Eat. Drink. Be Merry.

I was reminded today of some people's obsession with nutrition, as opposed to healthfulness.

A company sent the magazine a resveratrol-packed chocolate bar that claims to have a bajillion times as many antioxidants as red wine, blueberries, açai and goji berries and chemotherapy combined (or something like that). This bar will cure your as-yet-nonexistent cancer, just by you looking at it. It will lower your blood sugar. Then it will save the world.

I have thought for years that a relative of mine has orthorexia (only I didn't know it was called that until recently), and I wonder how much it is compounded by her work in the nutrition field. When I was a youngster, I remember, she was making almost-no-fat meals out of a cookbook by Dean Ornish, and I noted aloud that his name sounded suspiciously like "denourish." As the low-carb fads came around a few years ago, she tried those as well in attempts to get her "numbers" (cholesterol levels, blood sugar, other leading bad-stuff indicators) down. All this, mind you, for a 5'1" woman who I've never seen weigh more than 115 pounds. I'd be surprised if she's been over 100 in the past five years.

She has developed a type of pre-diabetes (as I understand it), and feels betrayed since she has always "done everything right," and she doesn't "deserve" this. (Do people with full-blown diabetes "deserve" it?) Well, she's never enjoyed just chilling out. Her blood pressure has been high despite exercise. But then, she won't exercise because it makes her lose too much weight. She's so fixated on this constellation of numbers...

I can't imagine living like that. Not eating this food or that food because it's a "carb bomb" (as she called a Thanksgiving dish my brother prepared last month). Have a taste, and enjoy it, and a glass of wine, and enjoy it. Watch those blood pressure numbers fall. And don't buy in (literally and figuratively) to ostensible "health foods" just because they market to your anxieties. If you want chocolate, eat some damn chocolate. And enjoy it.

A life spent tripping over numbers and eating by "rules" just doesn't sound that fulfilling to me (although one friend in particular manages her diabetes exceptionally well, and eats pretty well too). Yeah, I've gained 20 pounds back since moving to New York. I chalk that up to eating and drinking more, and exercising much, much less. And I'm trying to find a balance there. But I'm not going to turn to fake, "value-added" food to save me.

Of course there are soooo many people who are legitimately struggling with disease (e.g. diabetes) or weight as a real health and lifestyle problem. And I hope that each of them finds the combination of lifestyle factors that work for them to be happy, and healthy, and pain- and disease-free. But it's a slap in the face to people who have actual problems to see someone who is basically fine counting calories and agonizing over a "carb bomb."

So eat real food. And enjoy it.