BBC Radio 4 2016-04-08

BBC Radio 4 2016-04-08

Good Morning

Yesterday on this programme I was struck by two completely unrelated stories about how food, meant [of course] to provide nourishment and wellbeing, can be the source of very different types of human suffering.

Escalating levels of obesity leading to a plethora of awful health complications, might, it was suggested, be alleviated if food manufacturers labelled food differently. Every chocolate bar wrapper, for instance, could tell you how many times round the block you would have to walk to get rid of the calories it contains. Would you still buy it? Sure you would!

At the same time the eating disorder charity Beat highlighted the difficulties people with related mental health issues have getting the relevant advice and support they need. Waiting times for services vary enormously. The report simply stated the obvious: they need help and they need it soon.

Anorexia, along with a whole raft of eating related disorders, is, of course, a hugely complex condition.

Margaret Atwood’s now prophetic novel The Edible Woman was recommended reading for a seminar I attended on addiction and hidden conditions when I was training for the priesthood. Published in the mid 60’s, when anorexia was hardly talked about at all, it describes how the main character Marian McAlpin goes from eating relatively normally......to existing only on vitamin pills.

The very sight of food on her plate turns her stomach. She is convinced that her body is starting to disappear. She is helpless and without hope. But her problem is not so much a physical problem as an emotional/spiritual one, emanating from a combination of complex relationships, every changing circumstances and spiritual vicissitudes.

Gluttony is considered one of the seven deadly sins. And in many faith traditions the giving up of something or the avoiding of food is heralded as good for both the body and the soul. But in an appropriately titled article 'There is No Fat in Heaven' Caroline Giles Banks writes that self-denial (as well as over consumption?) can become both destructive and dark. Those then affected by eating disorders are paradoxically consumed by a negative asceticism finding it difficult to find a way forward without specialist support.

It's strange that the more available, attractive and sophisticated food becomes the more disordered our response to it can be. And ordering how much, what and when we eat, tells us as much about our inner being than it does about what the bathroom scales might have said this morning.