My sincere apologies for sounding like that. I think we should be able to discuss all aspects of eating on this thread I am really sorry.

My experience is that gluten free foods are all the rage now and it is difficult to find sugar free in stores or restaurants. For instance in my grocery store they have a huge section of gluten free, and so called health foods, but I cannot find sugar free mayo, catsup, peanut butter, salad dressing etc etc.
Like you I make my own.

I am not diabetic but I have a severe reaction to High fructose corn syrup, so I totally understand and support being able to find out what is in any food in a restaurant without being considered difficult. I also spend a lot of time in the store reading labels and sometimes the print is very small.

Like I said, I'm probably reading intent into it. :-)

Back in the early 2000's there were a TON of Low carb products... trust me when I say the industry wasn't doing us any favors. They were as monstrous, awful tasting, and unhealthy as the gluten free products are now.

Sad to say, you're probably better off either making your own or ordering them from specialty places online, like netrition.com.

I use so little ketchup that when I do use it, I just use the regular stuff. My mayo brand has no sugar. Nor does my peanut butter or salad dressing (usually make my own). I guess there just isn't much I use on a regular basis that has sugar.

Can you look for some different brands?

In my experience "gluten-free" foods, unless naturally gluten-free like vegetables or nuts, etc... are just another form of junk food.

When I read wheat belly that was one of his big cautions... don't fall for the gluten-free junk. Keep it natural.

It's just that when you can't be 100% perfect and make your own meals from scratch everyday, it would be nice to be able to walk into a grocery store and buy a ready-to-eat item that is not full of junk. You can't trust a ready made salad because you don't know what's in the dressing - it could be full of sugar and gluten...you can't trust chicken that has a mysterious sauce, or buffalo wings because they might be breaded, or sausage because it might have filler. Even soy sauce has gluten in it. hello. who would have guessed?

Options for safe food are limited. There's only so many celery stalks, cheese sticks and hard boiled eggs a girl can eat.

SO that makes me an orthorexic?? So be it.

Oh, gosh, too too too true!

I have a pet peeve (pun intentional) with the Animal Rights movement having made "vegan the default." I've been an activist since I was twelve, have never broken my fur pledge, and ran my own amateur cat rescue for over fifteen years. Yet people in the movement are always shocked when they find out I'm not a vegan.

Don't let them get you down!
Some of the biggest carnivores I've known love animals (and eating them! ) . My steak loving co-worker has 2 rescue pitbulls. I also had a friend who fostered stray cats and regularly trapped ferals to spay/neuter and release and did so on her own dime because, despite her best efforts, she couldn't get community funding from the city council...something I found totally disgraceful. She wasn't a vegan or vegetarian, though.
Almost all paleo people hate factory farming just as much as any vegan.
Plus, some vegans have some ideas that I actually feel are cruel in their own way. For one thing, having cats and dogs eat vegan. With cats, even many of the people who first pushed the idea have backed off on it because it really is just too damaging for them. Dogs are technically meat inclined omnivores, so apparently it can work for them, in that it's not as dangerous as it is for cats, but I feel like it's the difference between surviving and thriving. Particularly with the evidence coming out that grains and a high carb diet are harmful to humans, I can't imagine any canine species doing better with them.

"They made me an orthorexic!"

I sometimes get nostalgic for the days when I was adventurous and always up for trying new restaurants or interesting things to eat. I just don't enjoy eating in restaurants anymore because there are so many things that get "messed with": the meats have MSG or other additives, even if simply cooked; salad dressings have soy oil; veggies can be topped with stuff full of corn syrup (even sour cream can have wheat flour added).

I do appreciate that restaurants are proud to be "gluten-free," they want to try to please their customers; it's just that gluten-free isn't a sound or meaningful concept for what you might get in return.

And since restaurants buy in bulk, they're probably at the mercy of whatever is put into the ingredients they use, which are usually laced with all kinds of additives, chemicals, or other toxic stuff. It's just become "normal" now to assume that poisons will be added and you have to deal with it.

Seriously, a small cooked steak or chop and plain steamed broccoli -- what's the point unless it's to participate in a social occasion. Otherwise I could make something of much better quality at home. It's tricky to shop at supermarkets also but at least you can read the ingredients first and know if you want to avoid something.

The consequences of allergic reactions or feeling ill aren't "in our heads." We've detoxed somewhat (though it's a continuing process I think) and know what's not right for us. So now this is twisted into being some kind of neurotic (along with being judged as a PITA by people who think we're just being "too sensitive")?

I've been seeing this crop up for a while, it seems to be a new way to try to reverse blame for a broken food system on those who are trying to say "NO" to having all that nice food that so many people, animals, and the earth worked hard to create being RUINED.

It's just insulting on so many levels.

This is quite common for people with autism.

YES, thank you! I used to be a McDougaller, and was a member of his forum. I spent a lot of my time defending lowcarbers from just this type of attack. McDougall himself likes to say "everyone likes to hear good things about their bad habits". I can't tell you how often this is repeated on the forum regarding lowcarbers, and how absolutely insane it makes me. Needless to say I was summarily banned for being a troll.

Eliminating all grains from my diet was interpreted by some family members and friends as me desiring to go gluten-free. By definition, I am, but being free of gluten was not the main reason I eliminated grains. I was wondering why I started getting gluten-free foodstuffs as gifts during holidays and birthdays until my wife told me that people thought I'd jumped on the fad bandwagon and gone gluten free.

Wow! That was a surprise. Some of the gluten-free products I received as gifts were so loaded with carbs and sugar that I can't imagine anyone with a gluten intolerance eating this stuff!

As for being picky about restaurants, if I'm invited to a pizza joint where my choices are carbs, higher carbs, and more carbs, I politely suggest a different option or decline. If that means that I'm orthorexic, then I'll carry that flag proudly!!!

Oh yeah, GF food is worse, carb-wise, than gluten food. They have to add all kinds of starches to make it rise (tapioca, potato, etc).

I've had people give me GF cookbooks too. They get donated to charity. There are low carb, sugar free, gluten free cookbooks and some are actually pretty good.

Orthorexia is not a real disease classification yet. If it does make it, it will be about people who have OCD or Anorexia Nervosa.

That means people with very serious underlying issues could end up expressing this issues into eating behaviors. It doesn't mean low carb or healthy people concerned about food are all diseased.

Crazy stuff though.

Yeah - I know a few little kids with autism and they have OCD and ADHD tendencies too. It's tough on them. I feel for what they're going through.

But you're right - the orthorexia is attached to people with OCD. So unless the majority of people are now OCD - they can't be orthorexic.

I have found in myself, and observed in others, that when you are first attempting to RADICALLY change something that is a very fundamental part of your lifestyle, like your eating, it does actually require a certain "overdose of focus" on the subject at hand.

People don't kick alcoholism by occasionally reflecting upon it. It takes a very serious focus, one day-hour even minute at a time. I believe the same goes for radically shifting your eating habits, especially if this affects your schedule and timing.

If you are someone who lived on fast food drive thru's and worked the rest of the time, and didn't cook at all, then shifting to something where

a) 98% of everything you called food is now banned because it's not actually food but you didn't know until now;

b) every source of instant food you have is now banned because they are all carb-fructose-gluten-soy-msg-stuffed frankengestibles and if you want actual food you need to cook

c) you now have to:

* PLAN ahead for meals and their components
* SHOP ahead for those
* PREP ahead for those (defrost, marinade, chop, etc.)
* EAT at home for real not while driving
* CLEAN the substantial mess cooking makes esp. if you're new to it

d) You suddenly have to radically revise any social plans because everyone you eat with, even if they are actively dying of diabetes and other disease, is living on frankengestibles that addict you or tempt you or just don't offer options for you. Now you have social drama to add to everything else, or issues with having to get home early and prepare and eat something before you go...


The TIME this takes, the EFFORT this takes, can literally be -- initially -- almost all consuming, when added to a full time job let alone commutes or church or family or other time-consuming elements in a person's life.

And, sometimes, "sticking with it" requires a certain mindset where you NEED to focus on it fully, to keep you with it. How many times do people not go offplan because they spent the evening reading lowcarb chocolate dessert recipes -- or success stories, or planning a workout routine -- instead of eating badly? Probably many.

So I would submit that "a moderate but temporary" degree of "orthorexia" -- that being the "unbalanced overdose of focus" on obsession with the nature of your food -- is in fact both normal and necessary in early days and sometimes cyclically in a person's new-eating-and-life-plan.

Maybe it's not balanced but it is balance-ING something that is equally unbalanced in the OTHER direction, initially, so it actually has to swing farther-out to compensate.

The "negative" side of the over-focus -- beating oneself up, or others, about it -- that is bad no matter what. That is not a part of any healthy psychology. It's difficult to avoid as a side effect of course, but usually it stays within healthy limits, at least, if the people around you are also relatively psyche-stable.

PJ

So true! I said to a friend when I started Atkins: "I've turned my way of eating inside-out and upside-down!"

And now, going gluten-free can be a nightmare. I'm fortunate that I live in an area with lots of locally owned restaurants and a real chef in the back. I can tell them I can't have gluten, and they respond like champs.

So yes, to the average person, I'm freakishly restricted and overly fussy.

Yes, this seems to be an apt comparison.

I think of my "LC orthorexia" more as one would think of a hobby. For example, no one else may understand the passion to poke around flea markets looking for figurines of dairymaids, of which you already own a thousand. But it isn't considered a disorder. Um, that isn't my particular passion, but you get the idea. Or perhaps a religion? Never perfect, but always on the road you consider righteous.

I'm pretty happy with my LC support group right here. Thanks, all!