Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

After years of suffering in food service under the hand of food obsessed elitists, he gets a little nervous every time he goes into a Trader Joe’s Grocery Store.

• My Trader Joe’s Phobia | Waiter Rant

But let’s face it; many people are organic because they want to feel better about themselves. For them food isn’t sustenance, it’s a statement. It’s often a quick, easy and rather masturbatory piece of faux virtuousness. How else can you explain purchasing organic vodka? Are you kidding? You want to pickle your liver and stroke your social consciousness too?

I feel the same way. After years of being told to eat more whole grains, my digestive tract was bleeding me dry. The minute I disregarded the Food Taliban, I started healing. Fortunately, Trader Joe’s has options for me.

No matter whether it’s veganism, vegetarianism, organic proponents, or whole grain pushers, whenever someone thinks they have THE answer for everyone, I start to back away. Food elitism isn’t about being healthy. It’s a religion.

I’ve talked about this before:

• Starling Fitness: Compare Groceries
• Starling Fitness: When Food Snobbery Goes Beserk
• Starling Fitness: Food Snobbery

In 2010, I said:

Maybe it’s time to reconsider the idea that your diet is supposed to make you feel unique, special or superior. When they said that you are what you eat, I don’t think they meant that as a judgment of your personality, just as a guideline for food choices.

Using your diet as a statement of your political beliefs is just as disordered eating as anorexia, bulimia or binge eating. If you need to feel good about yourself, your diet isn’t going to make you feel any better than earning a lot of money, wearing the coolest clothes or exercising a lot. There is ALWAYS someone out there doing more than you and you cannot outdo the crazy people of this world.

In the end, there is no ONE way that is best for everyone. We are all the same species, but we evolved over vast distances, eating many different types of food. That’s the beauty of being human: we get to figure out what works best for our individual bodies. Even more interesting, our bodies are constantly changing and what worked for us at one stage of our lives might not work very well at another.

Whenever someone tries to tell you that they know the one secret to eating properly, be wary of them. Don’t spend seven years in horrible pain with a bleeding digestive system before you realize that the prevailing “wisdom” just doesn’t work for you, like I did. Be smarter than I was and reject any form of food elitism or snobbery within yourself or others.

Photo via: Flickr: Kathy at Trader Joe’s in Modesto – Day 94