I usually enjoy Livejournal's daily "writer's block". The questions are often silly, but harmless, and at times they can actually be interesting.
However, this is today's question:
"If a magic genie told you your calories wouldn't count for 24 hours, would it change what and how much you ate that day?"
To me it's bordering on encouraging eating disorders.
And it looks like most answers are "YES!". (Which is probably because most people who think this question is stupid don't answer it at all.) But fortunately some users who have answered the question before me have said perfectly what I was going to say.
joshksingh:
"To put this question another way: If an evil djinn told you you could indulge your eating disorder for 24 hours, would you?
I'm definitely lucky I'm not a girl in this society. What a profoundly silly and abusive question."
willowrs:
"No it bloody wouldn't. I wish folk wouldn't be so obsessed, and I wish social pressures and the media wouldn't put out images of 'people/figures to aspire to' that nobody actually looks like. It's all absolutely bollocks and makes me pissed as hell. Look at what it is doing to our young women and girls, it is beyond shameful.
Look after yourself properly, not how the media says to. They all have an agenda. I don't want everybody to aspire to looking like prepubescent girls it's just wrong, in so many ways and desperately unhealthy and damaging to the self esteem and body image. It's an apalling aspect of culture.
Eat a varied and balanced diet and regular exercise and it won't matter one iota."
lolotehe:
"I would just lie down and take it very easy, considering my body would be STARVING FOR 24 HOURS."
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That last quote is brilliant, because calories are ENERGY. So yeah, basically it's like, if you could eat as much as you want but still starve, would you do it?
You know what that's called? A tapeworm.
Blech.
Or binge and purge.
I think it's quite a stretch to say that the topic is actively "encouraging" eating disorders. And I say this both as someone who is personally recovered from anorexia and bulimia and is now a historian who focuses on the social history of food-related disorders.
Does the topic indicate that there may be quite a few LJ users who have insecurities around food or even disordered eating? Perhaps. But to say that a hypothetical situation posed by a "magic genie" might somehow be encouraging behaviors associated with a legitimate psychological disorder is a little much. If anything, the comments generated might encourage disordered behaviors, but I don't believe the initial topic in itself does.
Thank you for your opinion. You definitely know more about the topic than I do, so I really appreciate it.
Yes, I wasn't sure if "encouraging" is the right word here or not. But I do find this question very inconsiderate. "Writer's block" is supposed to be fun, not triggering. Not to mention the fact that their thoughtless support for calorie-counting culture resulted in a biology-fail.
Based on the topic, I thought you were going to bring up some of the LiveJournal pro-anorexia communities, one of which boasts the largest pro-anorexia site in the world.
I've been appalled by those and have wondered whether or not LiveJournal should do something about them. But after the whole strike-through scandal a few years ago, I'm really uncomfortable about LiveJournal trying to dictate morality.
With the above question, I think it's thought-provoking, but not necessarily triggering. The pro-ana sites hosted on LiveJournal, on the other hand, could be quite dangerous in my opinion.
Oh, I know. I've even blogged about the pro-anorexia communities on my lj, but it was so long ago and the petitions against them never worked. So I guess these sites are there to stay and posting about them would only give them more press.
I would agree that it may not be "encouraging" eating disorders, but I don't think the topic can be totally disengaged from the focus our culture puts on size and the body.
And I don't think it just has to do with full-blown eating disorders either. Many people, I think, exist in a weird place where they are insecure about their bodies and focus a lot of their energy on their food and calorie intake, but don't necessarily meet the "requirements" for being diagnosed with an eating disorder. This topic reinforces the importance of calorie-counting in a subtle way, by suggesting that ignoring calories for even one day would require a magic genie. And no, I don't think I am overreacting, because, for me, it is a sad though that we need a magic genie to forget about calories.
So sure, maybe it doesn't "encourage" or "trigger" eating disorders or disordered eating, but I think it's important to consider the topic in light of our cultural emphasis on thinness and dieting, and the obsession many people, even without diagnosed eating disorders, have with their calorie intake.
So, for years I had an eating disorder. For a long long time. The thing is, I was always able to keep my period and blame my weight loss on routine bouts of illness (tho the causation went the other way). I did this for a long time before admitting I needed help, and going through recovery. So, I was one of those people Steph described in her post.
Now, five years later, with a pretty healthy relationship with food, I can say that this question might be triggering to an anorexic person . . . but not anymore triggering than seeing Cameron Diaz (just to pick out a really thin model/actress) in a bikini, or hearing someone say, ugh why did I eat that?
I think the question is just a question. Like, I manage a pretty healthy diet now but do enjoy the occasional (okay, rather frequent ;-)) splurge. If I could eat ANNNYYTHING i wanted for one day and have absolutely no health implications, I would probably eat 3 packages of bacon and a quart of cream of lemon soup . . . not the healthiest items, but I eat them in moderation all the time. Not for my weight, but because I like to avoid too much cholesterol/sodium. See the difference here? It's entirely different to be focused on making healthy food choices versus low-calorie food choices. Some of the healthiest things (olive oil, anyone) are very high in calories. So while the question is calorie focused, I think its representative of the larger issue that many americans equate calories with poor health.
On the flipside, perhaps livejournal was actually trying to figure out how large of a presence pro-ana circles have on their site to see what kind of action needs to be taken.
I dunno, just my 2 cents.
"It's entirely different to be focused on making healthy food choices versus low-calorie food choices"
It's great that you have come to understand the difference, but it is 5 years later. I am suggesting that for a person in the thick of their struggle with food (well, not that it still isn't a struggle for you - I don't know that and won't assume; but you seem to have more clarity) that healthy food IS low-calorie food.
(For me, healthy is a word that gets muddled in all the messages telling me what I am supposed to look like, etc. When I was in the middle of my extreme food restrictions, healthy for me was low-calorie consumption.)
My point is really that emphasizing calories is dangerous. I am aware that this topic may not by itself send someone spiraling back into anorexia or even cause an eating disorder in a person who has never thought about dieting. BUT for a person in the middle of their battle, this is reinforcement that calories = bad and the line of thinking "oh how great my life will be when I get skinny enough to stop worrying about this" - because the elusive/impossible "skinny enough" is there magic genie. Also, again, in the larger context this topic fits in with the cultural values of thinness and dieting. Combined with images of really skinny women like Cameron Diaz, commericals about dieting/weight loss...yes, I think it's a dangerous topic.
oh gross. '"their" magic genie'. sorry about that.
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page . . . what I'm trying to say is that the issue is that people are taught health is directly related to calories/weight. I guess I should have phrased it better .. . an anorexic person is already anorexic . . . a question about a magic calorie genie might make or break their day, but it isn't going to cause or cure their eating disorder. We all know that an eating disorder is indicative of much bigger things than simply wanting to be skinny and being preoccupied with calories. It's a huge condition with genetic, environmental and psychological factors.
You said, "I am suggesting that for a person in the thick of their struggle with food (well, not that it still isn't a struggle for you - I don't know that and won't assume; but you seem to have more clarity) that healthy food IS low-calorie food." I don't think the majority of anorexic people are freaking out about their health . . . I think its 100% about being skinny, and using food to control things in their life that are out of hand.
I don't think I'm making myself clear . . . I'll try again tomorrow.
All calorie counting doesn't equate to eating disorders though. Most sites for it I've seen advise against going under 1200 calories a day, and one can usually find a medium between 1200 and 2000 that's healthy and filling.
When I saw that question yesterday I took it to mean "would you indulge in junkfoods that are normally considered unhealthy if you thought you could"
Would it have been better if the question had been framed in terms of cholesterol levels rather than calories?
That's pretty much how I read it too.
My answer, BTW, would be no. Not because I think any dietary restriction is close to an eating disorder, but because I don't eat lots of junk because it makes me feel like junk - headachey, inattentive, and low energy.
"Would it have been better if the question had been framed in terms of cholesterol levels rather than calories?"
I'd say that yes, it would have been much better. Because the focus would be on being healthy, not on being skinny. The popular associations are "calories make you fat" and "cholesterol makes you have a heart attack."
Of course there would still be some level of biology-fail, because cholesterol isn't "teh evil", it's necessary too. But "no cholesterol for 24 hours" is more healthy than not, and doesn't equal starving, while "no calories" does. And 0 is definitely under 1200.
When I read the question without considering the OP's interpretation, I thought differently about it.
I feel like it could have been intended to make people think about how important calories are to them, and how much they do restrict themselves.
Like maybe implying that calorie restriction isn't always healthy.
But maybe thats just wishful thinking.
That was my interpretation too...