Woman Criticizes Student with Eating Disorder for Wasting Food

The late Princess Diana of Wales was known for her long and difficult battle with an eating disorder called bulimia nervosa.

This eating disorder is a “serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder. People with bulimia may secretly binge — eating large amounts of food with a loss of control over the eating — and then purge, trying to get rid of the extra calories in an unhealthy way,” according to Mayo Clinic.

Meanwhile, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America has listed other types of eating disorders:

• Anorexia Nervosa. Symptoms include being preoccupied with weight, calories, food, fat grams, and dieting; constant remarks about feeling fat; and resistance or inability to maintain ideal weight for one’s build, height, and age.
• Binge Eating Disorder. Symptoms include feelings of inability to stop eating; feelings of guilt, disgust, or depresseion; and habit of hoarding or stealing food.



• Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). Symptoms include abnormal weight loss; fear of vomiting or choking; and picky eating that worsens in time.
• Rumination Disorder. Symptoms include regurgitating food regularly with the regurgitated food being chewed and swallowed again or thrown up.
• Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders (OSFED). Symptoms include extraordinary consumption of food on a frequent basis combined with self-induced vomiting or purging behaviors.



• Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder (UFED). This eating disorder causes distress or impairment that may impact the social, occupational, or other aspects of a person’s life.

It’s easy for some people to criticize others about their eating habits.

But it’s often easier to make a fool of oneself when one doesn’t think first before speaking — much less renders criticism over something they have no real knowledge of.

This Original Poster boasts about “caring a lot about food waste and the environment.” But she missed an even more important matter: caring for a fellow human being.

With the username u/throwaway0856742, she posted her story on Reddit’s r/AmItheA–hole forum: “I (21f) usually always sit with the same group of people in my university’s dining area. There’s this girl who I’ve talked to a few times but I’m not really friends with. She’s kind of quiet, but when she finally talks, she seems normal. I’ve sat across from her a few times and noticed how she was eating because it was weird to me. She eats maybe half of her food (keep in mind, you control the amount of food. It’s cooked by the cafeteria staff buffet-style. She could easily take less) and kind of plays with it with her fork when she’s ‘done’ (aka eating half of it, sometimes even less).”

OP said she didn’t say a word about it for quite some time. But after a few weeks, she could no longer hold her tongue. She asked the girl why she has been eating only half of her food. The girl appeared embarrassed but tried to laugh off an answer. But OP was not satisfied with her response and pointed out the food waste that the girl was creating. The girl left and seldom came to the canteen again.

However, OP chanced upon her again and decided to criticize her eating habit once more. She continued to relate in her post, “I asked her once again, and also asked her if her parents ever told her not to play with her food. It was a genuine question; some people are raised in households where manners aren’t important, but obviously, they are for most people. She got really mad at me and told me to stop commenting on her eating habits and that it was none of my business. I told her that it absolutely was since she was sitting at our table and obviously wasting food. She told me to go f-ck myself and left and threw out the rest of her food (AGAIN!).”

After the girl was gone, OP admitted to the AITA community that one of her friends told her to leave the girl alone since she appeared to have some issues with food.

But did those words touch her heart? This young woman went on to say in her post, “Yeah, obviously she has an issue with food?? She keeps wasting it! She hasn’t shown up again. I’m assuming she buys her own food now, which might teach her not to waste it, so that’s good. The same friend who told me to leave her alone keeps pestering me to apologise to her, but I think she should apologise to me. She’s unnecessarily rude when being asked the most basic and obvious questions and also told me to go f-ck myself? That’s way harsher than anything I’ve ever told her. Keep in mind that I care a lot about food waste and the environment.”

Did her righteousness and “caring a lot about the environment and food waste” endear her to the members of the AITA community?

Nope. She got blasted!

The AITA community was so furious with this self-righteous person who can see others’ faults but not her own. And they were still lambasting her ever after her post edit below:

“EDIT: OK! I’m the asshole! Sorry, I’m not studying to be an eating disorder specialist. I looked up stuff about it, and I’m realising I was too harsh. I’ll apologise the next time I see her and try not to be so condescending. But you should all follow your own advice. If people genuinely don’t know something, you should tell them nicely instead, and I realise I should’ve tried to educate her NICELY about food waste and not have commented at all on how she was eating.”

The AITA community rated this young woman’s attitude and narrowmindedness “Grade A a–holery.”