[image description: A koala bear with a fuzzy nose looks holds a banana they cannot eat (the art style is cut paper and muppety fabric). Text reads, “Kirra the Small God of Dietary Restrictions 249”]
“Hey, are you really gonna eat that?”
“You know, your body needs nutrients. That doesn’t have any real nutrients in it. You should eat something that’s better for you.”
“You eat like a child.”
“You eat like a senior citizen.”
“Do you actually EAT?”
Oh, she’s heard them all. From the shame to the blame to the food’s not a game, people whose diets have never been complicated have so much to say about the way other people eat.
She’s a versatile god. She’s not just here for the people whose diets are restricted by physical medical needs. She’s here for the ones who can’t stand certain tastes or textures, who gag when they think about putting something off their very narrow lists into their mouth, for whom common foodstuffs sometimes register to the brain as “not food.” She’s here for the picky eaters and the voluntary restrictors, the ones who refuse certain things because they don’t feel right, or they don’t like the way their bodies react to those inputs.
She is not a god of disordered eating, but she shares some of her faithful with that god, whose name she will not speak, for to name him is to invoke him: some of hers come to her by way of him, their relationships with food shattered and thrown into disarray, their stomachs empty, their mouths full of rumors and lies. She does what she can to help her devotees find a healthy relationship with food that is healthy for them, and ways to answer the endless criticism of a world that doesn’t want to accept that nutrition is never one size fits all.
She does want people to drink more water, though.
There are very few diets not improved by drinking more water.
Lee Moyer 