There was hope that Freaky Eaters on TLC this fall would shine some light on how people deal poorly with food and how they can be helped. Since I'm hugely cynical about reality shows, my hopes weren't very high.
The 6-episode series dealt with a different substance in each episode: sugar, soft drinks, French fries, pizza, cheeseburgers, and raw meat. And each of them got help from a nutrition expert and a psychotherapist.
What we discovered was the common theme wasn't their obsession with food, but using food as a substitute for something that was missing.
We saw a guy who ate cheeseburgers 3 times a day for almost 30 years, a woman who ate French fries the same way, and a young woman who drank 30 soda cans a day. This was not about food. Especially the raw meat guy.
And their meticulousness about their behaviors were deep-rooted. The cheeseburger guy ate them plain with nothing on them. The french fry lady wouldn't eat them if they were blue, even a non-processed potato fried in oil freaked her out.
These people should have been helped long before this point.
The good news was that the experts were rather nice, almost too laid-back. They could have done more for the soft drink woman. Usually the TV experts are over the top.
They did resort to similar tactics each time: the person was shown a visual of the impact of a month or year of eating the same thing. Medical tests were another consistent theme in the episodes. And they would steer the person toward something similar as a way to distract away from the obsession.
So what can we learn about food from Freaky Eaters?
- don't use food as a crutch
- taste your food, appreciate it instead of wolfing it down without thinking
- too much of a good thing is really too much
- your obsession can't be as bad as these people and they haven't died from it yet.
- eat a variety of foods
- don't let your problems make you reach the point where you end up on a reality show, even one with a softer touch
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