Binge Out!

The language police have struck again. According to Dictionary.com, I’m not allowed to describe my bouts of overeating chocolate kisses or over-watching Netflix as “binging.”

The dictionary opines: “When most of us use phrases like binge-watch or gag me with a spoon, we aren’t trying to cause harm. However, our willingness, inadvertent or not, to treat eating disorders, their symptoms, and their vocabulary as a joke means that the 30 million people in the US who suffer from some form of an eating disorder can feel stigmatized, made to feel like their conditions aren’t serious.”

There is method behind this madness, and it’s all about money:

Take a bad habit (i.e., binge eating), give it a clinical-sounding name (binge eating disorder), give that an acronym (BED), register it as a mental illness, get health insurance to cover it, and – bingo! You have created a new billion-dollar industry.

Two more steps:

* Get media to promote the idea that binge eating is not bad behavior but a disorder.

* Call in the language police to restrict usage of the term to the “professionals” and, thus, control and protect the asset.