Pet Peeves. Just in Time for Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

We will all rest more easily if we air
these 'pet' peeves.

Radio show host, Brooklyn Kitchen store owner and foodie Harry Rosenblum wants to know my food related pet peeves. He'll be interviewing me on March 16th on Feast Yr Ears about eating disorders and recovery with a particular interest in Cate and my book, Food to Eat: guided, hopeful & trusted recipes for eating disorder recovery. Pet peeves. Funny he should have asked; 'Thursday's patient' was just suggesting this for a blog post.

We all have them. Pet peeves are those things that drive us crazy that people and companies say and do that make us want to scream. But most of you don't scream, or even express your outrage. You might be annoyed, infuriated even, but you just keep it quiet and say nothing. Maybe you ruminate about it, or binge eat or don't eat at all. "I'll show them" may be your thinking. So readers, here's your prompt to share those things that piss you off. Ok, ok, not so fast. Let's narrow the focus to food and eating disorder related topics, okay?

I'll start us off with a few.

• People who ought to know better, that assume weight loss is a good thing. Think doctors and nurses. Just 2 days ago a pre surgical nurse interviewing a family member asked if there was weight loss of more than 10 pounds in the past month. Yes, was the reply. "That's great!" she  moronically responded, naive to any underlying vomiting, pain, growing cancer, or depression that might have contributed. Brilliant. Or the pediatrician who praised the boy's weight drop from his high BMI, failing to ask the critical questions that would have diagnosed his eating disorder.

• Food companies that sneakily shrink their packaging, thinking we just won't notice. 1/2 gallon of ice cream? Nope. Now it's just 1.5 quarts (vs 2 quarts). Kashi cereal boxes--same height, just a fraction of the content, with skinnier boxes. Call a spade a spade. Increase the darn price but keep the package size the same. Don't insult my intelligence, please! I'm waiting for them to fill my dozen eggs with just 10. Just you wait. 

Stop insulting my bread.
And please call it bread, not carbs!

• Nutrition misinformation that people can't let go of--belief that gluten, or carbs make you fat. Not so my friends! There's no evidence to support this. It's like global warming for a particular US political party. They hold on to these beliefs in spite of all the science to the contrary. Ughh!

• Food labels that shout out "high protein" or "low fat" or "gluten free" as if we should care. (If you  need to watch your gluten since you have celiac you'd better look for more that the shout out gluten text; you'll need a legitimate stamp identifying foods that have a measured low gluten level through careful factory testing).

• People that think their food choices or diet type raises them to a higher moral ground. Choose to be vegan if you are concerned about the planet or animals or both. But don't wear it like a designer label because quite simply, I'm not impressed.

This is steak. It contains protein.
And fat. And other nutrients.

• Calling food by its nutrient. As in "I'll have some protein with that" referring to meats or fish, for instance. Can't we appreciate and select foods for their other characteristics, too? For their flavor, or texture, their smoothness or crunch? The simple pleasure they give us?

What are your pet peeves? Let's put them out there and circulate them. And maybe we will raise awareness and create change.