Eating disorders often look like they're about discipline or willpower, weight loss or weight gain, control or chaos. That's precisely how diet culture wants us to see them. But underneath, they're about pain, about regulation, about protection.
"I found that calorie counts gave me some semblance of control in the aftermath of my mother's death; I couldn't control what happened to her body, but I could regulate what I put in mine."
You never know what someone else is going through and why they're eating what they're eating, highlighting the complexities behind dietary choices and interpretations of comments.
To see how deep this connection runs, this team decided to test it out using Kool-Aid. The study introduced a group of mice to Grape Kool-Aid, a novel flavor to them. Half of the mice were then injected with lithium chloride, a chemical that induces nausea.