Rant ho

Now that we bloggers have come to represent the new media, we get a lot of the same kinds of PR stuff that used to go to newspapers and magazines--press releases about new products, upcoming events, etc. Occasionally I find something of interest.

More often, I cannot believe someone sent whatever it is my way. Take, for instance, the email I got today. Subject line (cue drumroll):

Could the Recession Be Making Us Fat?

Gee, I thought we were already too fat--in the midst of an obesity crisis, as a matter of fact. The recession's only been around a year at most. So, I don't know, no?

The email goes on with predictable idiocy to quote a nutritionist saying that in "uncertain times," people "crave rich foods." That's merely banal. The truly enraging part comes next:

"Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia are also on the rise. "

Since the prevalence of anorexia and bulimia has been pretty constant for as long as we've been diagnosing them (about 1 percent for anorexia, 2 to 3 percent for bulimia), I'd love to know where this nutritionist is getting this shocking new information. Maybe from the bullshit fairy?

The journalist in me recognizes what we call "fudging" when I hear it, and this is pure fudge--the kind of unsupported generalization people offer up and that too many people believe because, um, it sounds like the fudger knows what he's talking about.

And here's the kicker:

"Both illnesses are tied to stress, depression and the need for control, which is a direct link to the sentiment of many Americans during this recession."

Oh really? Notice the fudging language here? EDs are "tied to" stress and depression. They sure are. So is cancer and heart disease. And then we get the twist of the knife--that old "need for control" crap that's been trotted out routinely ever since Hilde Bruch started writing about anorexia.

The whole thing is actually shopping this unnamed nutritionist as an authority on--wait for it--losing weight.

Yeah, this guy is a real authority, all right.

Note to PR flacks: Do the research before you send out crap like this. You're doing your clients way more harm than good.

Next time I'm naming names.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you

The world of eating disorders treatment is changing. Slowly. Infinitesimally. Minusculely. But change is creeping in.

Still, most ED patients and their families get smacked upside the head at some point with the old assumptions and stigmas about these illnesses.

Such as: Eating disorders are caused by cold or overcontrolling mothers; the child has no other way to establish a sense of autonomy, so she stops eating.

To their credit, many docs have left this one behind. Some say they've left it behind but still on some level believe it. And now I have an inkling into why: A friend who's in med school, and who just finished the hour or two devoted to talking about eating disorders in the curriculum, reports that this outdated and discredited point of view is still in the textbooks.

So on some level, these stigmas are still being perpetuated. Big surprise, I know. But you know, it was a surprise. I'm enough of a good girl academically that reading something in a book makes it shiny and important.

I feel pissed off and sad, though, at the thought that this kind of perspective is still living out there in print, for new generations of baby docs to read and take in. Especially since most of them get almost no training in treating eating disorders anyway. So this might be all they take away from med school on the subject. And it's wrong.

Of food revolutions and politics

This article in today's New York Times poses the question of whether the time is right at last for a revolution in the way we grow, buy, distribute, and eat food. A perfect storm of factors, argues the writer, is brewing to make this happen: Economic hardship, political leaders who value sustainability and an older-school farming ethos, and an ever-more-complex web of relationships between those who grow food and those who eat it.

Is it, as Michael Pollan has suggested, time for a reform of our entire food system? Is this the moment to move toward the Alice Waters model of growing and eating local? I hope so.




The agribusiness lobby has had Washington's ear for the last eight years. I hope the new administration can hear something else now--the concerns of small family farmers, organic farmers, parents who want to feed their children (and eat themselves) high-quality food. One of the biggest obstacles to meaningful food reform in this country has been the fact that only the relatively wealthy have access to good food. So I'd like to see policies that broaden that access and make it possible for poor and inner-city consumers to buy local fruits and veggies, organic meats, and food that's grown to taste good rather than to last 4 weeks in a crate on the back of a truck.

Why am I writing about this here, you might ask? Because eating local food, organic food, food that bloody well tastes good, is a crucial part of learning once more to celebrate and enjoy food. It's a back door into my obsession with the joys of eating and of being comfortable with your body.

OT: The Hebrew Mamita, Yo

Def poetry and you don't look Jewish. Rock it.

Here's one little gizmo I won't be buying

The HappyHR (I kid you not) continuously calculates the amount of calories you burn. Even, um, when you're asleep.

"Stay fit and be happy" is the slogan dreamed up by the Georgia Tech students who are building this gadget. I think they've got the wrong slogan there. How about "Think you're obsessive about eating now? Wait till you wear one of these babies."

I can already imagine the new eating disorder that will grow out of this. Calorexia, anyone?

If the U.S. were my students, they'd flunk

The National Alliance on Mental Illness recently released a report card on America's health care system for adults with mental illness. Our grade: D.

At the Newhouse School of Public Communications, where I teach, this is a failing grade. We flunk when it comes to creating a support system for people with mental illness. We have no network of consistent services, no consistent access to mental health care, and no standardized system of licensing or treatment criteria.

We fail in other ways, too. We as a society fail to take seriously the ravages of mental illness. We step over those with mental illness both literally and figuratively. We turn our faces away. We perpetuate the shame and stigma of diseases like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and, yes, eating disorders.*

My students always want to know how they can raise their grades. I put the same question to all of you: How can we as a society raise our grades when it comes to mental illness?

Here's my two cents on the subject:
1. Offer incentives to those studying to be doctors and therapists. One reason we have such a staggering lack of good mental health providers is that in our current health-care system (or shall we say lack of health-care system) they can't earn as much as other docs. This is partly a function of how our disgraceful so-called health insurance system works. See 2.
2. Mental health parity is a good first step, but it's full of loopholes. Enact legislation that prevents health insurers from weaseling out of covering mental health issues. The track record is dismal, especially for eating disorders.
3. The first two items on the list would start us on the road toward lessing stigma around mental health issues. Shame on the health insurers for heaping more shame, and financial burden, on families struggling with these issues.
4. Talk, talk, and more talk. The more we talk about a subject, the less shameful it becomes. Social change takes time. Let's get started.

What are your ideas?





* I'm not a believer in classifying eating disorders as mental illnesses, but for now that's where they reside and so that's where we've got to live with them.

A challenge to my readers

A front page article in yesterday's New York Times made me weep. (I've chosen not to upload the photo that ran with it because it is so very distressing. But please read the article.) It's one of the things I love most about journalism: Its ability to shake readers up and make a story personal. Agenda-setting, we call it--telling readers not what to think but what to think about.

I know that children around the world are hungry. But somehow this one image and story brought home the issue vividly and powerfully.

There are children right here in the U.S. who are this hungry, of course. Probably right in your hometown--no matter where you live.

So here's my challenge for the day: I'd like those of my readers who can afford it to make a donation--no matter how small--to an organization somewhere in the world that feeds children. It could be the U.N.'s World Food Programme, which is working in India. It could be Feeding America (which used to be called America's Second Harvest), which addresses hunger here at home. It could be Mazon, a national nonprofit agency that describes itself as a Jewish response to hunger, or any one of dozens of other anti-hunger organizations.

Give money if you can. Bring a can of soup to your local food pantry if you can't. But do something--today. And then please check back in and let us know what you've done.

Put your money where your heart is . . .

and consider making a donation to the Academy of Eating Disorders' 2009 scholarship campaign.

One of the sad truths in the field of eating disorders is that there just isn't enough research being done. That's one reason for the relatively ineffective treatments we've got--there's not a lot of money to be made by researching EDs, probably because pharmaceuticals don't typically do much to help. So researchers--especially young researchers--have to find other ways to support their work.

One of the things I really like about the AED as an organization is the ways in which it nurtures research. And this is one of them. Since 2002, the scholarship fund has helped fund more than 50 clinicians and researchers from around the world to work on finding solutions for eating disorders. It's a worthy cause--and tax-deductible, too!

Dietitians and fat bias

This study, which shows that dietitians (like doctors) suffer from a significant amount of fat phobia, does not surprise me. Why should dietitians be different from any other group of medial professionals?

One or two sessions with a dietitian is really all it takes to learn the necessaries on nutrition for someone recovering from an ED. Yet our family--like so many others--was told to make weekly appointments with a nutritionist.

As it happens, the nutritionist we saw was not fatphobic; she was just ignorant about how to talk to my daughter. In fact she was a very tall and large woman who told Kitty, at our one and only appointment, "Don't worry, honey. I used to have an eating disorder too, and look at me now."

It was almost funny, really, except that it took hours of reassurance to get my daughter back on track.

Which is why I like to talk to medical professionals--not just about eating disorders but about attitudes toward fat, obesity, and "wellness" curricula in schools.

So if you know of a group of doctors, nurses, nutritionist, or other medical professionals in training or in practice who could benefit from a talk, let me know.

Sadly, this is very funny

Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head SizeThanks to Jane for linking me to this hilarious (and thought-provoking) video satire from the folks who bring you the Onion.

What I want to know is how the actors pulled off their lines with straight faces.

Or maybe it's not that far off the truth. . . .

Looking for women with autoimmune disorders, PCOS, lupus, IBS, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue for a story

I'm doing a story for HEALTH magazine on diseases that a) disproportionately affect women and b) have historically been unrecognized, under-treated, or generally pooh-poohed by the medical establishment, but are now being recognized and/or taken more seriously. I'd like to tell several personal stories as part of the bigger piece.

So if you have had or still have any of the conditions above, or anything similar, and would be willing to let me interview you and possibly tell your story for the piece, please email me at hnbrown at syr dot edu.

Many thanks.

Seeing red

As a professor of journalism, I read a lot of media. And some days, what I read makes me feel downright ashamed of my industry. Today is one of those day, and the triggering story is this one, from the Washington Post.

The piece is written by a young woman who discusses the power of a parent's words to trigger an eating disorder. I have nothing against the writer; it's a heartfelt and I'm sure honest piece of writing. The writer attributes her three-year course of bulimia to a critical comment about her weight from her mother. The piece goes on to list "resources" for parents, presumably to prevent them from doing such things in the future.

I'm not defending this mother's comment. Far from it. I grew up in a family where comments like these were fairly commonplace; I know how hurtful they can be. My problem is with the editors of the Post, who did not do their homework. They accept this premise as if it were 100% true and present no other point of view. There's nothing in the story to contradict the notion that a parent's comment can in fact trigger an eating disorder. There's nothing on the heritability or biological roots of eating disorders, on the neurochemistry of starvation and purging. Readers are left with the sense that a stray comment, especially from a mother (always the mother), can cause the nightmare of an eating disorder.

Had the editors of the Post looked at any of the recent research on eating disorders, they might have been inspired to add another perspective to this young woman's story. Had they stopped to think about it they might have realized that if a parent's words were truly that dangerous, we'd have many more cases of eating disorders to contend with (because God knows parents say hurtful, stupid things all the time, myself included).

The irony is that this piece ran in a package along with an excellent piece written by Carrie Arnold, whose blog Ed-Bites and books are both well-researched and moving. Arnold's piece is informative, but its headline and deck--"Extreme Measures: When Kids' Size Is a Problem, Parents Seek New Solutions"--written by the editors, are misleading, possibly deliberately so. Since when are anorexia and bulimia a problem of a child's size? Hello, do the editors here know anything at all about eating disorders? Do they not care? This kind of thing perpetuates the destructive myths around eating disorders--that they are "about" appearance, that they aren't serious health issues, that they happen only to the children of overinvolved and overcritical parents.

Fact: Eating disorders happen in all kinds of families--rich, poor, white, black, Latino, overinvolved, neglectful, respectful, authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, large, small, functional, dysfunctional.
Fact: Eating disorders are complex and multifactorial. We don't understand their origins. We do understand that blaming parents is both unhelpful and unhealthy--and often untrue.
Fact: The family is almost always a child's best chance at recovery.

The Washington Post's concept of families seems about as outdated--and harmful--as the photo above.

I shouldn't be seeing red right now. I should be used to this. Somehow I never get used to it.

Cupcakes and conversation

If you're anywhere near Syracuse, NY, this Thursday, please stop over at the panel discussion and book signing for Feed Me!. The book includes fabulous essays from some of my favorite writers, including Joyce Maynard (whose poignant memoir about making pie with, and then for, her mother still makes me tear up), Caroline Leavitt (who wrote a haunting piece about men, power, grief, and food), Diana Abu-Jaber (writing about the culture clash between Bedouin and American eating habits), and many others.

We'll hold a panel discussion with Mary Tantillo of the University of Rochester's Eating Disorders Program and Cris Haltom of Ithaca, both of whom speak eloquently about food, eating, and related issues. And yes, there will be cupcakes. I'm not saying they'll live up to the perky frosting on this one, but, you know, a cupcake's as good a reason as any to come out on a chilly night.

If you don't show up, I'll have to eat all the cupcakes myself.

The stigma of mental illness

This piece, from my local paper, is both horrifying and provocative. The writer, Joyce Gramza, tells how her daughter, who has paranoid schizophrenia, was punished--in the hospital, awaiting transfer to a residential facility--because of her illness. It's an upsetting story.

What's even worse, as Gramza goes on to catalogue, is that her daughter's case is not an anomaly. Rather, it reflects a level of proven prejudice among doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. Even for those who should know better, it seems, the stigma of having a mental illness can diminish the level of care, both physical and psychological.

An old friend of mine had a brother who was schizophrenic. I knew Steven as a talented musician whose dreams of becoming a composer never materialized but who made a life for himself despite his illness. Steven was in his 40s and receiving treatment for colon cancer when he died. The autopsy showed that he had literally no white blood cells left. The chemo that was supposed to help him killed him, because no one had monitored his white cell count.

Might this have happened to a patient who was not schizophrenic? Sure. But it happened to Steven. And he was not alone. The studies Gramza cites demonstrate that this kind of dropping the ball on care happens to a lot of mentally ill patients.

My hope is that more people will advocate for their mentally ill loved ones, whether the issue at hand is a mattress to sleep on or proper bloodwork. In the middle ages, people feared that they could catch mental illness from touching someone who had it. Our attitudes today, sadly, have not evolved very much.

Write a review?

Hey y'all, I'd love to see a couple more customer reviews of Feed Me! up on the Amazon site. (Good ones are preferable, but say what you really think.) Would you consider sending one in for me? It doesn't have to be long or fancy--just whether you liked the book and why.

Thanks. Really.

Join the Rebellyon

Thanks to my friend Erik for sending me a link to this story about musician Amanda Palmer, whose record label, Roadrunner, told her that her stomach looked too fat in a new music video and that they needed to digitally slim it down.

Palmer's response: Love thy belly. Her fans jumped on the belly wagon, creating a "rebellyon" that includes a website where you can upload a photo of your own belly, inscribed with a message to the world.

This story is interesting both for its element of cultural body dissing and for its feminist subtext: Apparently one of the record label execs told Palmer, "I'm a guy. I know what people like."

Yeah, I'm a woman. I don't know what people like. I don't know what my own body looks like. And I sure as hell don't know why I'd ever buy another Roadrunner record. Except, of course, for Palmer's latest.

OT: Help a Syracuse University student

One of my students is looking to interview children of alcoholics for her honors project--especially those under, say, age 25. Anonymity is yours if you want it; she's a sensitive interviewer, as she herself comes from an alcoholic family.

If you'd be willing to talk with her for this project, or know anyone else who might be, please contact Theresa Walsh at tewals01 at syr.edu.

I thank you.

EMAIL ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED.

Revolutionizing the runway

Last Sunday I was lucky enough to be able to take both my daughters to what was billed as a "revolutionary fashion show" put on by Ophelia's Place here in Syracuse. While I'm not in general a fan of fashion shows, this really wasn't about fashion. It was about sending men, women, and children of all shapes and sizes down the runway with confidence. It was about redefining beauty to include many types of bodies and attitudes. It was about celebrating an aspect of the human condition that too often gives us cause for anxiety, obsession, and despair.

My favorite part of the event was the slide show at the beginning that encouraged the audience to stop the fat talk, stop body bashing. You know--the reflexive corporeal self-loathing we all (especially women) get into and express uncontrollably--to ourselves and to the world.

I love this message. Let's just stop--just say no. If you can't say something nice about your body, don't say anything at all. And don't be saying anything about other people's bodies. Because we are more than our bodies. We are powerful, strong, funny, loving, creative, inspiring, and beautiful.

I'm signing up for next year's show. Anyone want to join me?

* The terrible photo at the top of this post was taken by my laptop. I'm holding one of the purple chocolate butterflies that were given out at the event. It was delicious.

This is how myths about eating disorders are perpetuated

By work like this, from a psychologist at the University of Missouri.

If you've got a minute, hop over to the site, read the story, and leave a comment. I don't waste my time arguing with people online, but maybe Bardone-Cone can learn something from a different perspective.

Finally, some good news about fat

This blog post from Tara Parker-Pope discusses a study on the kinds of factors that affect how we visibly age. Make sure to look at the compelling slide show that goes along with it. It's a fascinating look at pairs of twins where one looks considerably older than the other. The study results suggest that smoking, sun exposure, depression, and weight loss all contribute to looking older.