Et Tu, Bon Appetit?

It used to be that gourmet food magazines were a great way to escape the stresses of everyday life. With a few flips of the pages, you could vicariously travel to Paris, Rome, Kyoto, New Orleans, or Copenhagen and learn about the food, the history, and the culture of these great cities. Talk of calories was avoided, and the true passion around food and cooking shone.

And then, without warning, bread became taboo, a "cheat" food, and food magazines started buying into the myths embedded in diet culture. These once interesting publications started interviewing people in the fashion and entertainment industry so everyone could see how and what they eat in a day: plain vegetables and protein with a rare splurge of a few potato chips if they earned it. And the stomachs of readers everywhere who used to enjoy beautiful presentations, elegant recipes, and fine dining in general turned.

It's bad enough that cooking magazines now promote warped ideas around health and diet, the kind of junk one finds in fashion magazines designed to take advantage of people's insecurities around beauty, but it's particularly appalling when coaches, nutritionists, or anyone acting as such does. For example, a nutritionist who uses social media to post links to "articles" on how to have thinner thighs and lose belly fat is probably more concerned with getting attention than doing what's right. It's clear that there are many people who are struggling or have unhealthy beliefs around diet that still insist on dictating what others should do. They don't care that joking or silly comments about diet and body can be harmful as long as they get a few extra likes or reposts.

I understand that many people want to lose weight, but our society's constant obsession with weight loss and the perfect body is unhealthy. It's tiresome to see just how many people buy into and then promote this idea that losing weight is the answer to all your problems. It's so ingrained in our culture that many people don't even realize just how harmful what they promote can be, but anyone in a position of calling him or herself any kind of coach, mentor, or provider should be more aware.

I always come back to how deadly eating disorders are, so if you are actively encouraging individuals who are already at a healthy weight to lose, lose, lose! you are a big part of the problem. Consider your audience and ask yourself if what you're suggesting could be potentially triggering. It takes so little effort to reword a comment or avoid posting a link in order to do right by those who are more vulnerable. I'm not saying you have to completely censor yourself; I'm just saying think about the messages you're putting out there.

You Do You

I've been fortunate to be invited to speak about eating disorder recovery and share my story in the past. I will always consider myself an advocate, but I spend more time as a mentor offering advice to those in the throes of the illness than I do promoting myself. In fact, I don't really promote myself much at all anymore and was never very good at it in the beginning. Plus, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm not willing to hide my political, religious, and other views, which can be a turnoff to some.

The eating disorder recovery community needs all types, from those who are very vocal and in the spotlight as much as possible to those who are more quietly reaching out to others in need. Eating disorders are tough illness to overcome or manage, and educating the public about recovery is essential, no matter what form raising awareness takes, unless, of course, the message is skewed.

It's hard to explain just how disappointing it is to see so called advocates engage in jokes that support diet culture, promote fears, and suggest terrible ideas around eating and exercise. Even those with degrees in nutrition aren't always careful about what they popularize.

The other day, I saw a lady who has put herself in a position of being a healthy eating advocate (but obsessively posts photos of every fucking morsel she puts into her mouth) suggest to her audience that they should consider cravings merely thoughts. She then implies that doing this is a good thing because that way you can avoid eating the food you're craving. I get what she's probably trying to say, that not every single craving needs to be acted upon, but the message is all kinds of fucked up the way it's presented. And that's the thing; since her main topic is weight loss, it doesn't really matter to her how anyone else interprets the message. All that matters is that she gets more attention, more likes, more "you go girl!" comments, and more approval. Unfortunately, she has a lot of people who are struggling or have struggled with various eating disorders following her, but she still seems to think it's OK to continually toss out ideas that potentially or sometimes quite clearly counter eating disorder recovery strategies.

Here's the truth. It's sometimes just fucking fine to eat because you fucking want to, because your soul or brain or some remote part of you calls out for it or because you're tired and need a little pick-me-up. That's normal. This idea that we must always eat only when hungry and only at certain times and not at night and not too much sugar and rule after rule after fucking rule is tiresome. I'm so glad that when I went to see a respected dietitian, she didn't try to shame me into not eating a midnight snack or wave her finger and tsk tsk me for eating ice cream and chocolate most days.

Hey, it's great that you found what works for you. Just stop shoving your goddamn diet plan down other people's throats and asking for money to do it. I am so glad that I stressed in the books that I wrote that everyone is different, that there is no one right way to do things. The best thing you can do for yourself is work on self-compassion and self-trust. What someone else does might be helpful in terms of giving you ideas, and it might not be. Worse, it might be hurtful, so you really have to be careful with all the fad diets, fasting suggestions, and general bullshit floating around lately.

Interview with Ashley Sara DeKam

Ashley Sara DeKam

Interview with Ashley Sara DeKam by Lizefb on Mixcloud

Ashley is the founder of the blog, Craving4More. She has also written a book called "Real." Ashley states, "I know food.  My relationship with food is both vast and intimate.  I know the chemistry of food, I know the art of food, and I oh so know the emotion of food.  I adore food and yet I grieve it.  My goal, though, is to respect food for what it is – nourishment.

I pursue health.  Physical, emotional, spiritual well-being is a constant journey and Craving4More.

I am life.  Each day I live and I breathe life.  Each day I wake to serve as a mirror to reflect the light of life onto others – the others who are all Craving4More."

TOE- Interview with Sue Ann Gleason

Sue Ann Gleason

TOE- Interview with Sue Ann Gleason by Lizefb on Mixcloud

More information about Sue Ann:

Sue Ann Gleason is food lover, food writer, food-based healer and champion for women who want to lead a more delicious, fully expressed life. She has been featured in Oprah and Runner's World magazines and numerous online publications.

When not working with private clients or delivering online programs, Sue Ann can be found sampling exotic chocolates or building broccoli forests in her mashed potatoes.

Be sure to check out her upcoming program, Eat Your Way to Gorgeous, to explore all the ways you can make food fun so you can be more spontaneous in meal planning and take advantage of the abundance of summer produce that awaits you.

You can connect with Sue Ann in a number of places. Delicious freebies await you!

Joyful Eating: http://www.chocolateforbreakfast.com/
Nourished Living: http://consciousbitesnutrition.com/

Wise Business: http://sueanngleason.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chocolateforbreakfast

Writing Project

“A table!” my mother would yell from the front door. Her voice with the perfect Parisian accent carried to us no matter whose yard we were playing in, and everyone knew that it was time for my sister and me to go eat dinner. Torn between wanting to stay and play with our friends or leaving to go home for a home-cooked meal, Annie and I would hesitate before scampering home to the dinner table.

Meals were rarely anything fancy, unless my parents were entertaining, in which case out came Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and either my mom or my dad would fearlessly dive into the complicated recipe book. My mom never worried about simplifying things, whereas my dad, a theoretical physicist, had a way of making the complicated even more so. I fell somewhere between the two, a little bit messy as a chef but elegant and clean in the final presentation.

My dad’s version of everything was over the top and sloppy. He cooked army-style, in big pots with enough servings to feed an entire continent. The one Christmas he made a stollen, it was so long it didn’t fit on the table! My mom, on the other hand, cooked less extravagantly, but I’m convinced there was magic in her meals. Even her easy-to-make vinaigrette tasted like the best salad dressing ever made. Her recipe? Oil, vinegar, garlic and salt. When she showed me exactly how she made this delicious dressing, mine did not came out as good as hers. No, it had to be magic she put in there.

Everything she made was like that -- simple yet delectable. Her french fries were nothing but cut potatoes cooked in hot oil with a little bit of salt sprinkled on top, but I could never replicate the perfect texture: crispy on the outside but moist on the inside. I liked mine with large amounts of catsup.

When a birthday would roll around, my mom cooked whatever the birthday child wanted, usually shrimp tempura with rice. Sometimes she would make a birthday cake too. At other times, one of us would request a chocolate torte or some other kind of store-bought creation. On one special occasion, she made a coffee-flavored tiger cake for me. She cut pieces of the cooked cake and rearranged them to look like a tiger before frosting it in all the right colors, stripes and all.

Because my mother was born in France, my siblings and I were introduced to unusual foods at a very young age. I never found it odd that I liked the taste of Brie while my friends preferred packaged American singles. Little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Years later, I would stick my nose into some potent Pont L’eveque while traveling in France, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I became a chocolate snob early. How could I not when my grandmother, who still lived in France, sent extraordinary chocolates every holiday season?

Despite our early introduction to gourmet and imported foods, we all still loved whatever was being served at our friends’ houses. Oddly enough, my sister and I were guilty of buying these obnoxious green frosted cakes made to look like frogs available at our local supermarket’s bakery. The overly sweet, bright-green frosting sat atop a small round of chocolate cake. It was piled high into a pyramid with white and black frosting piped on for the eyes and a red gel for its tongue. This was about as far from gourmet as one could get.

Another strange thing was that my mother actually didn’t like to cook. She often cooked hamburgers, pizza or stuffed peppers, because these dishes were easy to make and didn’t require a lot of time in the kitchen. Years later, my mother would write and illustrate a funny cartoon book called Divorcing the Kitchen, a tale of kitchen woes.

Part of the reason my mother didn’t like cooking was that it brought up bad memories of her childhood. Her father, whom I never met, was a perfectionist, especially in the kitchen. If every green bean wasn’t perfectly prepared and arranged, the entire pot would end up on the floor. You see, my grandfather had also been in a factory accident that left him partially deaf and possibly with other problems related to brain trauma.

The worst part about all of this was that my grandfather became an increasingly violent man and took his frustration and anger out on my mom and my grandmother, brutalizing them both to the point where he nearly beat them to death. In fact, as an infant and youngster, my mother often stayed with my great-grandmother, because everyone was afraid her father would kill her when she cried. It was there that she enjoyed life in the country, eating cottage cheese in cabbage leaves and hearty breads, breathing in the fresh air, and helping my great-grandmother wash clothing in the river.

Eventually, when my mother was older and back living in Paris, she and my grandmother devised a plan to escape my grandfather that involved a good friend of my mother’s offering an extra bag of rationed potatoes to him in an effort to get him away from their home. This way, my mom and grandmother could quickly pack their belongings and flee while he was off getting the much-needed food. This was all right before World War II. Needless to say, my mom’s life was not easy. She went hungry a lot during the war and even ate an occasional raw egg when her hunger overcame her, but she is a survivor. To see one of her children struggle to eat due to an eating disorder later in life was perplexing, frustrating and heartbreaking for her.

My mother was resolute about not inflicting her traumatic past on her own children. As a result, we all grew up with many wonderful food-related memories, none of which ended up with food angrily thrown on the floor.

One of my favorite food-related memories is of my sister and me waiting with our plates held out as my mom made crepe. She would flip one onto my plate, and I would first sprinkle it with sugar and then fold it into a triangle. My sister would do the same when she got hers, and we would continue eating until the batter was gone. When we were finished, my mom would make a second batch to be used for making blintzes. Those were filled with a ricotta filling and served at breakfast with either blueberry compote or maple syrup.

On holidays, my mom became terribly stressed out, but everything always ended up just fine. Our entire family would sit down to dinner, and we are a talkative, opinionated, headstrong bunch. My older half-brothers would arrive early. My dad would start drinking early, and by the dessert round, which for us was often the main event, everyone would be comfortably full and relieved that any previous tension had dissipated, at least to some extent and for a little while.

My mom and I are still creating memories. We sample cheeses and chocolates together, eat an occasional lunch together and discuss modern cuisine, GMOs and the environment. As she approaches her 90th birthday, I know my search for the perfect birthday gift will likely include something imported from France. Maybe this year it will be some Poilane bread, pain d’epices or pate des fruits.