Nutrition Facts

Dinner was a barbecue sandwich; marinated meat, unceremoniously plopped onto a pure white hamburger bun. Served with sad, limp green beans on an indestructible plate reminiscent of the cafeteria lunch trays designed for young children. That plate had seen the inside of an industrial strength dishwasher hundreds of times, and its roots dated back to the opening of the establishment. Staring at the scratch marks from the forks and knives of previous diners, I pushed the beans around in their slimy green puddle.

I sat at the end of two long, narrow dining tables pushed together to form enough seating for the thirteen residents of the facility. Each person had a placemat with their name on it, put in front of the chair where they were supposed to sit. Mine had been whipped up earlier in the day by an employee, just a name in black Sharpie on white cardstock, but the rest of them were cheerfully decorated with bright colored markers and objects cut out from magazines. No doubt, a previous craft curated during one of many group therapy sessions.

It was my first official meal since being admitted; I arrived during lunch, and they let me pick at a salad with grilled chicken while filling out forms and answering questions from the nurse on staff. But, from now on, everything I ate or didn’t eat would be here in this room, at this table, in front of all of these people. As a group we were forced to either put our sacred food rituals on display or abandon them altogether. Two staff members were present; sitting and eating with us, inciting conversation or asking to play games to distract us from the fact that we were forced to face our disease each time we came to this table.

For the last nine months I rarely ate anything without subsequently inducing vomiting; there were some foods that got a pass, but bread was certainly not one of them. From what I had learned so far, there would be no trips to the bathroom for several hours after eating, and even then it would be supervised. I stared at the bun and saw its nutrition label in my head; 120 calories, 25 carbohydrates, 3 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fat. The meat was slightly less intimidating, but there was no way of knowing how it was cooked or what kind of saccharine condiments it contained. Bile rose in my throat as I stabbed two soggy beans and swallowed without tasting them.

“Who wants to play categories?”

Grateful for the interruption, I slowly raised my hand and smiled at the tech who seemed relieved to have at least one volunteer. I needed to run out the clock until this was over; if participating in a child’s game was the only way to do that, so be it. The others reluctantly got involved and in between turns, I took inventory of the various stages of consumption from each person’s dinner. All but a few were members of the “clean plate club” as my mother used to call it. As if finishing the entire meal was some kind of accomplishment with a reward attached.

“Is everyone done eating?” asked the senior technician named Megan as she stood up and looked around the table with an air of authority.

I felt her looking directly at me with a glimmer of disappointment as she asked again. I nodded and started to stand up, but the girl to my right, who could not have been more than a few days over 18, said “they have to check your plate before you can get up from the table” in a low voice.

Staring at her in disbelief, I quickly sat back down on the hard wooden chair. In the second grade the nuns at school would check to make sure that we ate all of our lunch before we were allowed to go to recess. There was always some poor kid who was forced to sit inside with the nun on duty, listening to the joyous shouts of their classmates on the playground until all of the cold, leftover food was gone. I never expected that I would experience the same tyranny as a 38-year-old adult.

Her placemat said “Bea”, an old-fashioned name for such a young person. She had moved the food around on her plate, but, like mine, it was mostly untouched. Covered in an over-sized sweatshirt, Bea pulled her long legs up onto the chair and wrapped her equally lengthy arms around herself. The only skin visible was from her tiny wrist, which was covered in goosebumps and soft, blonde baby hairs. As Megan finally made her way towards our end of the table, Bea’s began to fidget and tap her foot.

“Is that all you are going to eat Bea?” Megan asked, her tall frame looming over us.

Bea gave her a half-nod in response. “Less than 80%,” Megan stated out loud to no one in particular. She gave Bea the signal that she could get up and put her plate on the cart which would journey back to the kitchen on the other side of the building. That left me alone, smiling nervously and prepared to make any excuse I could to avoid the consequences that accompanied eating less than a quarter of my meal.

“Have they told you about percentages?” Megan asked as she sat down next to me. She was at least half my age, had a pixie haircut and tattoos running all the way up her right arm. With the amount of information I’d consumed in the short amount of time I had been in this place, it was impossible to know if one of the dozens of staff members I came across told me about percentages.

“I don’t remember,” I said, feeling like I was failing my first test.

“If you don’t eat 98% of your food, you will be offered a meal replacement drink. If you eat less than 80% of your food, you will be offered two,” she said hurriedly, eyes down, writing something on her clipboard.

530 calories, 52 grams of carbohydrates, 13 grams of sugar, 26 grams of fat. Times two. I stopped breathing for a second. I didn’t allow myself that amount of nutrients in three days, let alone one meal. And the math didn’t make sense; that sad sandwich and beans certainly wasn’t thousands of calories. Most importantly, what did “offer” mean? Was there an option to say “no thank you?”

“You can go wait over by the nurses’ station with the others.” Megan was already off on another mission, and I looked over to see Bea and another resident waiting in front of the glass enclosure where the nurses and techs went to escape us.

This was a mistake. I was not underweight; my body did not need the same dense, high calorie shakes given to someone chronically ill or severely emaciated. There was no way that I deserved the same treatment as a true anorexic; I didn’t have their discipline or dedication. The best I could ever do was lose enough weight to appear “healthy” or “fit”. Shame washed over me as I made my way towards the designated spot where the after-dinner drinks would be “offered” and I could practically hear what the others were thinking. “What is she even doing here?”

More to come,