I think I’m piggybacking a little bit here to Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food,” where he remarks on the fact that the American diet is all over the place and that Americans should adopt original diets from the Mediterranean, Asia or a few other places, I forget. Adding to his argument about abandoning the American diet (whatever that even is), I feel that the reason we have such eating disorders in this country is because the avenue to eating healthy is such a question mark. The American diet is made up within the last few hundred years and hijacked by capitalism, so the concept of eating healthy within it is all over the place and constantly changing.
We definitely aren’t the only country that has eating disorders, of course, and I absolutely acknowledge that most eating disorders stem from wanting to lose weight, but even there it’s because the American diet is just junk and mystery, and people are prone to gain weight on it. I mean, we all have our theories about preservatives and whatever else is in our food because people are constantly coming back from Europe talking about how they didn’t gain weight eating as much pasta as they want (though I do want to caveat that part of those reasons are also because we’re very sedentary in the US and our portions are out of control).
Are other countries going through these random obsessions like we are? Like sometimes we’re angry at carbs, other times we’re angry at fats, currently we’re obsessed with meat protein, etc. It just seems this country is always studying what to eat and never figuring it out, and as a consequence, you’ve got so many eating disorders.
So I’m not arguing the American diet being shit, but I am wondering if there is disagreement that it is that exact reason that is contributing to eating disorders.