Author: Michelle

  • Good food, bad food, and subversive food combining.

    The idea that there are universally “good” foods and “bad” foods is an old one, ancient even. There are traces of it in Leviticus, though the way the concept was used then is perhaps different from how we use it now.* Given what we know about clinical nutrition, that sometimes a startling mix of foods…

  • I ate frozen food for four months so I could do trauma therapy.

    A while ago, I embarked on the difficult and strangely exhausting project of closing a gaping internal wound, the type many of us walk around with our entire lives, in constant pain and in constant denial that the wound exists: I went through trauma therapy. Along with it, I spent four months or so eating…

  • Basic mammal maintenance, or How to be nice to yourself.

    Continuing on the theme of childhood neglect, my nonscientific gut-check tells me that if people were mean or indifferent or unable to care for you while you were a kid, you might lack the skills to care for yourself as an adult. This can lead to a place of acute suffering. It can also make…

  • It’s okay to love food.

    Last time, I wrote about sometimes when people have been abused or neglected around food, it makes sense that they might grow up to dislike feeding themselves. But what is equally true is that, sometimes, when people are deprived of food, their inborn love of food does not desert them, or they go on to…

  • You don’t have to like food.

    Some kids were not just neglected around food, but abused. This is a bit different than just not having enough to eat – it also includes being badgered and harassed about how you eat, what you eat, your weight, your appetite, having food withheld from you, being force-fed, force-weighed, forced to diet, forced to exercise,…