MovieChat Forums > Thin (2006) Discussion > The food at Renfrew...

The food at Renfrew...

posted 15 years ago by OrangeFood
11 replies | jump to latest

Looked terrible! Why were they forcing these women to eat pizza and cupcakes? Polly wanted a simple bran muffin for her birthday which is perfectly fine. They have fiber and good complex carbs but instead they give her a fat filled sugary cupcake? No wonder she felt sick afterward; all that sugar must have been a shock to her system!

I'm sorry, I don't mean to rant, but you'd think in a clinic for eating disorders they would serve healthy food with fresh fruits and veggies. All the vegetables looked over cooked and someone was eating canned fruit. It's just bad...I wouldn't have wanted to eat that sh*t either if I'd been there.

[–] summergirl726 15 years ago

I agree, if you're gonna try to get them to have healthy eating habits, at least give them healthy food! You can't go from them starving themselves to be thin, to shoving sugary, fatty food in their face. It probably wouldn't be such a shock if they gave them healthy food that doesn't have FAT written all over it.

All I can think of is they can't afford fresh, healthy food.

[–] heylooorx3 15 years ago

i've been to renfrew, and sometimes the quality of the food isn't that great, but the point of being there is to gain normal eating habits. if the people there were allowed to pick out the food they want, they would still be using their symptoms. the idea of giving them things that have more fat or calories is to push them and show them that a slice of pizza is normal and wont make them gain a million pounds. they do teach healthy eating habits but part of healthy eating is having a cupcake on your birthday. if they kept them where they were comfortable with everything, no one would recover.

[–] SapphireMind 14 years ago

I think this is a huge part. Eating a single cupcake on a birthday/celebration isn't supposed to be a big deal. Most of us do it without thinking, and part of healthy eating is being able to deal with an occasional treat without it being the end of the world.

I don't think she necessarily felt ill because the food was making her sick, but the fact that she ate it all.

[–] Artfltwrtr 15 years ago

When someone is at such an unhealthy weight that their life is in danger, the point is to get calories in them. I agree that she got sick from the cupcake because she's not used to eating sugar, but they need to get these women to a healthy weight and when treating someone with an eating disorder, you are told to get as many calories as you can in them until they reach a healthy weight. Also, because a bran muffin has so much fiber, it'll just flush everything out of her, you know, so that defeats the purpose. I'm sure that's why she wanted one, too.

[–] OrangeFood 15 years ago

Artfltwrtr - That definitely makes sense. You make a lot of good points. I was thinking more long term and not their immediate health :P

Heyloorx3, did they offer nutrition classes at the facility? My overall problem with the food at Renfrew was that even though it would help the girls gain weight while they were there, they would end up still being afraid of it on the outside. My hope would be that they could learn healthy eating with healthy food so they would feel more comfortable continuing to eat that way when they left...

[–] heylooorx3 13 years ago

@orangefood...they did have a lot of nuterition groups. there are level based on how you're doing, and at the highest level theres a cooking group. we made food for ourselves to get used to portion sizing and that kind of stuff. everyone there has a nutritionist. there were 3 working when i was there, and you saw them once or twice a week

[–] Squirrel71 11 years ago

I agree, they pay through the nose to stay there. At least give them food that is healthy and is cooked nicely. That food looked about par with your average hospital cafeteria,

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] VeritasV 11 years ago

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food..... Hippocrates, the father of medicine. The food they were serving looked to be the dead, revitalized, disease inducing food of the standard American diet. To take a starving person and ingest them with the poison of sugar, the mucous forming fatty crap that the typical pizza is made of, the gluten filled simple carbohydrate based breads, etc. will some day be seen in the same light that we view surgeons of years ago who idn't sterilize their instruments or wash their hands before surgery.

Perhaps some life giving, enzyme nd phytonutrient rich food would have balanced their systems and allowed them to heal.

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