joyless nutritionists, revisited

Last year around this time I regaled you all with one of my sordid fantasies, i.e. porn in which some insufferably prim and joyless nutritionist (that is to say, any one of them) is tied down and forced to eat chocolate ganache, nay, made to beg for the chocolate ganache and admit that it is good. Very good. If I remember correctly, that was in response to one sniffing in the newspaper that one shouldn't make a habit of 100-calorie portion-controlled snacks, because even 100 calories' worth of cookies or chips are Bad! Bad! Evil! Then there was that whole debacle last spring/early summer about *half* a baked potato being considered a serving. I think it's clear how I feel about these people.

And I don't remember exactly what triggered it, but I was wondering earlier this week whether anyone has ever done a study on what percentage of college nutrition majors either have clinical eating disorders, borderline eating disorders, are supposedly in recovery from eating disorders, or, at the very least, have majorly fucked up relationships with food and/or their bodies. I'm betting it's over 90%. I also wonder if it's an "open secret" amongst the faculty/administration or whether people actually acknowledge and talk about it.

In a somewhat related note--related enough that I'm cobbling it together in here, so deal--I read an interesting internet discussion/argument today about the new law in NY that requires restaurants to post calorie counts, only calorie counts, no other nutritional information, and publicly posted, not in a pamphlet or on the website. A lot of people who work with eating disordered patients dislike it, and are fighting it, because a.) it's triggering for a lot of anorexics, among other people and b.) because it's fucking stoopid.

I could enumerate a long list of reasons it's stoopid, but I'll just mention the one that galls me the most: I think the nanny state wants us fat fucking American slobs to, I dunno, be so shamed by the 800 calories next to our cheeseburger on the menu that we order steamed broccoli instead. Yeah, that'll work. It'll work great on people like me who will then order two hamburgers just for spite while waving a jaunty middle finger somewhere in the direction of the Department of Public Health. If the government wants to worry about my cheeseburger, I think I'd prefer them to be worrying if I'm gonna get e.coli from it, y'know?

Meanwhile, spite a joyless nutritionist and your overbearing local government tonight. If you're gonna eat a food ending in "li", make it cannoli, not broccoli. Andrea said it was okay.

xoxo