Tag: raw foodism

Orthorexia In The News

I got into reading about nutrition for fun when I was a teenager. I started off with the pop diet and nutrition books found in the local mall. I remember, from all of those years ago, a book called “Are You Confused?” by Paavlo Airola. The rhetorical question from his title was referring to the cacophony of contradictory nutrition advice in popular books. He wrote that if someone was to adhere to each rule from all of those systems that person wouldn’t eat any food at all.

It looks like there are some people that do that.

Its called orthorexia, a term for a new eating disorder. Orthorexia is about being obsessive with rules for healthy eating( true or not ) to the point where adherence to those rules starts destroying your health or taking over your life.

I found this interesting piece from ABC New’s “20/20” with John Stossel on youtube.

I wasn’t 100% comfortable with John Stossel confronting one of these nutrition folklore gurus ( part 2, 5:20 ), Viktoras Kulvinskas, in a harsh way, but part of me felt like what Stossel said had to be said. You will see that this particular guru looks like anything but the picture of health, yet he preaches his system with an almost religious-like fervor. Stossel stopped him in the middle of the conversation, pointed out that he was only 8 years older than Stossel, but looked several decades older.

I felt really bad for the recovering orthorexics interviewed. I was amazed that people could be that thin and still be alive. I felt badly for them.

Part 1

Part 2

Stop Using Cavemen as an Excuse for Your Fad Diet

Mock cave painting with cave men hunting a hamburger on a bun.

The ladies over at Jezebel said what I did in Cooked Meals For A Million Years?, but in a much more satisfying way:

Anthropologists have uncovered “unambiguous evidence” in South Africa that our Homo erectus grandpas were cooking their food as far back as one million years ago. Previous to this discovery, the earliest conclusive evidence of deliberate, human-controlled fires dated back only about 400,000 years. Now, I know what you’re thinking: How do I know it wasn’t just spontaneously-combusted bat guano?

Don’t worry, they covered that.

snip …

On principle, I 100% do not care what anyone else eats. But I do care about judgmental condescension shrouded in pseudo-science—the idea that certain behaviors are “healthier” or “more natural” because “that’s how the cavemen did it.” That’s some bullshit that you hear all the time, from raw- and/or paleo-foodists and those barefoot people and the strident anti-monogamists. And I really honestly don’t give a shit what any of those groups want to eat/wear/fuck, but can we just PLEASE leave the “cavemen” out of it?

Full article.

Cooked Meals For A Million Years?

A new study was published in the news citing evidence that Homo Erectus may have been using fire and cooking food as early as 1 million years ago.

That would mean people were eating cooked meals before people were people ( Homo Sapiens ).

Outside of scientific circles this may only be significant to raw foodists, many of whom justify eating only raw foods on the belief that it is the diet human beings evolved on and what we are adapted to.