Eating healthy is a disorder, REALLY?!
Nick recently showed me this piece on an amazing new eating disorder some psychologizt(sic) is hawking on the world.
Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.
In case you didn’t know these are mostly foods that people on Paleo and other low carb diets tend to avoid. The benefits of cutting out these foods are very – well – documented. But what does this really achieve? Think of the intended reader of this article. This article appeals to the regular conservative very easily: Organic foods tend to get hawked by vegans and whole foods shoppers. Vegans and whole foods shoppers tend to be intensely liberal. Suddenly our psychological disorder has a political use. This is an example of something the conservatives can (and probably will, fruitlessly) try to use to copy the liberals’ tactics.
When a republican says ‘no more welfare.’ The liberal can say ‘You’re a corporatist and a fascist.’
Now, when a liberal says ‘you’re eating processed pesticides from farms that contribute to global warming’ the republican can respond ‘you’re an orthorexic.’
While the names these ridiculous people call each other is of little use to me what bothers me is that specifically Paleo and low carb diets are singled out. That is an example of the mainstream Government Standard Issue Diet supporters trying to do some namecalling of their own on Paleo.
Fortunately any appeal to the ignorance of readers is doomed to fail when you’re fighting against the side of Truth.
