Paul Campos
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE Russian novelist Dostoyevsky noted that "Man cannot exist without bowing before something. Let him reject G-d and he will bow before an idol." Nowhere is the truth of this insight more evident than in the attitude many Americans now take toward food and dieting.
Consider the psychological crisis Barbra Streisand admits to suffering in the wake of the events of Sept. 11. "One day," she confessed to USA Today, "I tell myself, 'Screw everything, I'm getting a Carl's Jr. hamburger and eating fried chicken three nights in a row. I don't care about my weight.' The next day, my optimistic side takes over and I think, 'Wait a minute, life goes on. People will get wiser, justice will prevail. Maybe I should watch my diet.' "
Now, in a culture that had anything resembling a healthy attitude toward food, this sort of statement would be incomprehensible. What do Streisand's feelings about the relationship between fried chicken and her weight have to do with her hopes for the advent of a just society? Or consider a recent story from the San Francisco Chronicle regarding "orthorexics," a term coined by Steven Bratman to describe "people whose obsessive quest for healthy food overtakes their lives."
The story relates that "at the height of his dietary vigilance, Bratman would eat only vegetables plucked from the ground 15 minutes earlier and chewed every mouthful 50 times. He agonized over whether to eat a piece of Kraft Swiss cheese, certain it would give him pneumonia." After writing an article for Yoga Journal about his experiences, Bratman learned he was far from alone. People wrote to him from around the world, confessing that they too suffered agonies of guilt whenever they ate "bad" food (such as bread).
Further, they found themselves beset by all the social deficiencies of the classic religious fanatic: they nurtured intense feelings of moral superiority to those who were not as "pure" as themselves, and they alienated friends and family with their constant evangelizing on the evils of pork chops and Pop Tarts.
As someone who works in one of the most health-obsessed cities in America (Boulder) I sympathize with those who find themselves beset by orthorexics. Within the borders of Boulder County, to order one of the hamburgers for which Streisand lusts is to risk the wrath of the Tofu Taliban, many of whose members feel no compunction about offering strangers unsolicited advice ("You know, that's really not good for you") regarding the moral character of their dietary habits.
This is annoying, of course, but it is also quite sad. The food and diet zealots are denying themselves many of life's most innocent pleasures, all in the service of the illusion that if they don't eat fried chicken they're never going to die. An even sadder sight is provided by the tens of millions of Americans who grow fat and unhappy while bingeing on disgusting diet foods, such as Nabisco's fabulously successful SnackWell line of no-fat desserts, instead of enjoying the sorts of foods that would actually satisfy them. (The saddest irony is that if they ate foods that satisfied them, they would be much less likely to binge in the first place).
Barbra Streisand has fame and wealth in abundance, but all she
really wants is to enjoy a guilt-free piece of fried chicken. She will
never have that experience, as long as she continues to worship
the false gods of health and thinness -- idols that will betray her
in the end. Streisand and her 60 million fellow dieters would be
much happier (and most of them would in fact be thinner) if they
could learn to Just Say
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Comment by clicking here.
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