By Barbara H. Peterson
Hey, if the World Homicide Organization, excuse me, World Health Organization can make up a pandemic and get away with it, then why should they have all the fun? It seems that our medical community has been busy for quite some time inventing ridiculous diseases.
A California doctor named Steven Bratman determined in 1997 that a “fixation on righteous eating” is a disease he coined as orthorexia nervosa. “Those most susceptible are middle-class, well-educated people who read about food scares in the papers, research them on the internet, and have the time and money to source what they believe to be purer alternatives,” says Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association’s mental health group.
So, let me get this straight. If you are well educated, want to eat healthy, avoid contaminated food and have the money to do so, you are mentally ill. “Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out” (Observer).
Organic food enthusiasts watch out! You are mentally ill, need treatment, and should be checked into a clinic or treatment center. I guess the docs feel that if you can afford to eat healthy, you can afford the thousand dollars it costs for one month’s worth of therapy to cure your obsession with wanting to be healthy.
Evidently, if you don’t care what you shovel into your body, you are mentally balanced. Are these people insane? I think the following from Sibel Edmonds explains it quite clearly:
Once upon a time an evil warlock visits a kingdom and poisons the central well with a potion that drives people mad. The next morning all who drink from that well go crazy. The queen, however, knew about this in advance, and didn’t drink from the communal well. The next day, those who drank the poisoned water came to the queen and accused her of being the crazy one. The queen, aware of what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and lose her sanity like the rest of her subjects, but remain queen; or don’t drink, remain sane, but be swept from power by those who would view her very sanity as madness.
I might not have medical credentials like the “professionals” who endorse this madness, but I’ve got a solution to the problem. Rid the store shelves of garbage and fill them with healthy food. Get rid of genetically modified filth, pesticide-ridden produce and preservative laden processed foodstuffs. Replace them with clean, organic, locally grown fruits and veggies whose genes have not been blasted in a laboratory with fish genes. Label each product with ALL of the ingredients without subterfuge and then people who want to eat healthy might not have to spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to sort through garbage that masquerades as food in order to stay healthy.
Nah, the medical establishment wouldn’t make as much money off us that way. Couldn’t have that, now could we?
©2009 Barbara H. Peterson
Surviving the Middle Class Crash 
August 28, 2009 at 2:32 pm
After 38 years of vegetarian life, at 62, I am healthier than most 21 year olds as to internal chemistry and physical health. I raced Lance Armstrong in the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race and I continue cross continent bicycle touring. It gets down to how you want to conduct your life: full of adventures, good health and vitality, or, a slug, fat, wallowing, couch potato with no life past the remote. Most choose the latter in this country as witnessed by 200 million obese Americans. http://www.frostywooldridge.com
August 29, 2009 at 1:44 pm
You’ve hit that nail right on the head, Frosty. I ride horses, and have competed in ‘100 miles in one day’ events. You can’t get there from the couch.
August 29, 2009 at 5:58 am
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!
August 29, 2009 at 5:59 am
Forgot to say however, I’m “mental”….
August 29, 2009 at 7:02 am
LOL! Me too, Patrick.
August 29, 2009 at 7:42 am
And one day it came to pass, the people set aside their Fritos, Cheetos and Tostitos and became mental as anything.
August 29, 2009 at 8:23 am
Amen.
August 29, 2009 at 9:41 am
I found out after years of suffering that I was gluten and grain intolerant..I am now grain free unless it is an occasional gluten free blue corn chip with some home made salsa..we make our own wine and eat no wheat or bread any more..I crave pancakes everyonce in a while but hate to go to the trouble of making them for two people out of gluten free ingredients ,, so I just eat a piece of dark chocolate instead!
August 29, 2009 at 1:28 pm
FANTASTIC! So true… I often say such things as “This Nuerosis I call Consciousness” What is the world coming to!
Thanks a ton!
August 29, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Exactly!! I refuse to buy into the whole story of “well, when you get older things just start to break down and fall apart”
I enjoy taking responsibility for my OWN health (did you hear that government?!!),I do Bikram yoga 4-5 times a week, eat good whole foods, lead a simple life, study many things that interest me and laugh.
The choice is yours, what kind of a life do you want..it does not happen overnight, but every little effort is paid off handsomely and next and then it starts to snowball……next thing you know your kicking all the 21 year old butts!
August 29, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Oops, a typo error, here is the corrected version.
Exactly!! I refuse to buy into the whole story of “well, when you get older things just start to break down and fall apart”
I enjoy taking responsibility for my OWN health (did you hear that government?!!),I do Bikram yoga 4-5 times a week, eat good whole foods, lead a simple life, study many things that interest me and laugh.
The choice is yours, what kind of a life do you want..it does not happen overnight, but every little effort is paid off handsomely and then it starts to snowball……next thing you know your kicking all the 21 year old butts!
October 5, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Synchronicity!
I just wrote this
and WordPress flagged your post as one that might be connected – which indeed it is!
I spent far too much of my life being told I was making stuff up. In practice most of the symptoms were a result of carbohydrate – and especially wheat – intolerance, shooting my blood glucose and insulin levels all over the place and resulting in high blood pressure and dyslipidemia, among others.
Simply testing my BG and adjusting my diet, first by reducing carbs and then by adding more saturated fats and doing further tinkering, has not only reduced most of my symptoms, including things I didn’t even realise were connected, but improved most of my numbers to those of a rather healthy person.
Mentally ill? Yeah right, I’m as mentally ill as all these fit healthy octagenarians I know who I meet in the butcher’s, the fishmonger’s, the greengrocers and the farm shops, because I eat the same stuff they’ve always eaten???
Mentally ill is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Like telling people to eat more grains, less saturated fat, more synthetic seed oils and wondering why they always get worse . . .
July 6, 2010 at 3:11 am
Hello everybody
I can empathize with all of the above, and am just loving all of these wonderful comments! Thanks for all the life-affirming and positive thoughts shared here!
I too was told everything was in my head when I was environmentally ill back in the late 70s and suffering with agonizing pain from endometriosis. It all changed with an anti-Candida diet, and other problems disappeared too with gluten avoidance. I eat almost strictly organically and the difference to my health is incredible. So is this all imagined and all in my head? You had better believe it is not.
That said, I can also see the point though, that some people do develop food neuroses as they become too strict with their diets and health. SOme people can become rigid or like in-your-face-type lecturers, and this is a fanaticism which is not healthy. I would never go so far as to call this mental illness, but I surely would say that food and health-maintenance neuroses do exist. People on strict diets like the Candida diet can also develop food phobias, believing that even zucchinis or mushrooms will make them sick. It’s not true. Just cut away any molds, and the mushrooms themsevles are so full of b vitamins and are so supportive of the immune system that many are used for cancer treatment, that only benefits can ensue.
Still, it is definitely neither imagined nor an illness to say that eating organically and healthfully are important, not even just a nice or good thing to do.
And I love what you are all saying above about living a full and happy life, in addition to a healthful one. Thank you all! This is fantastic. Best wishes to everybody, Drina (herbalist, professional musician)