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So I really need to stop paying attention to the news... I feel like I'm horading the guild gonk

Anyways, good old Yahoo had a blip of an article up that I just shook my head at, but I was curious to see what these two "new" eating disorders are. Orthorexia? Adult Selective Eating? We seriously have names for these?

Does anyone else think that America needs to stop naming all of these habits as disorders? Does anyone ever think that they are just rediculously picky eaters?

Why do Americans keep naming everything?! Just so we can make all of America dependant on their prescription pills?

I think the only South Park episode I will ever like is the one making fun of AA because they think that alcoholism is a disease and they can't do anything about it...

I don't agree with a lot of the power hungry people who come up with these ideas... I don't think they are good ideas. That way, just like on South Park, everyone will think only pills or some higher power will be able to cure them. It makes people passive and sit their with their hand out waiting for the cure.

Regarding the other comment, you should check out my zealots thread, if you haven't yet. I think you'll have a good laugh.

..but that's not a disorder in itself if it's a symptom of a disorder. And from what I'm seeing, these 'disorders' are best explained as either exactly that, or oversensitive taste. And saying someone is disordered because of sensitive taste is going too far, I think. What's next, everyone who doesn't like yellow and circular shapes has a disorder?

It's not like this is something they can stop. I mean, it's a problem. An actual issue. Some people can't go out to dinner with friends. It's socially embarrassing. When it affects your life, it's an issue. It's not like they just want to survive on french fries. It's a massive anxiety issue, and they need behavioural therapy and a lot of willpower to expand their eating choices.

I don't really understand why pills would be involved, unless they were to lessen severe anxiety, and I'm not sure given the side effects they would be particularly useful in this situation.

I like to think people can make distinctions between eating disorders and not liking something. Stuff like orthorexia can be a disorder, and it's tied up with forms of anxiety, desire for control, OCD and so forth. OCD itself has a big element of anxiety to it. It's a different expression of the same things behind anorexia. If you'd eat a bag of chips once in a while and, well, maybe feel a little guilty - fine. If you're faced with a bag of chips and have an anxiety attack when someone asks you to eat one, not so fine.

It's a totally different beast to an addiction like alcoholism, the withdrawal from which is really unpleasant. I agree with South Park's take on AA, because calling it a disease in the way they did absolved their characters from personal responsibility, and hindered their recovery. That's not to say that alcoholism isn't a b***h to overcome, and the same applies to eating disorders. Anxiety in general is really nasty to experience.

This is why many pediatritians stress giving your baby many different textures and tastes. I grew up eating everything. My husband only grew up eating so much and he turned out to be picky as hell compared to me.

I think the "Adult Selective Eating" is too large of a group since it could just be people who do not like different textures or colors. My sister-in-law will not drink anything blue, I think. She's just picky. But then there could be people with major psychological issues. I have no clue why someone would only eat french fries, but it could be a new OCD symptom like you said.

I think they need to stress that there needs to be more research when they publish something like this. Because it just seems that we're trying to give everyone in America a disorder so they can feel okay about being stupid...

You don't drink coffee regularly? That's a nice addiction. Have two coffees a day for a few months, and then quit cold turkey. With a lot of addictions it's a psychological thing as well as a physical one. Now alcohol is really nasty because it's a very physical withdrawal. I mean we're talking vomiting, we're talking possible seizures, hallucinations, migranes, tremors.... I mean this s**t is hardcore. If you ever want a reason to not become an alcoholic, look into alcohol withdrawal. Nasty s**t.

Now smoking, that's not quite so unpleasant to withdrawal from, but there's an attachment to it as a habit as well as a physical addiction. It's something you enjoy doing, and for that reason you don't really want to stop, even though you know it's unhealthy. So a lot of people have to really want to stop in order to go through with it, because knowing you should might not be enough to get you through the symptoms. If it's anything like not having a coffee when you need one, you will hate everyone and everything they say and do. And cigarettes sit off there in the distance promising to fix everything. (You will understand this if you participate in the "intentionally forming a caffeine addiction" experiment I recommended.) Couple that with the feeling you get when you really really need chocolate and I can see how it would be difficult to stop smoking. You'd have to really want to do it.

Anxiety manifests in a whole heap of different ways. Things like OCD are manifestations of anxiety. The thing about naming these different disorders is that it helps with treatment. The DSM isn't about defining things so much as it is about helping with diagnosis, but people get hung up on whether this counts as that and so on. The diagnostical criteria do change quite a bit... that's why we'll soon have the DSM-V. And whether things count as "disorders" get added and removed - it wasn't too long ago that homosexuality was listed in the DSM. Essentially it's about understanding the mind, and understanding the problems that people can have, and about helping them with those. Now your anxiety is situational and you understand how it works and so forth, but with quite a few people their anxiety issues are tied into things that they've begun to do or to not do, and when they break those patterns that's when they get anxiety. So they feel compelled to fall back into those patterns. When they do so they feel less anxious, which reinforces that pattern. Like OCD. I can really see how an eating disorder would fall into this sort of category. Like anorexics feeling a sense of anxiety and failure if they don't lose weight, and will respond by eating even less or by exercising more, or by purging if necessary etc. The "eating healthy" one is actually really interesting, because it's also tied into sociology and the media, and what is healthy vs what is perceived to be healthy. And also, come to that, physical health vs mental health. But it's new, so thoughts on it will change a whole heap within clinical psych. Psychologists argue a lot anyway.

Some disorders are just ridiculous these days. My younger brother is really picky but in health class I remember talking about how some people just don't like certain textures and flavors of food. I found this article which is very interesting about disorders and the pill industry.

I beg to differ.

I studied dance for a long time, and I ran into anorexics or those suffering from ED not specified who came from otherwise well-adjusted homes. Dance is such a high risk for eating disorders (hell, I developed bulimia) because there's lots of pressure to be thin. I was lucky as my school didn't have a weight requirement, so I didn't have weigh-ins. For an idea, ask any dancer who has had to experience that and bring your own barf bucket. It will make you sick as to how they conform to their weight and sometimes try to hide their disorder. It's not pretty, and most are-as mentioned before-otherwise well-adjusted kids from good homes.

Sometimes it's the environment that pressures you.