Tag: drawbacks

What Are Eating Disorders?

 

The Minnesota Experiment by Ancel Keyes

The one thing we can count on our dieting to give us, is a complicated relationship with food. This, too, is proven by science. Most notably in a study done in the 1940’s on a bunch of healthy men. They were put on a calorie restricted diet, and the scientists soon started observing weird behavior in the men. They got depressed and irritable, started hiding food and binge eating. They lost their sex drive and their sense of humor. Some of them even went psychotic. All from living on around 1500 calories a day.

Scary isn’t it, when we think about how many of us, particularly women, live like this every day and have been since an early age?

Why is it, when we have such overwhelming evidence that diets are futile and destructive, that we still continue to blame ourselves? That we are still hell-bent on trying again and again, hoping for a different result this time.

A movement toward acceptance of body size and a more realistic view of individual differences in body shapes is emerging in the U.S. Acceptance  may be the most effective measures that can be taken to prevent many eating disorders.

Besides the more well-known disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder, there are many other eating disorders.

Some examples:

Anorexia athletica /female athlete triad: engaging in compulsive exercise to lose weight or maintain a very low body weight. Common in athletes.

Body dysmorphic disorder/bigorexia (muscle dysmorphia): An obsession with a perceived defect in the sufferer’s body or appearance. Affects males and females equally but can be prevalent in bodybuilders and gym-goers.

Pica: Craving and eating nonfood items such as dirt, clay, paint chips, chalk, laundry starch, coffee grounds, and ashes. More common in pregnant women and children of a certain ethnicity.

Please link to Louise Stigell (below) to read a provocative account of her dieting experiences.

Louise Stigell

Dec 6 · 11 min read

 

 

 

 

THE STANDARD AMERICAN DIET (AKA SAD)

A 2010 report from the National Cancer Institute on the status of the American diet found that three out of four Americans don’t eat a single piece of fruit in a given day, and nearly nine out of ten don’t reach the minimum recommended daily intake of vegetables. On a weekly basis, 96 percent of Americans don’t reach the minimum for greens or beans (three servings a week for adults), 98 percent don’t reach the minimum for orange vegetables (two servings a week), and 99 percent don’t reach the minimum for whole grains (about three to four ounces a day). “In conclusion,” the researchers wrote, “nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations. These findings add another piece to the rather disturbing picture that is emerging of a nation’s diet in crisis.”

A dietary quality index was developed reflecting the percentage of calories people derive from nutrient-rich, unprocessed plant foods on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher people score, the more body fat they tend to lose over time and the lower their risk appears to be of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. Sadly, it appears most Americans hardly make it past a score of ten. The standard American diet reportedly rates 11 out of 100. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, 32 percent of our calories comes from animal foods, 57 percent from processed plant foods, and only 11 percent from whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. That means on a scale of one to ten, the American diet would rate about a one.

Adhering to just four simple healthy lifestyle factors may have a strong impact on chronic disease prevention: not smoking, not being obese, getting a daily half hour of exercise, and eating healthier—defined as consuming more fruits, veggies, and whole grains, and less meat. Those four factors alone were found to account for 78 percent of chronic disease risk. If we ticked off all four, we may be able to wipe out more than 90 percent of our risk of developing diabetes, more than 80 percent of our heart attack risk, halve our risk of stroke, and reduce our overall cancer risk by more than one-third.

That is what this blog is about – how the SAD diet affects our food culture positively and negatively. There is much work to do about our lifestyles that can help change the course of the health of our bodies as well as the health of our environment – and the sooner the better. Let’s get started.