Jack's reminiscences of the physical hurt caused by hunger, the eating out of bins and so forth, are much closer to the kind of hunger experienced by an anorexic than someone who is going without food due to poverty. Real starvation takes a long time to kick in, and death by starvation, outwith mental health contributors, is almost unheard of in modern UK. (Malnutrition, or undereating due to poverty, sadly are not, but this is not the same as physical starvation, which take a long time to kick in in earnest and is very, very visible.) I do believe Jack when she says she ate a Big Mac out of a bin, but I think it was more likely to be a result of her ED - I also ate out of bins in the throes of bulimarexic behaviour. I do believe that Jack suffered from a restrictive ED although not necessarily full blown AN which thankfully is a rarer beast (DSM5 has widened the criteria for AN too far, I understand it's too allow people to access treatment more easily, but it doesn't help chronic sufferers but that's another issue). I do believe that Jack had and possibly still has residues of an ED; I don't believe she ever suffered from genuine malnutrition due to poverty although no doubt she skipped the odd meal. My issue is how often she elides the two, both in her stated timeline and in her florid descriptions. I'm not saying no one with an ED has never suffered food poverty, of course that's not the case, but it all feels...off to me, as a recovered ED person. Anyway, all this musing is coloured by my own experiences and I will delete if deemed too much by other Fraus.
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