Interesting article

sunfastrose

This article has an interesting view of the reasons behind dieting choices - https://getpocket.com/explore/item/eating-toward-immortality-1597909330

kshama2001

Love this!

"...We are not pandas, chastely satisfied with munching through a square mile of bamboo. We seek variety and novelty, and at the same time, we carry an innate fear of food. This is described by the famous omnivore’s paradox, which (Michael Pollan notwithstanding) is not mere confusion about choosing what to eat in a cluttered food marketplace. The omnivore’s paradox was originally defined by psychological researcher Paul Rozin as the anxiety that arises from our desire to try new foods (neophilia) paired with our inherited fear of unknown foods (neophobia) that could turn out to be toxic. All omnivores feel these twin pressures, but none more acutely than humans. If it weren’t for the small chance of death lurking behind every food choice and every dietary ideology, choosing what to eat from a crowded marketplace wouldn’t be considered a dilemma. Instead, we would call it “the omnivore’s fun time at the supermarket,” and people wouldn’t repost so many Facebook memes about the necessity of drinking a gallon of water daily, or the magical properties of apple cider vinegar and coconut oil. Everyone would be just a little bit calmer about food."

gallicinvasion

I like this article a lot! Although I wish there was a section on female socialization and eating/diet, especially when the author talks about the guilt that comes with eating

Orphia

sunfastrose wrote: »

This article has an interesting view of the reasons behind dieting choices - https://getpocket.com/explore/item/eating-toward-immortality-1597909330

"Unclean, agnostic eating"... Love it.

AnnPT77

Good link! Quite amusing, though could've been edited to a more pithy clarity, for my taste.

As a cancer survivor, especially during treatment, I'd routinely seen people implicitly holding up their best practices (eating, postive attitude, whatever) as a presumed talisman that would prevent them from experiencing what I was going through. (The most blatant form was probably "God won't give us anything we can't handle, and I couldn't handle that" - in words nearly that explicit! But there were other remarks that embodied similar magical thinking, diets or attitudes urged on me that would surely save me, since the person speaking used them and didn't have cancer themselves. SMH.)

Later, delving into weight loss culture here - so strongly colored by pop culture nonsense and profit-seeking charlatans' pseudoscience - it was pretty clear that the underpinnings often include that same "talisman against mortality" thinking, and the sin/expiation model of eating is obviously common ("I've eaten the bad foods, and now I feel sooo guilty. Should I do a cleanse?" "I'm eating clean, and working out, but can't lose weight: Whyyyyy?"). And what kind of first-world self-absorbed privilege does it take to believe that "starvation mode" will prevent weight loss, while poor people clearly starve to death daily, world wide?

Jruzer

This is excellent stuff. There are a lot of good takeaways here:

- "How we eat" is part of what makes us human. For me personally, this nails down why the idea of "food as fuel" is such a depressing idea: it is actually inhuman to isolate food from culture and society in that way.

- The idea that, if we just ate the perfect diet, that we would somehow escape our mortality. I'm reminded of this point every time I see a discussion about relative risks and weighing the healthiness of every possible choice, as if healthiness is some standalone attribute of food that can be isolated.

- The willingness many people have to trade their freedom in favor of proscription.

I'm not sure I buy all the author's assertions, e.g. the Omnivore's Paradox. In the meantime she dances around, but doesn't really address, the intersection of diet, religion, and culture. I can't say I blame her.

kshama2001

GottaBurnEmAll

That was just great. Thanks for posting it.

mmapags

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Good link! Quite amusing, though could've been edited to a more pithy clarity, for my taste.

As a cancer survivor, especially during treatment, I'd routinely seen people implicitly holding up their best practices (eating, postive attitude, whatever) as a presumed talisman that would prevent them from experiencing what I was going through. (The most blatant form was probably "God won't give us anything we can't handle, and I couldn't handle that" - in words nearly that explicit! But there were other remarks that embodied similar magical thinking, diets or attitudes urged on me that would surely save me, since the person speaking used them and didn't have cancer themselves. SMH.)

Later, delving into weight loss culture here - so strongly colored by pop culture nonsense and profit-seeking charlatans' pseudoscience - it was pretty clear that the underpinnings often include that same "talisman against mortality" thinking, and the sin/expiation model of eating is obviously common ("I've eaten the bad foods, and now I feel sooo guilty. Should I do a cleanse?" "I'm eating clean, and working out, but can't lose weight: Whyyyyy?"). And what kind of first-world self-absorbed privilege does it take to believe that "starvation mode" will prevent weight loss, while poor people clearly starve to death daily, world wide?

This is just such an insightful post in so many ways. Not the least is the experience of having cancer (not me. My daughter, stage IV breast cancer) and all the el meaning but inappropriate advice. And also the psuedo science as well as the "expiation" model of diet. Probably the best summary of our disfuntional food culture I've seen. Thank you for your insight.