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What have you eaten today...
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Essential support for under 25s
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KHSS and Suzy are right about what is appropriate. Encouraging people, in an environment where many people have had issues related to eating disorders, to be competitive about their eating habits is both dangerous and entirely lacking in empathy.
As a website that aims to provide support for young people we have a duty of care towards anyone who is using this website. That isn't about being 'Mum and Dad' - which is in itself a pretty dismissive way to respond to people trying to explain the damage you may be doing here.
People are more than welcome to start threads about diets or healthy ways to eat. That's an opportunity to safely and responsibly discuss the issues involved. Which is not what you are doing. The users of this community have seen many of the problems people have experienced before, if they are explaining a mistake you've made then it is worth stopping to take that on board.
In the same way, we don't allow any sense of a competitive discussion about self-harm. I'd take a closer look at those threads if you believe that is what is happening.
So, thread back on track please, if you'd like to discuss this further please PM a mod, we'll remove anything that isn't a description of the content of your stomachs from here on out.
Thinking and chatting about this amongst the team, along with reading through all the comments, I'm tempted to think I've been a little dismissive of people's concerns about the inevitable direction a 'food diary' thread will take.
Whilst in principal, simply posting what has been eaten in a day may be okay, it's clear it's always going to have the possibility of being unhealthy or difficult to handle for some users.
We have the health board for people who would like to talk about safe dieting or eating problems and we have the food board to talk about... well to talk about food, glorious, food.
So we do want to find a way to allow people to talk about food regularly but to try and avoid an inevitable push over the boundaries of what is triggering. At this point I really want people to realise I don't think there is anything malicious in what people have posted, it's just clear food diary threads do cause problems and we owe it to you to address this directly.
So what I'm suggesting is that we post a thread that's about 'What's the BEST thing you've eaten recently'. This wouldn't be a list of everything you'd eaten but would still allow people to react and enjoy what other people are eating. It'd also allow people to avoid becoming unhealthly concerned with comparing their diets with each other.
I do think it's important people have a chance to discuss this though, as it does mean us deciding that a food diary thread isn't something we can really condone on TheSite in the future. So let me know what you think, does this seem like an acceptable solution?
yes.
i think the point is that of the users who actually post in this thread every day, a fair number have made it clear that they have issues with food. and saying 'i've eaten too much today' followed by a list of nothing is very triggering to people who have similar issues (and tbh the people who are posting that list should understand and therefore know better). i don't see what purpose this thread serves, because apart from people who are obsessed with food, no one else is likely to care what other people eat. i deliberately stay away from this thread because i know it will upset me. but looking through it today i can see that it is not an innocent food diary, which it may appear to be on the surface, but a lot more. and i think people know that.
And I'm going for an Indian with my parents tonight.
Think this is probably the best solution. I like threads like this at face value, because I am greedy and steal people's meal ideas, but there's no reason why I couldn't get off on the best thing people have eaten, rather than everything they've had.
Plus obv as has been mentioned, there is always going to be a sinister underlying streak in these kinds of threads. But I don't see a way around that. Even in 'best thing you've eaten' you're going to get posts like 'half a strawberry with some ultra-super-low-fat yoghurt on - omg, so fattening!'.
Although I think Jim's Idea is brilliant, at least with the "best thing" it will eliminate the nothing posts, as you can't say "The best thing I had today was nothing" although as Kaff said I think there will always be a small amount of problems.
on topic, my dinner tonight wasn't bad for work/staff meal. it was..
Pork chops/gammon, Chips and Mac Cheese, YUMMY
Think Suzy beat ya too it, getting slow in ya old age