I’ve had a hypothesis brewing in my mind for several years now about the origins of American dysfunctionality. Okay, so I have a few of them, including one about the roots of feudalism (or what I call neo-feudalism) arising from subconscious desires of early settlers who passed it on to their children and to the children’s children and etc etc until finally there was a huge subculture of “nobles” and peasants pre-programmed to accept …

Oh. Wait. Got sidetracked.

In any case, I’ve been pondering how dysfunctional we are as a society for a long time and have a hypothesis brewing. This is more confirmation of my suspicions.

We’re in deep doo doo.

Two points: my grandmother would have answered “yes” to several of those questions simply because she was a homemaker and it was her job to plan menus and think ahead about food preparation. Marketing those fundamental human activities as disease symptoms strikes me as little short of criminal, and a great way to devalue them just as they’re taking hold again in a society gone otherwise quite mad.

And second–perhaps more important: there’s a false premise underlying many of those “diagnostic” questions: that the only difference between what I will eat and what I won’t eat is my own judgments of “good” and “bad”.

In reality, what I will eat is food, and what I won’t eat is the semi-toxic food facsimiles generally available in supermarkets.

If that makes me orthorexic, then yay orthorexia.

I mean, if 75% of the people in a country have a psychiatric diagnosis (bipolar, ADHD, depression, whatever), doesn’t that scream volumes? And I don’t know if 75% of Americans have a psychiatric diagnosis, but I’d venture it’s pretty damned close to that.

I’m glad you’re writing books. I was going to say something about it the other day, tell you you should be writing more of them, but I got sidetracked by packing or a tornado or both (as in the case today – looks like Tulsa got hit by a tornado – very exciting! They never get hit!).

But I agree with your analysis of overmedication which invariably leads to addiction. Whilst in the USA, I was shocked to see so many TV & radio ads peddling medication.

I eat tamales and have a thing about corn nuts. But I still fit the criteria.

Ask yourself this: how many hours a day do you think about food? Do you think about menus ahead of time? By the terms of this new eating disorder, those of signs of disease.

Iow, what used to be considered commen sense approaches to life are now signs of disease.

I agree about moderation, but that’s not the author of this new disease’s point. And although I do agree that there are some people who carry it to such an extreme, I think they’re actually anorexics or, in the case of my gassy massage therapist friend, flaming addicts.

This is simply more medicalization for Americans and further cover for Totino’s Pizza and hog farms housing 10,000 pigs in a single acre.

We have endless diseases over here.

More likely, they’ll deveop some new pharmaceutical substance specifically for people who refuse to eat Totino’s Pizza and Mighty Man Salisbury Steak day in and day out.

There is a great deal of room for improvement in the American diet, but labeling those who care about it as neurotic isn’t going to help anyone be healthier. What’s next, a little antidepressant prescription to make you feel better about eating crap food, instead of feeling better by not eating crap food?