I found an article on AOL.com. My first reaction was shock that AOL still exists. My second reaction was anger from the headline:
Harvey Dyer, who is now 18, was diagnosed with a rare eating disorder called avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder when he was two years old. This “disease” makes it difficult for people to stomach certain foods based on sensory traits, such as smell, texture, or flavor. Somehow this disorder singles out only healthy foods because Harvey had no problems eating Pringles, slices of white bread, chocolate candy, french fries, and fried and processed meats. He started having symptoms when he was 14 and by age 17 he was legally blind attributed to a vitamin A deficiency caused by his poor diet.
Harvey’s mom Kerry is blaming the UK healthcare system for his illness. She says that doctors should have detected the vitamin deficiency and intervened so that he could have avoided blindness.
First of all, there are definitely legitimate eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, and people who suffer from those disorders have a rough time. In my opinion, Harvey did not have an eating disorder. He has what a lot of kids have who are called picky eaters. I was a picky eater when I was a kid. Do you know how my mom fixed that? “You eat what’s on the plate or you’re going to bed hungry.”
Kids do not always act in their own best interest. They’re kids. That’s why adult supervision is necessary. No sane person can look at this poor kid’s diet and have any sense that it is even remotely healthy. Letting him eat that way for years and then blaming doctors later when things go wrong is a dereliction of parental responsibility.
When you’re an adult, it’s on you. Don’t blame your culture or how you grew up or your genetics or what you were made to eat or not eat.
When my mom told me to eat everything on the plate, there was a LOT of food on that plate. To this day I still hear her voice in my head when I don’t eat everything on my plate. But I realized that behavior is what contributed to my tendency to overeat. It’s up to me to make healthy decisions now.
As an adult, you have the freedom to eat however you like, but you will experience the consequences if you don’t make healthy choices. Unfortunately, everyone else experiences those consequences as well in the form of higher health insurance premiums or taxes.