To think that MN is a haven for people with eating disorders.

[IPityThePontipines]

On any food thread there are abnormal levels of fixation with certain food groups being "bad" or "poison" and an awful lot of people seem to have very unhappy relationships with food.

And before anyone pops up with "obesity crisis", I'd point out that we are seeing growing rates of anorexia and bulimia in the UK too.

I think it's a feature of the Internet generally in that 'birds of a feather flock together' and you can get mutual reinforcement of weirdness, whereby people with quite extreme views meet other people with the same views and they convince themselves that it's mainstream and that they're definitely correct. I don't think mn is particularly extreme re food- in fact, quite the opposite. Read Food Babe on FB if you want real cray-cray stuff.

What reni1 said.

Exactly- CB but the internet facilitates it because it allows anonymity and overcomes the problem of low liquidity, so if you thought ( eg) that 9-11 was carried out by Lord Lucan and The Duke of Edinburgh and you told your immediate circle, probably they'd tell you not to be so stupid but if you write it online your chances of finding someone who buys that theory is millions of times higher. Therefore the Internet is great for spreading fringe ideas.

One in five children leaving primary school are obese.

It isn't as simple as that. I was at a city wide event recently with 20-strong contingents from thirty primaries (a mass choir thing). You could plot a demographic map of the city from the incidence of obvious obesity, and it sure as hell wasn't the middle class mumsnet readers' children. There are some obvious cultural and class issues which mean schools in the leafy suburbs policing lunch boxes are behaving like they want to provoke disordered eating while the schools with the obesity problem have way deeper and more complex issues that a kit Kat in a packed lunch.

I think the childhood obesity thing is often no more complex than lack of meaningful exercise.

I live in one of London's most deprived boroughs and you just don't see fat kids at football/netball/gymnastic/cricket tournaments.

You do however, see plenty of fat parents/grandparents/teachers.

Neither do I see many fat children regularly playing in my street or in the park.

Of course poverty plays a part, but I truly believe it's more about quantity of food and lack of exercise, than the actual quality, as many kids eat quite healthy foods but huge amounts of it.

There are many people with very little understanding of nutrition and throwing around words they don't understand.

Someone just claimed alcohol has 'very little nutritional value'. It actually has a pretty high caloric value.

Many people who post on here with absolute conviction they are right seem to not know there is a difference between a micro and a macro nutrient. Both count as 'nutritional value'.

I think there is a lot of posting on MN which appears to me to be rather disordered, it tends to be worst in the food and cleanliness threads although there can be hints of it on any threads which touch on subjects requiring adults to assess risk/threat.

Do you think people on here think ther term 'nutritional value' denotes a moral judgement rather than a quantitative one?

If so that says it all.

I do see a lot of questionable relationships with food out in the "real world" though - whether doing "no carbs before Marbs" diets or knocking back the Krispy Kreme. It's society-wide and not just MN. At least here on MN the people talking actual woo bullocks will get pulled to pieces and on the occasions where I've seen women saying "I'm so fat and really need to lose 8 pounds" they've been interrogated as to their current BMI, and when they reveal they're 5'6" and 8 stone they're pointed in the general direction of reality.

I think people definitely assign a moral judgement to 'nutritional value'. Every so often a thread will pop up where someone is peeved to learn that foodbanks are requesting donations of biscuits and tins of custard rather than just 'nutritious' (and virtuous) lentils.

People also jump on a scientific study as though it's gospel. Even if it's a single study with 10 people

One doesn't like to be PhD-ist but very little undergraduate study involves reading papers unmediated; you might be guided through selected papers, but doing a literature survey that requires a critical decision about crap papers is the quintessential first year doctoral activity. Which your supervisor almost certainly criticises for the first four drafts. The frequency with which people with bees in their bonnet anout education and nutrition cite papers that a cursory reading shows to be crap, published in journals with homeopathic impact factors and never cited in anything but nutcase blogs is telling. Often the papers are behind a paywall and it's obvious the citer has only read and misunderstood the abstract.

There are some threads on here that are pretty scary. Some of the most prolific posters on the 5:2 threads are definitely obsessed, in an unhealthy way, with weight, fasting, and how long they can starve themselves for. I read a few threads to get some tips about cutting out snacks etc, but I was shocked at some of the people who are already very thin and are pushing themselves to extremes.

Ethel - that was me. Yes, I know about the calories in alcohol and should have used correct terminology as opposed to "nutritional value" as a lazy shorthand.

However, my point stands with regards to gin, vodka, etc not being described as "shit", while cookies, doughnuts and crisps are.

Returning to the thread, I'm seeing lots if mentions of "processed foods". Bread, cheese, jam, these are all heavily processed, yet we've been eating them for centuries.

MamaMary I'm a regular on the 5:2 threads and that's really not the case. Anyone planning unhealthy fasting is actively discouraged and, there's a focus on eating healthy nutritious food and definitely not starving. Sometimes we get posts from someone new to fasting who is planning something extremely but they are always told it's dangerous and that losing weight slowly is best.

Totally agree with WorraLiberty here. There are a lot of "projectors" on any site. Its just the way it is. Im a very honest poster and get called "goady" all the time. The people that get "personal" are the ones that have some awful issues going on and I actually feel rather sorry for them. This can be about absolutely anything but food is a big one!

I don't demonise any food, but sometimes I find it hard to believe people brag about "eating all 12 of the multipack of Kitkats" or "Bought big family tub of ice cream for kids, and then ate it all by myself in the bathroom." What was it the other day, someone saying they'd eaten a dozen Krispy Kremes on their own?

I never knew people actually did that.

The rest is easy to ignore. 'Healthy' has no meaning, or has different meanings for different people. I eat high-protein, for weightlifting, high fat for satiety/hormonal regulation (and to make my mother gasp in shock) and fewer carbs on non-lifting days, so a proteinless pile of pasta and non-fat cream isn't 'healthy' to me. But it might be to a runner about to do a marathon.

I don't think it's the diets themselves that are the eating disorder. I suspect they attract a number of people who have a propensity towards disordered eating. It allows them to exert a high level of control over exactly what they are eating in a way that seems to be much more socially acceptable that other EDs which can still get swept under the carpet a bit.

I have a family member that does this. Currently it's sugar is toxic, but in a few months it will be the next health fad done obssessively. All cheered on by friends who will tell them how healthy they'll be and how they wished they had the will power to do the same.

That doesn't mean that all people on those diets are the same. If they can follow them but are happy to occasionally fall off the wagon on occasion, and it works for them as a way of eating then that's fine.

It's Lena Dunham isn't it who said that vegetarianism is just an ineffective eating disorder? It's true more widely, of course.

""Bread, cheese, jam, these are all heavily processed, yet we've been eating them for centuries.""

But the bread, cheese and jam that we buy now, from the average supermarket, not "specialist" etc products, have completely different ingredients in, than they did centuries (or even since the 50's) ago.

If it wasn't for enough people caring about what was in our food and demanding that there were some regulations in-regards to "the Food Industry", the products on the supermarket shelves, would actually be harmful to our health.