In keeping with the current thread (nice work, Anonymous), if I can call it that, about the general populace not really quite understanding climbing, I offer this letter to the editor from the New York Times.
I (shocking that I would reference myself) posted a blog a few days ago that brought up both eating poorly and climbing, but I never dreamed that someone would somehow equate the two. “Mountaineering Disorder”? The reason that we don’t refer to mountaineering as such is that the manifest benefits of mountaineering (excepting those that buy their way up peaks to inflate their fragile egos, e.g. many of the folks involved in that recently re-aired dirty laundry about the ’96 debacle) are many, while the manifest benefits of overeating are few.
This should be obvious to eveyone, excepting perhaps the overly-hypoxic–or someone who has never set foot outside of their cubicle.