Hello hello! I am posting from the airplane right now, as I am on the way to my hometown for a high school reunion.
I don’t know why, I guess I feel like talking about food this week. In response to my “Meat Suit” post (which, oh my God, I guess they’re making into jerky, don’t even get me started on how disgusting that is), one of my friends alerted me to this show called “Freaky Eaters,” so now I’m going to rant about that.
Actually that friend was not the first friend to tell me about that show—I had heard about it a week or so ago through ANOTHER friend who emailed me to say the promos for the show made her think of me. OK, now, I get why a show about people with unusual eating habits would automatically ping the “Culwell weird food” file you must have in your mind, but people: come ON. Yes, I am a little OCD and high maintenance when it comes to germs in food, or food left out too long, or something like sushi being sold at a gas station, but I do not, nor will I ever, succumb to the level of weirdness and food obsession like that which you can observe on “Freaky Eaters.”
Apparently this is a real documentary-style show (kind of like Hoarders, but even weirder!) where people are obsessed with one food, like pizza or raw meat or cheese (Mental note: may need to prepare a whole additional blog post ruminating on exactly how these people are alive, since they are obviously not pooping). This is a show that revolves around the intervention and trying to get the person to break the six year cycle of pizza eating that is ruining their lives and their health.
Get this— this is coming from a person with food issues—I actually think it’s kind of wrong to make a documentary out of this kind of problem, since these people are obviously so mentally ill, it’s almost cruel to watch them suffer like that and to have their family be involved. Honestly, if I were to spiral down into this kind of real-life dangerous situation, I promise you that before they called up “Freaky Eaters” to try to get on TV, they would strongarm me into a mental hospital where they would make sure I got the help and medication I needed. Maybe it’s because I know I have a tough-love type family that I hold myself to a higher standard and allow myself to only become manageably OCD.
What I’m saying is this: no one gets to the “Freaky Eaters” place by themselves, ok? I’m not going to watch the show because I know I actually have this tendency so I don’t like to watch this kind of thing on the off chance that it might flip some kind of sympathetic switch in my mind and make me backslide into the food-crazy when I’ve made so much progress. So, even though I’m not watching it to verify this fact personally, I can practically guarantee that every person who gets to that place with a mental illness has ONE PERSON in their family who is enabling it, just like on “Intervention.” I can honestly say that if I did happen to get that sick, not only would no one in my family enable this behavior, but they most certainly would not call up Lifetime or whoever is producing that show to get me put on TV. This just makes me feel bad for the people who have the illness.
Thus ends my “Freaky Eaters” rant. Gah! Get those people some help!
Next week: reunion wrapup! This is already looking to be a very entertaining trip, based on the amount of texts, emails, phonecalls, and Facebook shenanigans that started on Wednesday. You know you are curious!
