Are you old enough to remember Gourmet magazine?
I was devastated when it shut down.
I still recall where I was when I heard the magazine was closing. I was trekking in Nepal and met another traveler from the United States. As we were ambling along the trail, she shared the crushing news.
I didn’t believe her at first. I thought it was a terrible rumor.
I was shocked that such a beloved cultural icon with a rich 68-year-old history could shutter so abruptly.
My Entire World
I was devastated because I relished the magazine. It was such a special thrill to find it in my mailbox once a month nestled among the utility bills and grocery store ads.
It was also a bigger deal to me than one might expect, as food, including food media, was pretty much my entire world back then.
I spent hours devouring food magazines, websites, blogs, newsletters, books and TV shows. I read restaurant menus online and crawled into bed at night with cookbooks.
My work breaks and evenings were spent immersed in a clunky online message board reading fervent posts by food fanatics about who had the best burrito, brownie or bread in the Bay Area.
If Instagram existed back then, I’m sure many hours would have melted away as I scrolled through every food-related account.
I was infatuated with food. It was my primary focus. I thought it was because I was a foodie.
Understanding My Fixation
It wasn’t until years later that I came to fully understand my fixation.
It was because I was hungry.
My thoughts were consumed by food because I wasn’t consuming enough food.
I was constantly thinking about food because my very wise body was trying to get me to eat more food. Low on energy due to dieting, it was attempting to get the fuel it desperately needed to survive.
Learning about the Ancel Key’s Minnesota Starvation Experiment (CW: calorie counts, disordered eating, photos) helped me see how my undereating drove many of my behaviors during this time, including my food fixation.
The experiment's objective was to study the physical and mental effects of starvation during World War II and postwar refeeding practices. Thirty-six young healthy men, all conscientious objectors, volunteered to be subjected to a calorie-restricted diet for six months.
One of the outcomes was the men became preoccupied with food, including constantly talking about it, dreaming about it, reading cookbooks and collecting recipes.
By the time the study was completed in 1945, one participant owned more than 100 cookbooks.
Describing his fixation with food, another participant shared that “…it made food the most important thing in one's life…food became the one central and only thing really in one's life. And life is pretty dull if that's the only thing. I mean, if you went to a movie, you weren't particularly interested in the love scenes, but you noticed every time they ate and what they ate.”
Related to Their Experience
While my weight-loss intention was quite different (to look good*) than those of the men who participated in the study (to do good), we experienced many of the same food deprivation symptoms.
Not only had I become hyper-focused on food, like many of the study subjects I also found myself guarding my food, sneaking food, engaging in hunger-suppressing strategies, bingeing on food, feeling irritable, anxious, depressed and fatigued, becoming socially isolated and more.
And, like a few of the men in the study, I even got a job in the food industry. I became the marketing manager for a food website with a slick test kitchen. Sadly, I never ate a bite of any of the delicious food prepared in it as it wasn’t allowed on my diet.
Although in no way was my intentional deprivation from dieting comparable to the heartbreaking chronic hunger, starvation and malnourishment experienced by millions of people around the world, I can relate to so many of the things the food-deprived men in the study experienced. Maybe you can, too.
More Calories Than a Diet
It’s important to understand that the daily number of calories the men were fed during the study's “starvation” phase was similar to what most diet programs prescribe today.
While they were considered semistarved, the participants were likely eating more calories than many of us have been instructed to eat on some diets.
It seems beyond unethical that diet companies have known for more than 75 years about the numerous physical and psychological harms their programs can cause yet they continue to offer them while intentionally neglecting to warn their customers of their potential adverse side effects.
If they truly valued people’s wellbeing over their bottom line (ha!), this information would be made available so folks could make fully informed decisions.
Stopped the Fixation
As I started divesting from diet culture, giving myself unconditional permission to eat and fully nourishing my body, I stopped fixating on food.
While the foodie in me still enjoys exploring different food cultures, reading an occasional food article, tuning into some food podcasts and shows, and experimenting with a new recipe now and then, my interest is nowhere near the level of obsession it was when I was dieting, which frees up a ton of time and energy for a variety of other pursuits.
Of course, not everyone who is obsessed with food and everything related to it is dieting, undereating or engaging in other disordered eating behaviors. People are passionate about food and really into food-related content for all sorts of reasons.
Thankfully, my personal interest in food these days is because I find it fun, pleasurable, comforting, compelling, connecting and nourishing.
And if Gourmet magazine happens to be resurrected someday, I’d likely be quick to renew my subscription.
*I deeply regret that I had a lot of unexamined anti-fat bias at the time due to decades of social conditioning that taught me there was only one right way to have a body (i.e., the thin ideal) and warped my idea of what it meant to “look good.”
