"Edible Harassment"

I was invited over to a teacher's house today (Mrs. Nakabayashi-sensei) where she was hosting a B-day party for Maybelle, my Philipina friend. It was a great time, with lots of great food and good conversation. But as usual, there being only 4 people at the table, and Adam with having strange selectivity of what he can and cannot eat, questions started moving to my eating habits.

Everyone seems sceptical about Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) that doesn't have it. I can't really blame them. It is a weird thing. You'd think, by the laws of physics, everyone who eats a fibrous substance like lettuce or other leafy vegetables should, in almost all cases, feel the results of that fiber. Many with IBS, such as myself get terrible abdominal cramps that keep you from being able to straighten your back without even greater pain, and hours to days of diarrhea and continued abdominal cramping. This doesn't seem like it should be possible. But it happens. I also have alergies, and an acid-sensitive stomach. So when I'm picking around my food, avoiding super-acidic fruits, high amounts of butter, fibrous veggies, and staying clear of anything with Shrimp, Crab, or anise in it, or which makes my nose twitch angrily in allergic response to the very smell, I tend to stay away from it. So although the night was GREAT, and I really appreciate the hospitality, I am tired of people simply telling me that I am picky and that I need to get over it. This is what happened to me tonight.

As is more typical in Japan, Nakabayashi-sensei made a meal consisting of about 20 things to select. It is appreciated if you have some of all of them. I ate almost all of everything that was sent down the table, and considering the variety, that is quite a bit. I tried at few totally new things. After a bit, Nakabayashi asked me if I was going to finish one of the many things that I was eating, and took it as a signal that I was picky, in combination with what else she was seeing and had heard. She and her husband gave the advice that I shouldn't be picky and that I should eat breakfast every day, even if I am almost never hungry in the slightest and am perfectly functional until I have been awake for hours. Then they tried to attach my current health difficulties with food poisoning to the fact that I was picky, and that I should just eat anything presented to me, because it is healty for me to do so. Healthy?

I later brought up the point that I find it strange that people harass me about what I eat, which is obviously sufficient to sustain me, and which my father is paramount evidence that a man can be healthy and eat from a fraction of the food groups and be perfectly healthy (and if you didn't know--he's been training for half-marathon and has been bicyling, and he's healthier than almost anyone I know, almost never seems to gets sick. And he eats almost nothing. Not even cheese). In any case, people often tell me as "advice" in my eating habits to try eating the things that ail me. I've tried that. It is punishing. Article A-Digiorno Pizza. I rest my case.

The reason this harassment irks me so is that the people who pick on me about in are almost universally people who consume food and drink with a variety of narcotics, people who are often smokers, rarely or never exercise willfully, and consume alcohol in often harmful quantities. So how is eating that undercooked onion and getting gastrointestinal pain that will keep me from sleeping tonight going to improve my health? Why should I eat a half-dozen servings of fruits and leafy veggies if it will only empty my bowels of all nutrients that I am obtaining from anything else? How is being miserable from end to end of my body a good thing?

Maybe people should set aside their presuppositions about food and start really thinking, instead of belittling those with what amounts to a disability in edibility.