Funny or Offensive: Local Version
I don’t mean to belabor this topic, but this one hit my radar as it’s “about” Quakertown, Pa., where I’ve spent sufficient time.
Anorexic Realizes She Just Has To Eat
Quakertown, PA resident Jasmine Strotz, a 22 year-old who has been struggling with the eating disorder anorexia for three years now, was relieved to hear, during a class discussion at the college she attends, that all she has to do is eat and her disease will be cured.
“For years, I’ve wondered, ‘How can I stop this?’” she said in an exclusive interview. “I thought and thought, but I just couldn’t figure it out. It was the hardest problem I had ever faced.”
When the problem first surfaced, Strotz was reluctant to go to a doctor, believing she could fix matters herself.
“I tried some home remedies, like trying to pack clay onto my body in hopes that it would absorb into my skin and become weight,” she explained. “I also tried sleeping with the food, as well as looking at pictures of food. But still I remained hungry!”
Normally, I don’t offer my opinions on these ForOs. But this one? Its poor writing offends me. Click here for the rest.
liz | 3:34 PM | Funny or Offensive?, eating disorders
Orthorexia: An Obsession With Health Food
The New York Times last night posted a story about orthorexia, a sort of eating disorder in children whose parents have been strict about what they’re allowed to eat.
While scarcely any expert would criticize parents for paying attention to children’s diets, many doctors, dietitians and eating disorder specialists worry that some parents are becoming overzealous, even obsessive, in efforts to engender good eating habits in children. With the best of intentions, these parents may be creating an unhealthy aura around food.
“We’re seeing a lot of anxiety in these kids,” said Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They go to birthday parties, and if it’s not a granola cake they feel like they can’t eat it. The culture has led both them and their parents to take the public health messages to an extreme.”
Tiffany Rush-Wilson, an eating disorder counselor in Pepper Pike, Ohio, has seen the same thing. “I have lots of children or adolescent clients or young adults who complain about how their parents micromanage their eating based on their own health standards and beliefs,” she said. “The kids’ eating became very restrictive, and that’s how they came to me.”
This kind of problem includes a dramatic increase in kids who won’t eat certain foods because they believe them to contain pesticides. The Times profiles one woman whose obsession with health food turned deadly:
But whatever the behavior is called, those who have lived through a disorder fueled by an obsession with healthful eating say that the experience can be agonizing. Kristie Rutzel, a 26-year-old marketing coordinator in Richmond, Va., began eliminating carbohydrates, meats, refined sugars and processed foods from her diet at 18. She became so fixated on eating only “pure” foods, she said, that she slashed her daily calorie intake to 500. Eventually, her weight fell to 68 pounds and she was repeatedly hospitalized for anorexia.
Today Ms. Rutzel, who said she is normal weight, often talks to young girls in schools and churches about the perils of becoming health-food obsessed.
When I think about childhood food, I have such lovely memories — hoagies, Whopper Juniors, Big Macs, Yankee Doodle cupcakes, you name it. I guess this is one disease I’ll never have to worry about.
liz | 11:24 AM | eating disorders
