What we all need to do is eat like cave-people.
You’re hardcore now, so you go way past way cave-person. You go all the way to The Inuit Diet™.
Some people say it’s a little fringe, but you are committed to live a healthy lifestyle. “Okay,” you say, “let’s do this shit,” as you fry your caribou steak and seal liver in rendered whale blubber. You lose some weight which is good, but it costs $147.99 a pound for frozen seal liver out of the back of an unmarked van at the Canadian border.
Even though The Inuit Diet™ is high in Vitamin D, you learn that every disease anywhere can be traced to a lack of Vitamin D (you read that on a blog post) so you start to supplement. 5000 IU of Vitamin D before sitting in the tanning booth for an hour does wonders for your hair luster.
Maxing out your credit line on seal liver forces you to continue your internet education in healthy eating. As you read more you begin to understand that grains are fine but before you eat them you must prepare them in the traditional way: by long soaking in the light of a new moon with a mix of mineral water and the strained lacto-fermented tears of a virgin.
You discover that if the women in your family haven’t been eating a lot of mussels for at least the last four generations, you are pretty much guaranteed a $6000 orthodontia bill for your snaggle-tooth kid. That’s if you are able to conceive at all, which you probably won’t, because you ate margarine at least twice when you were 17.
Healthy eating is getting pretty complicated and conflicted at this point but at least everyone agrees you should eat a lot of raw vegetables.
Soon you learn that even vegetables are trying to kill you. Many are completely out unless they are pre-fermented with live cultures in a specialized $79 imported pickling crock. Legumes and nightshades absolutely cause problems. Even fermentation can’t make those healthy.
Goodbye, tomatoes. Goodbye green beans. Goodbye all that makes summer food good. Hey, it’s hard but you have to eliminate these toxins and anti-nutrients. You probably have a sensitivity. Actually, you almost positively have a sensitivity. Restaurants and friends who want to grab lunch with you will just have to deal.
Kale: it’s what’s for dinner. And lunch. And breakfast.
The only thing you are sure of is kale, until you learn that even when you buy organic, local kale from the store (organic, local kale is the only food you can eat now) it is probably GMO cross-contaminated. Besides, it usually comes rolled in corn starch and fried to make it crunchier. Market research, dahling…sorry, people like crunchy cornstarch breaded Kale-Crispers™ more than actual bunny food.
And by now you’ve learned that the only thing worse than wheat is corn. Everyone can agree on that, too. Corn is making all of America fat. The whole harvest is turned into ethanol, high fructose corn syrup, chicken feed and corn starch and the only people who benefit from all those corn subsidies are evil companies like Cargill.
Also, people around the world are starving because the U.S. grows too much corn. It doesn’t actually make that much sense when you say it like that, but you read it on a blog. And anyway, everyone does agree that corn is Satan’s grain. Unless wheat is.
The only thing to do, really, when you think about it, is to grow all your own food. That’s the only way to get kale that isn’t cornstarch dipped. You’ve read a lot and it is obvious that you can’t trust anything, and you can’t trust anyone and everything is going to kill you and the only possible solution is to have complete and total control over your foodchain from seed to sandwich.
Not that you actually eat sandwiches.
You have a little panic attack at the idea of a sandwich on commercial bread: GMO wheat, HFCS and chemical additive dough conditioners. Some people see Jesus in their toast but you know the only faces in that mix of frankenfood grains and commercial preservatives are Insulin Sensitivity Man and his sidekick, Hormonal Disruption Boy.
It’s okay, though. You don’t need a deli sandwich or a po’boy. You have a saute of Russian Kale and Tuscan Kale and Scotch Kale (because you love international foods). It’s delicious. No, really. You cooked the kale in a half-pound of butter that had more raw culture than a black-tie soiree at Le Bernardin.
You round out your meal with a little piece of rabbit that you raised up and butchered out in the backyard. It’s dusted with all-natural pink Hawaiian high-mineral sea salt that you cashed-in your kid’s college fund to buy and topped with homemade lacto-fermented herb mayonnaise made with coconut oil and lemons from a tropical produce CSA share that helps disadvantaged youth earn money by gleaning urban citrus. The lemons were a bit over-ripe when they arrived to you, but since they were transported by mountain bike from LA to Seattle in order to keep them carbon neutral you can hardly complain.
The rabbit is ok. Maybe a bit bland. Right now you will eat meat, but only meat that you personally raise because you saw that PETA thing about industrial beef production and you can’t support that. Besides, those cows eat corn. Which is obscene because cows are supposed to eat grass. Ironically, everyone knows that a lawn is a complete waste in a neighborhood – that’s where urban gardens should go. In other words, the only good grass is grass that cows are eating. You wonder if your HOA will let you graze a cow in the common area.
In the meantime, you are looking for a farmer who raises beef in a way you can support and you have so far visited 14 ranches in the tri-state area. You have burned 476 gallons of gas driving your 17-mpg SUV around to interview farmers but, sadly, have yet to find a ranch where the cattle feed exclusively on organic homegrown kale.
Until you do, you allow yourself a small piece of rabbit once a month. You need to stretch your supply of ethical meat after that terrible incident with the mother rabbit who nursed her kibble and ate her kits. After that, deep down, you aren’t really sure you have the stomach for a lot more backyard meat-rabbit raising.
So you eat a lot of homegrown kale for awhile. Your seasoning is mostly self-satisfaction and your drink is mostly fear of all the other food lurking everywhere that is trying to kill you.
Eventually your doctor tells you that the incredible pain you’ve been experiencing is kidney stones caused by the high oxalic acid in the kale. You are instructed to cut out all dark leafy greens from your diet, including kale, beet greens, spinach, and swiss chard and eat a ton of low-fat dairy.
Your doctor recommends that new healthy yogurt with the probiotics. She thinks it’s called Activa.
EXACTLY! I’m so glad I’m not the only one who feels like this! SERIOUSLY! I no longer beat myself up for ‘failing’ because where’s the winning!
I’m plugging my ears, growing my own food and enjoying 🙂
This was great and so informative!! I have been gulen free, milk and monsanite free for almost 3 yrs. ViSalus meal replacement shakes has made it so much easier over the last 3 months. There is an answer out there. You just have to find it.
You’ve got to watch the ViSalus stuff – some of it is sweetened with Sucralose!
It would be way funnier if it all weren’t so close to the truth. I’m glad somebody said “Get a Grip!” Great job Erica (again). What I find interesting is that with social media the way it is we swing and slew our ways across the eating opinion spectrum in a matter of months whereas dietary diatribe once took many months or years to catch on. I remember growing up with my mother on the Macrobiotics wagon which almost seemed to belong secretly and exclusively to people who bought health magazines. Years later it was Pritikin (when the true commercial value of a “health diet” was realised by companies) and then Atkins and these movements lasted a few years but now dietary ethos comes in and out so fast that before my lacto-fermentation was done I was old hat and Paleo-poor.
My gawd this is awesome. Dead on. Now excuse me while I head to my favorite vegetarian co-op and buy all my non-gmo food in bulk with my pre-weighed re-used glass jars I’ve been collecting for my grocery trips. All locally grown and produced food – of course – labeled very diligently with facts on providers/farms/families – how far away the farms are, how many acres do the chickens have to graze, how much solar and wind power they use, and how their goods get transported to the store in bio-fuel vehicles, including the raw milk. I’m serious. I love it and at the same time, have to laugh out loud. How did it come to this?…… thanks for the blog – hilarious.
I needed this laugh tonight. Not sure what to do though, my kale succumbed to aphids and I had to feed it to my chickens. 🙂
That’s actually really good. You really shouldn’t be eating eggs at all, even from backyard hens, unless they are fed exclusively kale (for the kale-vitamins) covered in insects (for the protein). This is absolutely true. I read it on a blog post once. 😉
try planting marigolds next to the kale the aphids do not bother them.
Omg, I will be laughing for a couple hours over this post. Very well written and extremely entertaining!
hilarious, my dear. and oh so freakin’ true.
That. Was. So. Funny.
You are my new hero. Thank you, I sooo needed the laugh!
Hilarious! So why does my husband keep asking me to “eat normally”???
This is gold! I can relate to every single aspect – these thoughts race through my mind every time I open my mouth to insert food. I am torn between the findings of the China Study and reconciling that with the Cure Tooth Decay findings and the Weston A Price foundation approach. Eeeep! Such a funny and true post, thank you for sharing!
We’ve healed cavities in our family.
This article sounds like a commercial for Activa.
It sounds to me like an ad for anti-anxiety meds.
Now I can’t get the Activia song from the commercials out of my head.
This was funny! I’m not big into dieting or anything but I read the whole article thinking there would be a grand solution or something and when I got to the end, your point was clear without a conclusion at all! Great. I shared it on FB
Ok, This is hands down the best thing I’ve read all week. My husband is trying to get a diagnosis for some kind of weird liver thing he has and the doc has suggested as a precautionary measure to cut out all iron rich foods. He also has gout and we try to be aware of the food we eat. But last night I had a melt down, this is F..ing ridiculous! I want to just eat food. Food that I know. Not anything crazy assed, but you know the stuff my grandmother would recognize!
I will be sending the link to this site to a lot of my friends.
Thanks for the giggles.
Evonne: Your husband should have his PH level tested. If he has gout, I am guessing his PH level is low and his body is on the acidic side which most likely means his body has less oxygen than required for his body to operate normal. From what I have read and researched, oxygen kills cancer. So, you might want to get his PH level tested ASAP.
If his pH is acidic to a significant degree he’s got bigger problems than gout/liver function/cancer.
Sometimes, I stand in the grocery store exhausted from all the possible implications of how my food dollars are spent, and just want to buy a can of Pringles and eat them in secret in my car. Love this. SO SO funny.
Wow.. have you been inside my head?? LOL
I am so messed up because I have food sensitivities/allergies to both wheat and corn. ( The corn allergy is so bad, I haven’t been able to walk into a movie theater since the last Dark Knight flick)
I am 55 eat whatever the hell I want. My blood pressure is normal, my cholesterol is low, I can swim and run a mile. Don’t listen to these “flavor of the week” idiots, they are usually promoting a book or something. Eat well and enjoy life, it’s too short to worry about crap like this.
Curious, since you seem to do pretty well, what do you do to recover autistic kids?
Awesome post, I found myself in a very similar situation. I decided to not focus on perfection, but improvement. Since I was what I call a “Costco Mom” most of our meals came from a box in the freezer, just about any change was better. I think I’ve found a happy balance and don’t stress as long as I’m eating better than I was. I have a few items I’m strict about and others I’ll let slide a bit. I’ve given up on the internet since you can find a convincing article both for and against most any topic. I’m a fan of Michael Pollan and eat as local as is practical, but I just don’t have the energy or desire to research everything I put into my mouth.
What a brilliant article! I think about this all the time and think that a high level of discrimination is necessary — more than ever, with all this unverified information floating around on the Internet. What a conundrum.
Well, this is me but my former eating habits that resembled that of the “average” American led me to severe acid reflux and probably contributed to my body developing and being disabled with MS (not Lymes – I’ve been tested repeatedly). Almost everyone I know is battling a major health or weight problem and I look around at what they’re eating and it’s no wonder. I joke that I’m the healthiest sick person I know! On paper, I’m in perfect health and while I could be hit by a bus today, I’ll die feeling pretty darn good. It’s good to laugh at ourselves and remember to not get too obsessed but I’ll stick with my gf/ df /low corn / low sugar / high oils + plenty of kale for now. Thanks for the laugh.
Totally cracking up … because this is my life. lol Well, it’s not that bad.
But I think it should be mentioned that it’s the stress at the end of the day from trying to eat well that really does us in.
This is awesome. I’m an RD and I roll my eyes at all of those who fall off the deep end with everything they hear. Eat it all, in moderation and move. Voila. Thanks for the laugh 🙂
Best. Post. EVER! Oh the anxiety of eating healthy, ethically, and locally!
Frying seal liver? That’s crazy talk. You eat that shit raw.
Samantha, thank you. THIS is the one that made me laugh out loud for real.
This is the greatest thing I have ever read. Mostly because I relate to it 110% because this is pretty much my life for the past 5 years. I’m pretty sure you wrote this about me. Every day someone skips the meat helper box and the drive-thru and makes something from scratch at home it’s a step in the right direction!
haha, too bad the the bacteria culture in Activia yogurt is derived from poop 🙂
http://meghantelpnerblog.com/2012/04/12/is-thereactivia-yogurt-rat-poop/
Love it! I do have gluten-sensitivity/Celiacs, but have never been officially diagnosed because I started this journey: Went to a Naturopath who had helped a friend discover she was gluten-intollerant. She had me cut out gluten “just to see” (now know that prevented me from getting an official diagnosis) and did an allergy test which told me I was allergic to literally EVERYTHING. Test said I could eat brocolli, rice and beef, because that was only mildly trying to kill me.
So my Naturopath convinced me to cut out the 7 big allergens – eggs, milk, nuts, soy, wheat, corn and fish. Additionally I couldn’t eat chicken, lamb or turkey – the chicken and turkey actually caused me to have real physical effects – my hands and throat blistered when I prepared or ate it. I had to keep a food diary and submit myself for a bi-weekly scolding about my food choices. It was when I’d lost 50lbs and she was critizing me everytime I ate more than 1000 calories in a day – and LOVED it the days I was under 700 cal [the offical caloric intake during the Dutch Famine] that I KNEW this was crazy.
I’m back to eating just about everything but gluten, eggs and chocolate, all of which I could not introduce back into my diet without massive amounts of pain accompanying them. My son gets about 50% organic food, but I’m just going to appreciate eating again 😀
It sounds like your naturopath had a disorder of her own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa.
Oh great, now what do I eat?? Even Kale has been wiped of our menu, not good for hypothyroidism …..so I read on the internet!!
OMG! This is hilarious and I’m loving the comments! You forgot about water. Harvard study shows it will lower your intelligence. Unless you drink well water that is. Then you are just going to die of cancer. Drink wine. Cheers!
Sounds like a plan! lol
OMG, I laughed so hard! You are writing about me! I am so desperately trying to do the right thing for my family, researching, reading, etc.. but I am so sick of it to tell you the truth! One pediatrician tells me no milk, bad for the body, the other says, you must give 1/2 L a day, I am so confused. Raw or pasteurized, organic, is it really? When they bring it from a 3rd world country that’s happy to add the word BIO to make more money. Ugrr… So exhausted of this and once you go that route, you can’t really turn back cause everything I look at with disgust now and guilt when I do eat it! Anyway, thanks for making me laugh so hard I had activa coming out of my nose 😉
You forgot the one where drinking water will kill you. I saw it on facebook.
First off, great read- thanks for writing and posting it!
I just wanted to chime in on the whole Arthritis conversation. My son was diagnosed with JRA when he was one (1) year old. Nearly broke my heart to see him try to stand only to crumple in pain and wake up in the night crying in pain. The swelling in his ankle was noticeable and you could literally feel the heat when you wrapped your hand around it gently. The doctors had him on a series of anti inflammatory meds (all unsuccessful) which I allowed right up until they wanted to get him on some liquid chemo treatment… that’s when we decided to look outside of “western medicine” and I am sooooooooo thankful that we did. What good would it have done to destroy his organs to reduce his ankle pain? I wish I could tell you exactly what it was that cured the swelling and pain but I honestly don’t know. I believe it was the fish/omega oils but again- dunno. what I do know is that when all of our genius, super advanced and scientific methods fail- consider going back to basics.
kind regards,
a dad
Hahahahahahahaha! The whole food thing has just become too weird in recent years. I have Sjogren’s syndrome (dx through a biopsy and definitely not Lyme Disease) and spent 9 years with constant nerve pain, sucking down steroids to stay vertical and opiates to stay non-suicidal. I was working hard at eating ‘right.’ Lots of leafy greens, tons of veggies, fresh salsa all the time (I made it). Little meat, soy instead of dairy. Then I was handed a diet by the Swedish Hospital (Seattle) Pain Clinic and told that it was not well known and MIGHT help the pain and inflammation. It did. It cut out everything high in polyamines. No more: tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, squash, basil, dill, eggplant, mushrooms, mussels, cauliflower, legumes, … the list is very long and my diet now is very boring. But after a total elimination I challenged and saw that tomatoes (in any form), all cruciferous veggies and spinach in particular caused my joints to swell, neuropathy to start tingling in my hands and feet and the nerve pain in my face to go off the charts. Oh yeah, no soy. At all. Try avoiding soy lecithin. It’s everywhere. But I feel better. I no longer take steroids, I weaned myself off morphine. I’ve dropped half the anti-seizure meds I used to take and I’ve stopped taking muscle relaxers and anti-depressants.
There is no single way to eat that is right for everybody. And if I stopped to consider the political and cultural implications of my current diet it would make me crazy. I don’t. I just eat what doesn’t hurt me and try not to worry. Stress hurts us all.
Great article and I’m still laughing about the virgin tears. I have friends who I swear would buy it off the shelf if it turned up at Whole Foods in a cute, totally recyclable bottle.
This. Is. GLORIOUS. 😀
Way too much of ‘the sky is falling’ mentality going around for me. Here’s my deal. My dad is 90 years old. He has never had a heart attack or cancer. He has pretty much just eaten whatever during the course of his life but has never over-imbibed. He has smoked one pack of cigarettes a week for as long as I can remember (really…just one). He was just told by his doctor he should probably stop with the donut for breakfast since it looks like he is showing some signs of diabetes. At 90!! His response? We all die…I’m not going to be changing much now so I can assure myself of a ‘long’ life…I’ve already had one!
I like his attitude and I’m very much his daughter. I am more conscious of ingredients and make most of my foods from scratch and while sensitive to those with allergies also see people flock to GF like it’s cool (ask my friend who has celiac’s disease just how cool it is when you REALLY have to deal with it).
I swear, I think the worries over foods today and the attendant stress has to be a factor too!
Let’s be fair though, the worst part of the stress is the social disdain.
I believe in the “anything” diet. Eat whatever you want, in small quantities. Moderation… Moderation…
You are a genius! I recently experienced this madness myself (and have home baked organic kale crisps in the fridge as we speak but thankfully sanity prevailed before I handed over our lifetime’s worth of savings at the local health food store for a minuscule packet of raw cacao nibs and agave nectar. Food shouldn’t be a constant source of anxiety, and our health is most definitely not dependent on some obscure, hard to find ingredients that we don’t even know how to pronounce. I’m going back to the ‘everything in moderation and eat your greens’ approach. I think my bank account will thank me.
Good thing you didn’t get the agave nectar because that stuff will kill you! It’s 90% fructose and we all know how bad fructose is. 😉
(But really, agave nectar is bad stuff)
I’m so sorry you loose, seems the neighbors are bringing you up on charges for cruelty to animals and suing you because you warped their kids ideal of the Easter bunny. How very un christian of you.
Lol seriously killer article I loved it. Dr. Oz is a hack. btw.
BEST BLOG POST E.V.E.R.!
Best blog post ever.
Preach it, sister!
love it.
This post is beyond funny!!! You are awesome!!! You forgot to mention soy products and raw dairy! I’ll be waiting for a sequel!
This post is awesome. I would say more, but I’m too busy worrying about whether or not my coconut-almond latte contains GMOs.
Am I the only one that finds this article rude, ignorant and offensive?
The way we eat is a lifestyle, not a burden. It’s certainly not a joke. I can’t have gluten because I have celiac disease, that’s a serious autoimmune condition. I don’t appreciate you making it sound like Celiac Disease is an imaginary disorder created by a health freak who just decided to go gluten-free for kicks.
You make it sound like people who avoid gluten and other foods simply are doing so because they suffer from “orthorexia nervosa”
Are you aware that conditions like celiac disease, gluten intolerance and food allergies exist and are serious conditions that make it necessary for people to avoid certain foods?
I did not find your article amusing in any way. I am quite offended and I would help you would consider others feelings before you write such rubbish.
Yes, I am aware of all those things you mention. This post is not about Celiac Disease. Thank you for attempting to get me to consider your feelings about your dietary restrictions by calling my writing rude, ignorant, offensive and rubbish. Perhaps this is not the blog for you. Better luck elsewhere.
Hell yeah 🙂
Apparently after 9PM my brain reverts back to that of a teenager. Let me expand on that ‘hell yeah’ –
Well said, Erica! Heather, what you seem to be missing is that this blog post was not written about people who have to eat a certain way due to valid and very real food allergies or illnesses. No one is laughing at that.
Erica was poking fun at the rest of us, like myself, who make a *choice* to eat a certain way. We fall down the proverbial rabbit hole of nutritional philosophy that is largely fear based, confusing, overwhelming and filled with the shame and guilt of what harm you could cause yourself, your loved ones and the planet if you don’t strictly adhere to it’s tenants. It’s paralyzing.
For example, my Husband and I have been discussing having children. I know (because I’ve read it on blogs..) that not only is what I eat during my pregnancy of critical importance to my developing child, but also what I eat before I even get pregnant! So I have to order some fermented cod liver oil…preferably blended with high vitamin butter oil (because of the x-factor, which I don’t know exactly what that is…but it sounds important…) and I really should be eating organ meats every day, despite the fact that they gross me out (did i really just admit that? Blasphemy!). Also, my only source for raw milk is through a co-op that has it trucked down from an Amish farmer in PA at $10/gallon plus a $5 delivery fee and it’s packaged in plastic, which is leaching god only knows what into my $15 milk….the only solution really is to get a milk cow…but i’ll have to quit my job if I’m going to be tied to twice a day milkings. If all of this isn’t bad enough, the pre-conception diet has to be practiced by both potential parents, so I have to somehow convince my Husband to follow the same dietary guidelines if we don’t want our child to come out with a deformed jaw, autism and destined for a life of illness.
Oh wait, I just remembered that I was vegetarian for 7 years and consumed a ton of soy products, which were probably GMO and have most likely destroyed my reproductive system anyway.
Screw it, I’m not having kids.
In short, Heather, Erica was making fun of us, not you. We need to lighten up. Perhaps you could consider doing the same.
There. I feel better now.
“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.”
― Maya Angelou
Enough said, well one more thing, I say, Never ,ever,lose your sense of humor!!
It just makes you grumpy and no fun to be around 😮
Right on, Andrea.
Andrea, yes it’s funny and laughter is good, but as it stands, this piece is a double edged sword for social bullies to misuse. Unavoidably, it ridicules individuals and families who have hit the wall with their health, and discourages young people to be proactive. If 80% of damage is usually done before symptoms appear. attempts at prevention are reasonable. However, public health and digestion are so trashed today in so many ways, frankly, no one really knows what to do to turn it around.
Attempts at prevention are reasonable.
Jumping from fad diet to fad diet because it’s this week’s miracle, gorging on this week’s latest ‘superfood’ because last week’s superfood is now known by everybody (except those still arguing about it) to be totally unhealthy after all, upending your life based on something you read on an Internet forum where everyone is an expert in anecdata–that is the opposite of reasonable.
Nobody is mocking folks with Celiac Disease or Crohn’s or food allergies other illnesses with strict dietary requirements. Nobody is mocking folks with autism or PCOS/endometriosis or gluten issues or other health problems who find changes to their diet help them handle their illness. And nobody is suggesting that people shouldn’t do their research and eat healthier. This is a site on suburban homesteading, after all.
This post is poking fun not at real dietary concerns, but at reactionary fad dieting and “Healthy Eating Internet Education”–the way we all read on an Internet forum that broccoli is the new miracle veggie that will prevent all cancers, straighten teeth, cure ear infections, and fix your credit history, while glass jars are the latest hidden evil of modern society, letting treacherous UV rays at your food, menacing your children with their breakability and calling you at 3AM to leave naughty messages. The comedy is self-deprecating, and most of the comments are of the ‘laughing at myself for tripping over the same ottoman’ variety: folks are remembering that time they went on the all-grapefruit diet, or completely gave up brussel sprouts because they read that it deformed fetal kneecaps.
Yes, nowadays these fad diets are related to real dietary concerns, but so are regular fad diets. Poking fun at the grapefruit diet, or the Atkins diet, or the cayenne-drinking fast craze, isn’t mocking the obese, or giving fuel to mockery of the obese–it’s simply recognizing our own trend to overreact, overcorrect and take anything we hear on the news or the Internet too much at face value.
Anecdata of my own: the most effective rants against the gluten-free craze I’ve read were by folks with Celiac, who felt the fad trivialized their own health concerns. One could easily argue that it’s not posts like this that add fuel to the mockery, but folks who seize onto the fad and make a big production about how they can no longer eat brussel sprouts and it’s very insensitive of everyone else to go posting recipes for brussel sprouts or talk about brussel sprouts around them, and have you heard the word about brussel sprouts?
Andrea, I see the joke, and appreciate the sustainability blog focus here. My concern still, from my own experience, is that as it stands it is easily misused by social bullies. Many of them, particularly many out dated medical professionals, don’t believe food matters much (except with diabetes) and they eat the ones who do for lunch.
Using the gluten “fad” as an example, many folks still mock gluten free, partly because cross contamination makes that diet eye catching. I agree beginners are likely to be obsessed with the emotional transition, and maybe some do guilt others unnecessarily, but most of the time most of us are just trying to eat and keep our food away from crumbs. (Gluten-free is actually turning out NOT to be a fad. As tests get more accurate, the dx rates are climbing quickly, but we need to address the underlying reasons for it.)
I just hope some exhausted young mom does’t get this article brandished in her face by her scornful pretzel toting mother in law, and cry herself to sleep from discouragement and loneliness.
I’m not Andrea. 🙂
You’ve presented this archetype, the exhausted young mother who’s trying to solve her kid’s digestive woes and is shunned by her peer group for it, but frankly, you’re just as likely to run into an exhausted young mother verbally attacked and shunned by her peer group for giving her kid a pretzel. Your archetype has less to do with diet than it does with ‘mompetition’, the ridiculously extreme competition, criticism and polarization that takes over parenting groups these days. You’ll find the same backbiting, ostracizing and bullying over bottle vs breast, cloth vs disposable, raw milk vs pasteurized, fruit juice vs water, etc.
I fully accept that this exhausted mother is someone you personally know, and this was something you personally witnessed. Holding her up as your banner, though, is not working, because many of us have been that exhausted person too–the one at the table harangued and harassed about our diets. But in our cases, we were bullied by someone who had taken up vegetarianism, veganism, paleo, gluten-free, etc., and felt the need to ‘correct’ everyone around them.
You’re coming across as that person now–not as the defender of those who just want to find the right path for themselves and their family, but as the food bully determined to smack others down for not falling into line with your way of thinking/eating. You’re so determined to see this as an attack on your diet that you’re slathering on the self-righteous guilt in retalliation–us big meanies picking on that poor theoretical exhausted mother! Probably pelting her with bread, too! But I’ve been on the receiving end of similar lectures from folks who didn’t like my lunch, and the only attack here is coming from you.
Again, the post has nothing to do with your dietary restrictions. It’s a gentle jab at our human tendency to jump on bandwagons and freak ourselves out. I hope you don’t corner exhausted young pretzel-wielding mothers with the same rhetoric you’re using here, because it’s hard enough to be a mom without the food police waving their Internet credentials and lecturing you until you cry yourself to sleep from discouragement and loneliness. And hunger.
Yup, you pretty much are the only person here who doesn’t have a sense of humor. This article was HILARIOUS in a self-deprecating fashion and perhaps the lack of gluten in your diet has stifled your sense of humor? You should probably start taking a supplement to get that back. 🙂
I can see why you might find this offensive, but at a fellow allergic person (to the norm, ie pollen, wheat, iodine/shellfish, chamomile) if your going to survive in the average world you have to find humor in the situation. Yes if you consume said allergan you might turn into a preventable version of the elephant man, or worse (depending on the level of allergy) but you can’t ignore that too many people deny themselves food based on the fear of what might happen in the long term. Life is made to be enjoyed, that is the point
I too have Celiac disease and found this extremely funny! I never, ever eat gluten and life has become quite a bitch at times due to the lack of food available that is palatable to me. I don’t have time to cook all my own food so I just don’t eat much and drink smoothies instead. Even as a Celiac I could relate to this post as I read labels and try to make a decision whether or not to eat a tasty looking prepared meal that was incidentally prepared in an environment where wheat is present. It’s a toss up. I found this post in no way at all to make fun of those of us that must limit our food intake due to allergies/intolerances.
“Am I the only one that finds this article rude, ignorant and offensive?”
Ah, yes, you are!
No you are not the only one. It is well done and she has a point that can be taken as humorous. Sadly in real life it is not really funny, it is a little sneering. Is it presented in a balanced or kind way? This type of banter in the hands of young people who still assume they are healthy can be socially devastating to others who are suffering, desperately looking for answers, yet disdained by their peers as faddish.
PMSL! Every word resonated with me. I would write more but I’ve got a tray of organic, home grown kale chips in the oven and I don’t want them to burn!