An Orwellian moment

I learned from Monday’s Denver Post that people who eat fruits and vegetables are called “nutritarians.” People who go for walks are getting “green exercise.” And George Orwell thought the English language was in trouble in 1946. What makes these two phrases both ridiculous and sad, indeed tragic, is the complete rupture between those who speak them and the natural world itself. 

Our language develops from the world that we inhabit. We speak the words we need to describe our experience. Likewise, the words we speak create and shape our experience of the world. What can we make of people who would need the word “nutritarian” to describe the experience of eating? What is a more basic and more intimate an act than that?  “Nutritarian” is a parody of a word, infused with a bizarre brand of pseudo-science along with a false sense of self-righteousness.  Nutritarians can’t possibly eat. If they do, they don’t taste. They think about eating, while calculating the number of ANDIs (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) in their food. In other words, they have made the intimate experience of eating into an ideological act and a linguistic nightmare. 

Likewise, green exercise. “Green exercise,” write Drs. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden, “refers to physical activity that is done while simultaneously being exposed to nature. Various forms of green exercise include hiking, biking, outdoor sports or beach activities.” Have the people to whom they are writing forgotten what it is like to go outside? Do they need to have as motivation a study by the University of Exeter that “two out of three people have improved self esteem” after performing green exercise?  

Orwell argued that the problem with the English language in 1946 was its tendency to be abstract and unclear. It lacked simplicity and reference to the material world.  Unfortunately, “nutritarian” and “green exercise” are the words of a people far more lost and confused than even Orwell imagined.