Quotes about Diet

I N T RODUCTION

OUR NATIONAL EATING DISORDERSR

What should we have for dinner?

This book is a long and fairly involved answer to this seemingly simple question. Along the way, it also tries to figure out how such a simple question could ever have gotten so complicated. As a culture we seem to have arrived at a place where whatever native wisdom we may once have possessed about eating has been replaced by confusion and anxiety. Somehow this most elemental of activities—figuring out what to eat—has come to require a remarkable amount of expert help. How did we ever get to a point where we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from and nutritionists to determine the dinner menu?

For me the absurdity of the situation became inescapable in the fall of 2002, when one of the most ancient and venerable staples of human life abruptly disappeared from the American dinner table. I’m talking of course about bread. Virtually overnight, Americans changed the way the way they eat. A collective spasm of what can only be described as carbophobia seized the country, supplanting an era of national lipophobia dating to the Carter administration. The latter was when, in 1977, a Senate committee had issued a set of “dietary goals” warning beefloving Americans to lay off the red meat. And so we dutifully had, until now.

What set off the sea change? It appears to have been a perfect media storm of diet books, scientific studies, and one timely magazine article.  The new diet books, many of them inspired by the formerly discredited Dr. Robert C. Atkins, brought Americans the welcome news that they could eat more meat and lose weight just so long as they laid off the bread and pasta. These high-protein, low-carb diets found support in a handful of new epidemiological studies suggesting that the nutritional orthodoxy that had held sway in America since the 1970s might be wrong. It was not, as official opinion claimed, fat that made us fat, but the carbohydrates we’d been eating precisely in order to stay slim. So conditions were ripe for a swing of the dietary pendulum when, in the summer of 2002, the New York Times Magazine published a cover story on the new research entitled “What if Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat?”  Within months, supermarket shelves were restocked and menus rewritten to reflect the new nutritional wisdom.  The blamelessness of steak restored, two of the most wholesome and uncontroversial foods known to man—bread and pasta—acquired a moral stain that promptly bankrupted dozens of bakeries and noodle firms and ruined an untold number of perfectly good meals.

So violent a change in a culture’s eating habits is surely the sign of a national eating disorder. Certainly it would never have happened in a culture in possession of deeply rooted traditions surrounding food and eating. But then, such a culture would not feel the need for its most august legislative body to ever deliberate the nation’s “dietary goals”—or, for that matter, to wage political battle every few years over the precise design of an official government graphic called the “food pyramid.” A country with a stable culture of food would not shell out millions for the quackery (or common sense) of a new diet book every January. It would not be susceptible to the pendulum swings of food scares or fads, to the apotheosis every few years of one newly discovered nutrient and the demonization of another. It would not be apt to confuse protein bars or food supplements with meals or breakfast cereals with

medicines. It probably would not eat a fifth of its meals in cars or feed fully a third of its children at a fast-food outlet every day. And it surely would not be nearly so fat.

Nor would such a culture be shocked to discover that there are other countries, such as Italy and France, that decide their dinner questions on the basis of such quaint and unscientific criteria as pleasure and tradition, eat all manner of “unhealthy” foods, and, lo and behold, wind up actually healthier and happier in their eating than we are.  We show our surprise at this by speaking of something called the “French paradox,” for how could a people who eat such demonstrably toxic substances as foie gras and triple crème cheese actually be slimmer and healthier than we are? Yet I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense to speak in terms of an American paradox—that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.

All is forgiven, move on.

From that point on I visited the bottle every day at dusk. After the morning with Alexis and the afternoon in the sun, this became the third highlight of my day. I never ate more than a milk ball or two and at most half a licorice twist. It was the ritual that counted, the decadent taste of civilization in that strange fruitless Eden where I was allowed to eat practically anything, so long as it wasn’t food.

The Vedics created an elaborate science spanning yoga, meditation and diet for pooling this higher-dimensional energy, which they termed “prana,” into their bodies. The Taoists developed a similar science for cultivating “chi.” Early in the 20th Century, Nikola Tesla theorized the existence of “scalar” waves (subsequently popularized by Tom Bearden) that transcend spatial limitations and are capable of acting instantaneously at a distance. Tesla created a prototype scalar system for free electricity using no generators or wires. Later, Wilhelm Reich became famous experimenting with “orgone” energy. Aether, prana, chi, scalar, orgone—all are names for the light-based aspect of the same spiritual or torsion energy that gave (and continues to give) rise to the holographic multiverse.

We arent' what we eat.  We are what we don't shit.

A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.

The National Dairy Council, with the government's permission, (is still) the largest and most important provider of nutrition education in the country... That the Diary Council can still convincingly promote saturated fat and cholesterol-rich diets reflects ... the credibility it built in the days before the link between these elements and atherosclerosis was known.  [Dr. Pascal Imperato from New York is who John is quoting here.]

Eating a vegetarian diet, walking (exercising) everyday, and meditating is considered radical.  Allowing someone to slice your chest open and graft your leg veins in your heart is considered normal and conservative.

"I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effect on a long-range basis. Any attempt to use the water this way is deplorable." Charles Gordon Heyd, M.D., Past President, American Medical Association.

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types.  But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

Grain crops, or cereals, are by far the most important sources of plant food for the human race. On a world wide basis, they provide two-thirds of the energy and half the protein of the diet. These crops are: wheat, rice, maize (corn), oats, barley, rye, sorghum, and millet.

Have you heard of the garlic diet? You don't lose much weight, but from a distance your friends think you look thinner.

Give my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage; And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

Possibly the best suggestion in condensed form, as to how to live, was given by my old Headmaster, Dr. Haig Brown, in 1904, when he wrote his Recipe for Old Age. A diet moderate and spare, Freedom from base financial care, Abundant work and little leisure, A love of duty more than pleasure, An even and contented mind In charity with all mankind, Some thoughts too sacred for display In the broad light of common day, A peaceful home, a loving wife, Children, who are a crown of life; These lengthen out the years of man Beyond the Psalmist's narrow span.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world- as invalids pay a high board. Their virtues are penance's. I do not wish to expiate, but to live: my life is for itself, and not for spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask for primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from a man to his actions.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, then that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

Imagine of all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on library shelves. And-since women are a majority of the population-we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.

Rudolph (the leading character): If you's go stop three tradesmen on the street, and ask the three what it is they live by, they'll reply at once, bread, meat and drink, and they'll be certain of it; victuals and drink, like the rhyme in Mother Goose, makes up their diet; nothing will be said of faith in things unseen, or following the gleam, just bread and meat and a can of wine to wash it down. But if you know them well, behind the fish-eyes and the bellies, if you know them better than they do, each one burns candles at some alter of his mind in secret; in secret often, from himself, each is a priest to some dim mystery by which he lives. Strip him of that, and bread and meat and wine won't nourish him . . . without his . . . hidden faith, he dies and goes to dust.

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet. and Doctor Merryman.

We must develop a better sense of responsibilty towards our total environment ... this better sense cannot any longer exclude from revision the staples of our diet.

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

It is wonderful, if we chose the right diet, what an extraordinarily small quantity would suffice.

"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" If He should now come, would He find it in us? What fruits of faith have we to show? Do we look upon this life only as a short passage to a better? Do we believe that we must suffer with Jesus Christ before we can reign with Him? Do we consider this world as a deceitful appearance, and death as the entrance to true happiness? Do we live by faith? Does it animate us? Do we relish the eternal truths it presents us with? Are we as careful to nourish our souls with those truths as to maintain our bodies with proper diet? Do we accustom ourselves to see all things in the light of faith? Do we correct all our judgments by it? Alas! The greater part of Christians think and act like mere heathens; if we judge (as we justly may) of their faith by their practice, we must conclude they have no faith at all.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.