The Eradicats - "I Ate a Sandwich"

CW: Eating disorder

Kansas City, MO band The Eradicats have a new bubble grunge single out that tackles singer Kristi's eating disorder recovery. "I Ate a Sandwich" is an upbeat and bubbly new track with just the slightest punk edge to it. It's a serious subject matter, but it's also a celebratory song about overcoming her disorder. It's an irresistible song that merges melodic alt-rock with the energy of 90's pop punk. Not many bands could pull off a song with such a serious subject matter into something that sounds fairly silly and have it work, but The Eradicats did it quite well. I know we'll be diving into their back catalog after hearing "I Ate a Sandwich."

Kristi says of her band's latest video and her recovery:

"I knew I had a problem when I cried on the floor in the pasta aisle at the mere thought of eating spaghetti. But it took me another couple of years to walk into an eating disorder clinic and ask for help.

"I've been working with a therapist and dietician for just over a year now and it has transformed my life. I've spent the last decade being afraid of food, feeling I had to earn any food that I ate. I've lived in a body that I believed morphed and changed in drastic ways with just one bite of food or one skipped workout.

"'I Ate a Sandwich' is a true story about a teaching conference I was attending last spring. I knew there would be a boxed lunch and I decided I wanted to try and eat it. This is something I never would have considered before treatment. I would have just brought my own "safe", eating disorder approved food. But I'd been in recovery for a few months and I wanted to try eating lunch like a 'normie'.

"I prepared with my therapist and dietician in the weeks coming up to it. We planned for what would be in the box, what I would feel, what I would feel comfortable with and what the eating disorder would try and have me do. I went into that lunch with a lot of trepidation, but also the support of people who understood what this meant for me.

"The lunch was exactly what we'd planned for, a sandwich, an apple, a bag of chips and a cookie. The cookie wasn't happening, not there yet. The chips were also not my concern. One battle at a time. I opened the sandwich and examined the situation. It was your basic sandwich, turkey, slice of cheese, lettuce, and a lot of bread. It would have been easy to take the cheese off. It would have been easy to remove the top part of the bread. But as my dietician taught me, that's not punk rock. The punk rock thing to do is eat the sandwich, do the scary thing. And I did. I ate a sandwich. A whole real sandwich. I didn't even take the cheese off. No one at the table even suspected I was unaccustomed to eating sandwiches. I text my dietician in that moment because I was proud of myself.

"The whole experience became this song and it means a lot to me because it's goofy and fun, as our music tends to be, but it's also deeply serious and I hope it can resonate with anyone else who may be struggling with an eating disorder or body image disorder."

You can watch the lyric video for "I Ate a Sandwich" below. For more on The Eradicats, check out the band on Instagram.