When I was 19, I got sick. A few weeks into an interminable summer spent puzzling over baffling symptoms and going back and forth to doctors, my bloodwork was flagged for a possible cause — a food sensitivity issue that might just clear up with some dietary changes. It wasn't a serious health crisis. It wasn't anything I couldn't handle. But I was a teenage girl in America, so I already had a fraught relationship with food and my body. Naturally, then, I took this new information as a challenge to restrict my Diet Coke and celery sticks lifestyle even more sharply. A few weeks later, I returned to school with nearly twenty pounds carved off my already slim frame. And it took me the next several years to unlearn the self-sabotaging habits I picked up that summer.
Decades later, the combination of dietary issues and disordered eating patterns is still a perversive challenge for many of us. How could it not be? Monitoring what you eat, being mindful that your food could actually hurt you, is stressful. For people already struggling around food and body image, it can make tough mealtimes even tougher. And for people with previously untroubled eating habits — like children — those allergies and intolerances might just nudge along some brand new emotional problems.
