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Sue - 2004-03-15 12:37:17
The key word in your entry is "moderation." A lot of people use emotional distress as an excuse to binge. In the long run, it's much healthier to find other ways of coping with emotional stress, but if you feel down and one chocolate chip cookie or half a cup of Ben & Jerry's makes you feel better, I don't think there's a problem... it's when you want to eat the whole container that you need to beware.
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CJ - 2004-03-15 12:50:09
Though I don't think it's exactly the same thing, I'm guessing that the post-9/11 trend toward comfort food at restaurants (and at home?) could be part of this discussion. As a nation, the food we are consuming appears to be chosen as a result of emotions caused by that day.
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Paula - 2004-03-15 13:14:25
Right, you both make good points.
I guess what I'm saying is, unless you're on an IV drip, the food you take in is going to have some emotional component to it.
My more controversial belief is that "self-medicating" with alcohol can be OK, too, but I know that's a dangerous thing for a lot of people, so I'm not going to encourage that discussion.
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CJ - 2004-03-15 13:21:57
Oh, like what (probably) Solomon had to say about it?
Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. -Proverbs 31:6-7
Vodka on the picket line!
Um, not that I'm going to continue any discussions that have not been encouraged...
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I wombat - 2004-03-15 13:45:39
The emotional power of food and drink, is most profound when it fills a need, I'll stick to food, for the moment. I sometimes manage to let myself get actually hungry before I eat (not just bored) One bite and the stress level just drops. Because a problem has been solved, hungry? eat! I find that inattentive noshing actually subverts this opportunity for emotional release. I've heard that a lot of people aren't very good at sensing their thirstyness ,I'm refering to the biological signals for the need for water, and it is sometimes confused with hunger.
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Paula - 2004-03-15 13:53:56
Yeah, I've learned in the last few years that a nice glass o'water can solve many imagined ills. People tend not to get enough water.
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MeowMe - 2004-03-15 13:56:16
Food is one of the great gifts of life. I don't think emotional eating is bad per se, except if one falls into extreme unhealthy habits, as Sue noted, or if food is a substitute for emotions.
As one illustrious author put it in raw manuscript: "Better to feel your problems than stuff them down with ice cream and cake." I red-lined that one. But she has a point.
The other night I got a slice of pizza heaping with mushrooms and black olives. Then I plopped down on the futon and watched "Sex and the City." Which I had rented. I ate the pizza, enjoyed the show, and then had a stale cigarette. It was so, so fine.
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Paula - 2004-03-15 14:25:15
Erica:
yes! Exactly.
Food is not just for the body, but for the soul. You don't want to be unhealthy about it, but it seems so self-abnegating to decide, e.g., never to eat bread or sugar again.
A life w/o pasta or ice cream is not a life I want to live.
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2fs - 2004-03-15 14:31:22
I think the displeasure directed toward "emotional eating" is part of the general anti-pleasure view of the still-powerful puritanical component of American thought. (There. Now someone else write the dissertation.) Of course, you can overdo it - but you can overdo damned near anything, including nominally positive activities (if they exclude other parts of your life or people affected by your actions, for example). I'd also agree with you on "self-medication" - except, of course, for those people who cannot moderate, for whatever reason. (Again, that's true of many activities.)
I think it was in Harper's last month: an essay from Modern Drunkard magazine (not making this up!) on countering interventions. While there might be a certain perversity there, the gist was: if the only problem your drinking is causing others is their perception that you might have a problem (i.e., you're not missing work, etc.), then it's their problem, not yours. The article also helpfully pointed out that recent articles highlighting the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption curiously mention about the same amount of alcohol that hard-core neo-prohibitionists regard as prima facie evidence of alcoholism...
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I wombat - 2004-03-15 15:03:25
Food is naturally enjoyable, but I went through a peroid of time, when, because I saw myself as overeating in general, I couldn't take a bite of food without thinking "I don't need this" but of course we need food to live. So by eating more appropriately, I was able to enjoy the food I needed. As I get older, it seems there is not much latitude in overeating, without impacting negatively on the kind of body I would like to have. (actually, I think it's the lovely beer that pushes it over the edge( the stomach over the belt, that is))
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I wombat - 2004-03-15 15:34:36
I do agree that we don't want to be ruled by a Puritan ethic, but also in this time and place a lot of effort goes into enticing us into consuming on every level, from extremely high fat foods, to gasoline. I think it takes some effort to resist those forces. Although when I write this I'm reminded of a recent study that seemed to contradict a lot of the whole will power in dieting thing.
On the Simpons, Chief Wiggam was depicted in a scene of rejection, at which point, he projected the reason as being because he's so fat, at which point he proceeded to cram ice cream into his face for comfort. I guess this is an extreme caricature of comfort eating, and it appears as a sad, self destructive cycle.
But that we should take comfort and enjoyment from eating and all the aspects of our physical exsistence, seems to be a fundemental value, and a right.
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Paula - 2004-03-15 20:20:11
Wow, I gotta get me some of that olive oil.
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Bob - 2004-03-15 21:40:26
Course, that doesn't really seem to be a matter of preventing addiction in my case, if I was managing to eat the same amount of potatoes and rice with and without olive oil. Maybe more a matter of non-spiking blood sugar not feeding and/or somehow inciting fat. But actually succumbing to carbohydrate addiction can, I'm sure, seem a serious matter, in retrospect, if one's insulin mechanism packs it in in disgust, and diabetes results. I'm with them scolds the Mekons on all this: "Don't drink that Coke... It's really bad for you." Then again, when I used to characterize myself as being on the Primate Diet, my uncle would helpfully stage-whisper to girls: "That means he eats monkeys."
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