It's National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Now, I don't want to make light of the eleven million Americans who suffer from eating disorders, particularly since around ten million of them are women or girls. This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, so let me say right now that in their most extreme forms, anorexia and bulemia are scary, sad, and potentially fatal. But mulling over a news report from Arkansas this week, I  had to stop and wonder if maybe these little girls with their "disorders" aren't just as perfectly sane and healthy as you and I. Not that that proves anything.

Here's a quote from an Arkansas doctor about the supposed "rise" in eating disorders in her state. She says girls as young as 9, 10, and 11 are showing up in her office: "They're reading labels and they're cutting back on foods they used to like; they're not eating."

Let me just throw this out there: With an insane number of people getting sick or DYING FROM EATING PEANUT BUTTER, chicken, hamburger, spinach, scallions, tomatoes, cookies, diet sodas, and oysters, couldn't we posit that it sort of makes sense for these kids to be super paranoid about what they're putting into their mouths? And since their "favorite foods" probably contain trans-fats, modified starches, and PEANUTS, would we say that their new attention to labels is a "mental illness" or would we call it a "healthy survival instinct"?

I mean come on. In the U.S. today, "food" more or less equals "poison." Sucking down a yummy spoonful of peanut butter ice cream gives you roughly the same odds as loading a bullet into a revolver, spinning the cartridge, putting the gun to your head, and pulling the trigger. The latest figure I've heard is that 1 in 4 Americans get food poisoning every year. Seems to me these 9-year-olds are crazy like a fox.

Who's gonna call us "sick" if ALL just stop eating?