This Eating Disorder Supper Club Is Part Dinner Party, Part Therapy

A supper club for people with eating disorders sounds like an oxymoron. But on a warm Saturday evening, ten anxious eaters have gathered at an events space in South London. They’re here for Comfort Food, a dinner for food anxiety sufferers to relax, meet new people, and of course, enjoy good food.

When I arrive at tonight’s dinner, however, a nervous energy lingers in the air. Drinks in hand, guests stand around the table, making small talk and wondering what to expect from the meal. I soon find out that many of the people here are attending a supper club for the first time. One woman I speak to tells me she recently read about Comfort Food in a magazine and, having struggled with her weight for most of her teenage years, decided that this would a good opportunity to meet others with similar experiences.

“I thought it would be really great to be in an environment where everyone can understand each other, even though you’ve never met before,” she says.

Comfort Food is organised by Eve Simmons, co-founder of Not Plant Based, a food and lifestyle blog for "the troubled eater." Having previously been hospitalised with anorexia, Simmons uses her platform to expose food and fitness myths and provide non-patronising advice for those struggling with eating disorders.

After a lot of encouragement from readers, Simmons held the first Comfort Food supper club earlier this year.

“From personal experience, I know that [healthcare] services are increasingly stretched,” she tells me as everyone takes their seats around a large table. “I saw a huge gap and felt that, even though we are not trained and qualified professionals, we were offering something that our readers were finding really valuable and getting a lot of support from.”

Simmons, who recalls having a very negative experience with her own in-patient treatment when at the peak of her illness, hopes that providing a judgement-free space will help people patch their relationship with food back together.

“In order to work on this relationship [with food], you have to be in an environment that is emotionally un-heightened,” she says. “So making the environment calm, safe, and fun, and filling the room with people that you feel safe around is important. This is not going to happen if you have someone breathing down your neck, staring at you, while you’re eating baked bean after baked bean.”

Tonight’s menu, designed and cooked by Simmons and her boyfriend, who has been diligently prepping in the kitchen since this morning, has a homely Mexican theme. We start with feta cheese nachos and guacamole, before moving onto juicy chicken tortillas and refried beans. The food is served in sharing plates placed in the centre of the table, allowing guests to choose as much as they like and lessening anxiety around portion size. Notably, Simmons does not share the menu for her supper clubs in advance, explaining in a post on Not Plant Based that this measure is "in order not to pander to the eating disorder bastard who needs to know the exact calorie content of every ingredient."

Ironically, the more dishes that appear from the kitchen, the less tension I feel around the table. People start eating and talk turns to the usual dinner party topics: work, relationships, funny anecdotes. In the moments when diet culture or public health does come up, everybody is open and supportive, speaking candidly about their own experiences. The grand finale is a magnificent toffee popcorn cheesecake, served with cinnamon churros and salted caramel.

By the end of the night, most of the food is gone and people take their conversations to the closest pub. Speaking to guests after dinner, I hear mostly positive reviews.

“It was nice because I was around other people who get it, like I don’t have to try and act normal, which is how I usually feel when I go out for dinner,” Lauren* tells me. “I think I would like to work on my own recovery because eating in groups is still quite a big challenge.”

Justine*, another of tonight’s guests, expresses similar feelings. Sharing food with strangers is a big step for anyone in recovery from an eating disorder, but there are clear benefits.

“Just because we have an eating disorder doesn’t mean we don’t like food,” she says. “I was surprised with how open people were at the dinner and how much I didn’t think about what I was eating.”

For Simmons, comments like this are the popcorn on the cheesecake of a successful evening. “The knowledge that a difference is being made is amazing. To me that’s why I wanted to do it,” she says.

Does she have plans to hold another Comfort Food event? She smiles.

“If I could do one every week I would in a heartbeat. If I could do it regularly and across the country and it paid my bills and that’s all I had to do, I will be all for it.”

*Names have been changed.