the most irritating term

Hey adoring fans,

Today I actually have a topic. First, I want everyone to guess what term frustrates me the most (ok, excluding racist, sexist, ableist terms). It’s used all the time and you might never have thought of it.

It’s the phrase “healthy eating”.

You may ask why I feel this way. Don’t I encourage healthy eating? Shouldn't it be my goal? The answer to al these questions is yes.

Yet the term still irks me.

I will give you two recent examples/anecdotes where this term is used.

#1

Long ago I decided to stop buying fashion/beauty/fitness/celebrity magazines because my inner feminist didn’t want to support an industry so morally bankrupt. I stick to magazines like bust, bitch, vegnews, bicycling times….you get the picture. I’ve slipped up a couple times and bought some, but for the past few months I’ve been…sober from patriarchal filth? Ok, maybe a little extreme but basically I’ve really stopped buying them.

However, I was getting my hair cut and my stylist gave me a stack of magazines while my hairy head was baking to become blonder. I flipped through a few of them and then I came upon Us weekly’s diet special.

I know, I shouldn’t have touched the thing.

Thankfully, it didn’t send me into a downward eating disordered spiral, but rather made me disgusted. They used the term “healthy eating” when describing the diets of various celebrities, but obviously they were focused on weight loss. There was the one were you puree all your food into baby food like mush. They put up sample menus from various starlets, including the nutritional information for the persons daily food intake. One girl had eaten less than 1,200 calories (I hate to use numbers, but most people should know that is a starvation diet). For breakfast she had a latte- and the “nutritionist” who analyzed her menu criticized her for drinking a latte with whole milk, and insisting that she drink skim to cut back on fat and calories. Umm, who are you and why are you calling yourself a nutritionist? This woman needs more calories and more fat. What substance allows for absorption of certain vitamins, insulates the body against cold and injury, offers a source of long lasting energy, makes your hair shiny….fat.

Then they analyzed Kate Gosselins “dancing with the stars” diet. It only allowed for one serving of carbs (more accurately “grains”) per day, only in the morning (the food guide recommends at east 6 servings of grain daily for a woman her age). She eats hummus and veggies for the rest of the day, and while she makes her kids sloppy joes for dinner she makes herself egg whites and vegetables. She claims to be the “healthiest” eater on the show.

Then there’s “healthy eating” ano camp style.

When I was in day patient eating disorder treatment we would have groups on nutrition education. About every week the subject was “healthy eating”. The group would generally start by the facilitators asking us what the term “healthy eating” made us think about, and then they’d give us a bunch of words that describe healthy eating:

“energizing”

“fun”

“variable”

“flexible”

“satisfying”

“nourishing”

“colourful”

As the resident smart ass I eventually grew tired of this discussion. So eventually when we had a group on healthy eating and I was asked what healthy eating meant to me I would respond in a monotone voice “healthy eating is energizing, fun, variable, flexible, satisfying, nourishing and colourful”. I would then get death stares from the facilitators.

I’m not disagreeing with any of these descriptions, but the repetitive, vague answers were irritating. As one goes through treatment they work on “normalizing” your eating. However, you then realize that almost nobody its into the category of normal. True, a lot of women in our society have unhealthy relationships with food without having a full blown eating disorder. What then happens is you begin to notice “unhealthy” behaviours like calorie counting or using exercise to compensate for larger amounts of food in women you thought of as healthy. You begin to question if “healthy eating” is possible. They present it as black and while – either you’re an eating disorder sufferer or someone who is unaffected my cultural pressure to be thin and eats completely intuitively (but still within the guidelines of Canada’s food guide). You realize that those people are rare, if not extinct.

These different interpretations bother me and make me want to pull my hair out. We are socialized to believe that regimented, low calorie diets describe :healthy eating”. Then you tget sick and fo to ano camp and are taught that it’s wrong. You can’t drink a diet coke or feel insecure with your body without it being an eating disorder symptom.

So what the hell is healthy eating?

Still looking for an answer,

Peace, Love and Veggies,

Alex