FOOLS
Weighing the Truth Dieting and nutrition gone awry
THE WASHTENAW VOICE • APRIL 29, 2013 • SECTION C
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION NATHAN CLARK THE WASHTENAW VOICE
Feeding on failure The dangerous industry of dieting By NATALIE WRIGHT Staff Writer
The diet industry wants you to fail. It masquerades as a savior, emancipating the unhealthy masses from poor nutrition and negative body image. However, the reality is that the industry intentionally misinforms the public for its own profit, experts say. “The diet industry is the most successful failed business in the world,” said Amanda Harris, an outpatient psychotherapist at the Center for Eating Disorders in Ann Arbor. “They create this problem and then position themselves to solve it. They’re benefitting from people’s insecurities, and they’re very successful. The American diet and beauty industries are worth over $110 billion,” Harris said. Not only is this industry capitalizing on peoples’ insecurities, they are enforcing unhealthy behavior. Thirty-five percent of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. And 20-25 percent of pathological dieters progress to partial or full syndrome eating disorders, according to the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Women ages 25-45 are at the highest risk for disordered eating and clinical eating disorders, according to
Brian Burkett, a member of the clinical staff at the CED. Sixty-seven percent of American women in this age group are trying to lose weight. More than 50 percent of these dieters are already at a normal weight, Burkett said. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associate Disorders (ANAD) said that 91 percent of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting. Twenty-two percent dieted often or always. Another survey, conducted by the ANAD on a different campus showed that 83 percent of female students dieted for weight loss, and of these dieters, 44 percent were at a normal weight. The obsession with being skinny comes from the fashion industry and is perpetuated by the diet industry, said Brahmlin Sethi, a registered dietician and a nutrition specialist at the CED. Health and weight are not equivalent, they’re not even that closely linked, but that’s what this industry leads people to believe, according to Sethi. “Body and size diversity is just not promoted in our society,” agreed Harris. Studies show the pressure to be skinny also has massive effects on younger girls. Between 40 and 60 percent of girls in high school are on diets at any given time, according to the National Eating
Disorder Association. And in one study, 42 percent of firstto third-grade girls surveyed said they wanted to be thinner, said the NEDA Dieting is not only ineffective, it is harmful and dangerous. “The majority of common dieting practices are unsafe,” Sethi warned. Of these harmful practices, one of the most common is the restriction of certain food groups, such as fats and carbohydrates. By choosing all non-fat or lowfat foods, for example, dieters impede their bodies from performing necessary functions. Besides being an important source of energy, fats also facilitate brain growth, hormone production, skin health, and the absorption of many fat-soluble vitamins, according to Sethi. Sari Adelson, 28, a resident of Ann Arbor, learned about nutrition during the four months she spent in treatment for anorexia nervosa at the River Center Clinic. “People who understand nutrition know that fat is what makes us feel full. So if you’re constantly eating non-fat foods, you end up eating like three times the amount that you need to, because you never get that feeling of satisfaction,” she said. The diet industry’s existence hinges on its ability to convince the public it holds the key to health and beauty, a key that costs money. “They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re producing a product
COURTESY PHOTO MCT
Helpfully unhelpful: Although every packaged food product in the U.S. is required to have a nutrition label, most of the information on the label is lost on the average consumer.
that in a lot of ways is addictive and does much more harm than good. It’s disgusting to me and I’m still wrapped up in that world,” Adelson said. But anyone who is intent on getting healthy doesn’t need to pay for any dieting secrets. A nutritious diet is free, Sethi said. “A healthy diet is all about moderation and variety, there’s no big secret to it,” she said.
According to Sethi, the most important thing for anyone trying to learn about nutrition is to pay attention to the source of information. If it’s coming from a person or company who stands to make a profit, it probably isn’t trustworthy. If you want to be healthy, don’t accept what you see in commercials and magazines as fact. Do your research.
The long road to recovery A woman’s journey to stop defining herself as an “anorexic”
dealing with the disorder for more than 10 years die from it. Eating disorders are the most deadly mental illness, says the ANAD. Though exact numbers are hard to pin By NATALIE WRIGHT down, a study by the American Journal Staff Writer of Psychiatry estimated that 13 percent of those who deal with an eating Statistics say that 28-year-old Sari disorder will die from related causes. Adelson is lucky to be alive. Adelson began engaging in anorexShe has been struggling with an- ic behavior when she was 14 years old. orexia nervosa for almost 15 years. “It started out as a numbers game… According to the National I am incredibly obsessive-compulsive,” Association of Anorexia Nervosa and she said, “I had spent my life up until Associated Disorders (ANAD), five that point weighing less than triple percent of people who have been digits, and when I crossed over that
mark, the world collapsed and caved in on itself.” She wasn’t going to stand for it. There had to be a way to keep the numbers in the right place. But eventually it was clear that the numbers weren’t going to stay where she wanted them, so she began measuring success differently. It became more about body type, body shape and size. “I was always the really skinny one, or the gangly awkward one,” she said, “That’s how everyone related to me. That became how I understood that people understood me.”
In the later years of high school and in college, the disorder began serving other purposes. “It became about emotional control and emotional numbness and protection… and over those years I also became a very angry person. The more numb I felt, the more angry I became,” she reflected. As she became numb, she convinced herself that the disorder was the one thing she could hold onto. “I slowly began having this attitude that it wasn’t going to hurt me, it wasn’t going to kill me, that was absolutely impossible,” she said, “No one
was ever going to find out. And as long as nobody ever found out, then I could keep going for the rest of my life.” It was during this time that the disorder started to manifest itself in serious medical issues. In the beginning of 2008, Adelson used a cane to walk because she was so weak. In some ways she met the criteria for multiple sclerosis. She began to have all sorts of gastrointestinal issues. And neurological problems started appearing that doctors couldn’t explain. RECOVERY CONTINUED C2