Okay, so going to the grocery store isn’t a big deal for most people.  If anything, given the way the online trend is going, grocery stores are a bit of a hassle.   In a generation or so,  we’ll simply have everything auto-shipped from Amazon.  Or, possibly, everything will be pre-ordered and be delivered drive-thru window style.  Grocery stores, the American version of a museum, will vanish or drastically alter from what we currently know it.

I digress.

I refer to grocery stores as museums because they are.  The color, artwork, layout, and even the smell encourage people to wonder up and down the stocked inlaid rows searching for treasures and, sometimes, those hidden bargain deals, while listening to piped in music and well-paid advertisements.

Kroger, Publix, Walk-Mart, and others try to keep the shopper in the store with an array impossibly shiny red apples, brilliant oranges, out-of-season flowers presented as shoppers first walk in.  The bakery and deli isn’t too far away and can assault the senses with aromatic baits such as friend chicken and fresh-baked bread.  The shelves have pieces of artwork on the labels ranging from the simplistic Kellogg’s portrayal of Cornelius and a bowl of cornflakes to the tiny portrait of Hillshire Farms.  Women are shamelessly tempted by the tightly cladded Mr. Clean, muscled Brawny, and cute Scrubbing Bubbles.  Even icons from past and tragic times are represented in the forms of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima.

To an anorexic, the grocery store is not a museum.  It is not a place of leisure.   Rather, it can be a place of fear and anxiety.  We are the master of reading box labels and understand what all the big words mean.  The word fat, although bringing taste, is not a friend.  Carbs cause caution, if not anxiety.  Serving size… yeah, sure.  That’s a suggestion, not a rule.  A simple half a cup of Ben and Jerrys could yield 310 calories, 130 of that fat, and be about 19 grams of fat.  That’s just half a cup.  Okay, who can stop at half a cup of Phish Food, the Americone Dream, or Chunky Monkey.  Honestly.

Eating such things causes high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and heart failure.  What do we typically say or think when someone dies because of the pleasurable weakness of oral consumption?  “Gee, I better start exercising!”
—  Sure.  That’ll last for a month, maybe two.  Some may last a little longer.  Eventually, it’ll fall back to the same old routine.  Exercise is only 20% of the way to lose weight.
—  Some others may think, “Gee, I need to watch what I eat!”
–  Right.  Since these chips are reduced in sodium, it’s okay if I have a few more!  Sure.   Calories I eat alone don’t count towards my daily total.  It’s in the advertising Having a bad day?  Have a Snickers.  Chocolate soothes all wounds.  Need a friend, share a Twix!  It doesn’t help that they’re fun to disassemble either – the fiends.  Try not to look at the sodium content and the small amount of meat in a Lean Cuisine.  One of those is a snack, not a meal.  So, consume two or three.  They’re supposed to be good for you, right?

If something is healthy, eating a lot of it will make the person healthy?
–  I’m sure that’s not what we actually think to ourselves, but it is in our nature – our attitude.

For an anorexic, Kroger, Pubix, and even a Piggly Wiggly, is a place to be feared.  They take our money and make us fat.  Lies are in every advertisement.  The nutrition labels practically need a degree to really understand.  Temptation rolls on shopping cart wheels.  Hot dogs and the aptly named Tombstone pizza are for other people – people with weaknesses.  People who don’t know any better, or worse, don’t care.

Eating certain heart clogging foods is a family tradition.  The act of buying and consuming provides a feeling of satisfaction – of power – in an otherwise powerless world.  Some may even say it is our American right to eat what we want.  How dare anyone try to restrict or tame who we are?  Should anyone try, we’ll do our best to show them wrong.  That is what we do.  That is in our culture.  That is what we like to believe, or at least feel, in our private lives.

And when someone dies from diabetes or a heart attack caused by high cholesterol, the loss of person is what matters.  It’s a life cut short by smoked sausage, Twinkies, and bacon.  No one says… “Wow, Jim lead a good life.   He really knew his Ballparks!”

No, when death comes knocking, who we interact with, what we do, and who we are is what counts.  A shortened life truly shows we are what we eat.  We die to our own inability to understand the value we have upon others.

An anorexic knows these things.  She may not be able to express them.  She may not be consciously aware.  But the choice of life without eating also can lead to nothing.

If she eats nothing, she could be nothing.

So, what’s the balance?
Knowledge?
Discipline?
Self-worth?
Respect for those who come after us and those who come before us?

Yeah, right.
Maybe one day.