The Imbecilorexia on Orthorexia.

Sundays when Spring is in the air are my favourite days.There is nowhere to rush to. As there are no schoolbuses to catch ,it is also the one day when I can fit in a morning outdoor workout .

The early morning sun slants off the leaves and glistens in the dew -laden grass.Crisp wintery air a garden not yet over-run with packs of kids.I do bear crawls,tyre flips and climb stairs with a backpack.I am whooshed at the end of it but Proud !! and Happy as I have a wonderful meal to look forward to which I can smell in the kitchen !

My Sunday Menu has sol curry ,from the fresh-off-the-dam fish . An Avial spin-off with winter veggies,which I am fond of not just because it helps me deal with the uneven produce of my backyard :)) Twenty broad beans ,two carrots, unidentified local beans -ten numbers and one sweet potato !!! Thick whole milk curds;free range eggs cooked in ghee.Fresh guavas and gooseberries of the season. I feel good and full of life.And I love eating righteously and intelligently.At forty two I get fitter by the day.

The writer goes on to list how having excess of papaya/carrots /spinach /drinking too much water can cause digestive and other problems .To her credit she also lists too much soyabean , tea and shady protein shakes in the list. Of course ,I get that anything, when taken to an extreme, can interfere with a person’s life .

Honestly! I have NEVER EVER overeaten on spinach and carrots in my life - and believe me I have tried,back when I was an overfat lettuce cruncher.The only time when eating fruit made me sick was when between ages six to ten I was left to my own devices in vicinity of guava /mango orchards and I ate too many unripe ones throughout the holiday afternoons.And which of you have got drunk on water ?

Conversely I have gotten sick of ridiculously moderate portions of junk ,and spent aeons with acne ,acidity and such unhappy things when I was being normal and moderate with "everything".And we are not even talking of weight gain.

What the lady seems to be riling against is dangers for ill- informed folks who treat bran as fairy dust and rush from lauki juice to acai berries in search for a solution to ill health.However the solution lies not in labelling eating for health as a disorder to be wary of !

Walking unescorted, Flying an airplane ,wearing short skirts and playing Football have all been labelled as behaviours to be wary of .Even voting was considered Dangerous not so long ago! Women who did these things were officially suffering from Hysteria or Dementia.

The added platitudes that everything is good in moderation and that there are no good and bad foods is the kind of equivocation that is called dickheadedness in plain English.

There are bad foods.The world is full of sugared,margarined, flavoured, textured,coloured treated, pesticide laden ,hormoned, modified stuff .Some of it even struts under the self -bestowed label of " healthy" 

In the crazy upside-down world that we are living in ,anyone who is not bothered about the quality of food they consume -has a disorder -apart from all the chronic disease that they will eventually collect. What shall we call it ? Imbecilorexia ?? becoz everything is good in moderation!!

Honestly !what we need is not more counselling for folks who worry about eating healthily or cooking up mental disorders -the more the merrier -but giving people better paradigms to deal with the messed up Food System . How about more Real Food to start with ??