Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
Kids are concerned about food
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley, http://www.tomkileylaw.com, concentrates on legal issues regarding children’s health. A recent article in the New York Times illustrates a growing number of children are aware of and worried about the food they eat.
Children today are being trained by their parents to be aware of calories, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, vitamins, reading labels, choosing organic food, and other health concerns. Parents are teaching their children about healthy eating habits because they are concerned about hyperactivity, diabetes, and heart disease. According to the article, some doctors and health care officials worry that parents are becoming obsessive and creating an unhealthy aura around food. They say this is creating anxiety in kids and can possibly create an eating disorder. Clinical disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, which have been diagnosed in increasing numbers of adolescents and young people in the last two decades, are thought by researchers to have a variety of causes — including genetics, the influence of mass media and social pressure.
This is a new area of concern and there have been no formal studies on whether parents' obsession with health food can lead to eating disorders. However, reports from health care providers say they are seeing a preoccupation by many young people with avoiding "bad" foods and they are looking for help.
According to the article, Dr. James Greenblatt, the chief medical officer at Walden Behavioral Care, a hospital specializing in child and adult eating disorders in Waltham, Mass., estimates that he has recently seen about a 15 percent rise in the number of his young patients who eat only organic foods to avoid pesticides. And Lisa Dorfman, a registered dietitian and the director of sports nutrition and performance at the University of Miami, says that she often advises children who are terrified of foods that are deemed "bad" by parents. Dr. Steven Bratman author of the book "Health Food Junkies," has created a term to describe people obsessed with health food: orthorexia. Orthorexic patients, he says, are fixated on "righteous eating" (the word stems from the Greek word ortho, meaning straight and correct).
Some experts dispute the term orthorexia and say it is anorexia in disguise. They say these patients are overly concerned with the quality of their food as a way of expressing their eating disorder.
The article describes a patient named Kristie Rutzel, a 26-year-old marketing coordinator in Richmond, Va., who began eliminating carbohydrates, meats, refined sugars and processed foods from her diet at 18. She became so fixated on eating only "pure" foods that she slashed her daily calorie intake to 500. Eventually, her weight fell to 68 pounds and she was repeatedly hospitalized for anorexia. Today she has gained a normal weight to recover and talks to young girls in schools and churches about the perils of becoming health-food obsessed. Some experts criticize other sources such as nutritional programs in schools. They say there is a rise in the number of children who are fixated on the way they eat categorizing food as ‘good' and ‘bad.,' rather than learning about moderation. Some nutrition experts think we should only teach young children to eat foods of a variety of colors and to drink a lot of water.
Nina Planck, author of "Real Food: What to Eat and Why," said that eating disorders are not the fault of parents or schools, but are the result of an injured psyche. But Jessica Setnick, a dietitian in Dallas and author of "The Eating Disorders Clinical Pocket Guide," believe parents' attitudes can affect children. Her book discusses a parent who created anxiety in her daughter because she only insisted she eat brown rice when the girl really preferred white rice.
Ms. Collins, the author of "Eating with Your Anorexic," a book about her daughter's struggle with anorexia, and director of the nonprofit organization Feast (Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders), has another perspective. She said we’ve developed a moralistic restrictive and unhappy relationship with eating and it is hurting our kids.
