An on campus favourite for many Nottingham students, Mooch recently unveiled their new menu, and whilst it deserves praise for its inclusivity of more vegetarian and even vegan options, it’s not the food that’s causing concern now but it’s menu wording choice.
Amongst many new offerings, the student bar now serves “freakshakes” an Australian phenomenon popularised by Black Tap Burgers, New York. Oversized shakes are served topped with gravity defying desserts including cheesecake, muffins, cupcakes and, of course, mounds of whipped cream. To many students, it’s heaven in a mason jar, willing to take on the challenge no matter the sugar coma that will probably ensue but for some students, it can hold a different meaning.
Personally, I don’t have a particular problem with people choosing this – as someone who has struggled with eating disorder-related behaviours quite heavily in the past, I encourage anyone to try these new items for the occasional treat – and get a good Instagram pic to go with it. However, there are many people for whom the idea of this is not just alarming but terrifying, and this is furthered by Mooch’s choice of wording on the menu preceding the shakes: “calorie counters beware.”
I understand that they’re not forcing you to read or pay attention to this; that it’s meant to be lighthearted and many people would gloss over it without a second thought. The freakshakes probably do contain in excess of half your daily calorie allowance, but by including words associated with fear on the menu, what this does is perpetuate the idea that food is something you can and should be afraid of, grabbing the attention of those who really don’t need to worry about it and promoting a feeling of nervousness, anxiety and guilt surrounding food.
Society today is in a problematic place where levels of both obesity and anorexia have reached alarming levels. Prominent figures such as Jamie Oliver are demonizing sugar, associated taxes are being proposed, the gluten free diet is strangely being adopted by those without any intolerance, and popular health bloggers such as Ella Woodward, Freelee the Banana Girl and Niomi Smart are advocating the vegan or plant-based diet as a way of fixing our problems, suggesting radical lifestyle changes that aren’t really necessary for most people who just need to add a little more fruit and veg or cut the size of their daily dessert.
There are many people who may need to address their weight for health reasons, but the issue arises in how to tackle this without further alienating those already struggling to accept their perfectly normal body size because it does not match up to what they see on the runways or in magazines – or even compared to their peers.
The problem here lies in how we talk about food. Because, in our highly privileged western world, food isn’t just something we eat to survive but something we can choose, inundated with options that now range from obscene, mammoth sized hunks of cake, to the opposite end where dieters are substituting carbs for “zoodles” or “courgetti”. Foods are now labelled not as “tasty” or “satisfying” but as “good” or “bad”, encouraging a moralistic side to something that has come a long way from its original, practical purpose of nourishment.
A lot of people reading this may think I’m sensationalizing the issue from a place of personal experience that I’ve taken too far, but many more will find that my words ring true, having spent time worrying over what they’ll eat at a restaurant or how they can get out of a social occasion involving food that they can’t control. When such people recovering from an eating disorder finally bring themselves to undertake such scenarios, the last thing they want is triggering reminders of thought processes our culture has done nothing but enforce.
A menu with calories or wording such as Mooch’s is going to split opinion, with most choosing to laugh it off whilst others immediately feel anxious and look for the healthiest thing they can find to deflect feelings of guilt. I can’t propose a suitable solution to a decades-old mental health problem that is only now starting to receive the attention it deserves, but when it comes to extreme dessert choices, maybe it’s better just to label them as “sweet treats” and leave the element of danger out of it. After all, it’s a milkshake, not a mountain; even if, for those suffering from an eating disorder, it can seem just as challenging, if not more.
Edited by Nicole Swain
Sources
http://www.misstamchiak.com/patissez-singapore/
http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/editors-choice/deliciously-ella-courgette-pasta-recipe
http://www.fussyfoodie.co.uk/foodie/1524/eating-disorders-and-food-intolerance/