Fattoush or French Fries?

• Even those people, when they do remember to eat, know that eating a well balanced meal can have long lasting physical and mental health benefits.

Throughout the day, we make a multitude of decisions, many of which are centered around food and eating. Well, maybe not all of us because there are those hand picked unique individuals who have been gifted with a special kind of food related amnesia, claiming that they often forget about planning meals, eating or don’t feel hungry until reminded!

Even those people, when they do remember to eat, know that eating a well balanced meal can have long lasting physical and mental health benefits. But do we truly understand what ‘healthy eating’ means? Does it vary across cultures? Is it a realistic and achievable standard considering our busy lives? And perhaps the most crucial question here is; can too much of an emphasis on healthy eating become unhealthy?

Fear of obesity reaching epidemic levels in some parts of the world, including the Gulf, coupled with a greater understanding about nutrition and access to information has resulted in some of us becoming hyper vigilant about our eating habits.
Dr. Bratman along with an increasing number of nutritionists, dietitians and psychologists are concerned that an exaggerated focus on healthy food does have the potential to cross over to dysfunctional and obsessive tendencies.

Dr Bratman coined the term Orthorexia, which in Latin translates to ‘nervous about correct eating’ or an obsession with healthy eating. He explains that ‘it is this obsession that marks the distinction between making well-informed, careful, healthy decisions and engaging in potentially harmful behaviour.’

He goes on to say that the food preoccupation stems from a problem like asthma. “Among those who believe in natural medicine, the progressive view is to avoid medicine, which supposedly has side effects, and instead focus on what you eat. But everyone misses the fact that if you get obsessed with what you eat, it actually has a lot of side effects - mainly, the obsession itself.”

The obsessive behavior regarding healthy food can lead more to psychological stress than physical damage because these people may socially isolate themselves, spend excessive time planning and preparing meals, go to extremes to avoid certain places or people for fear of being tempted, experience feelings of superiority about their eating discipline, feel entitled to judge others about their weight or eating habits, and experience a loss of the joy associated with eating.

According to WebMD, here are some key questions to ask when trying to identify orthorexic behaviour:
Are you spending more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food?
Are you planning tomorrow’s menu today?
Is the virtue you feel about what you eat more important than the pleasure you receive from eating it?
Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?
Have you become stricter with yourself?
Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthy?
Do you look down on others who don’t eat this way?
Do you skip foods you once enjoyed in order to eat the “right” foods?
Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat anywhere but at home, distancing you from friends and family?
Do you feel guilt or self-loathing when you stray from your diet?
When you eat the way you’re supposed to, do you feel in total control?

Christina Pirello, in her article, Stigmatizing Health: The War Against ‘Health Nuts’ believes that ‘all this psycho babble’ is just a front for a much more serious issue.  ‘What’s really going on here? The truth shouldn’t surprise you really. With all the discussion and focus on health and the role food plays in keeping or destroying our vitality, special interests, big pharmaceuticals and conventional medicine have to figure out a way to marginalize healthy eating and living. How would they continue to thrive if everyone chose healthy food and did not need them as much? They want us to stop questioning and rocking the boat. 

They want us to shut up and chow down on processed foods that make a lot of money for them and deliver nothing but disease and death to us. They prefer that we stop reading labels and asking what is in our food. They want to keep the dollars flowing from stuffed crust pizza, soda, candy, sugared cereals, burgers, fries and fried chicken in a bucket.’

Regardless of which side of the buffet you chose to stand, ancient advice about moderation is probably the wisest path to take here. There’s no doubt that whole natural foods, reduced salt, sugar and processed food, exercise and an avoidance of junk food will allow us to feel and look better. So long as we don’t drown in the sea of flax seeds, quinoa and kale and still have some friends left to compliment our healthy glow!


 Dr Samineh I. Shaheem is the Learning & Development Director at Kawader (www.kawaderuae.com), and the owner of Life Clubs UAE. She has studied and worked in different parts of the world, including the USA, Canada, UK, Netherlands, and now the UAE. She co-hosts a radio program on 103.8 FM Dubai Eye (Psyched Sundays, Voices of Diversity 10-12pm) every Sunday morning discussing the most relevant psychological issues in our community. Twitter: @saminehshaheem/Facebook: Life Clubs UAE. Please forward your thoughts and suggestions for future articles to OutOfMindContact@gmail.com

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