Now Presenting...The 100 Mile Food Crank Diet!

[ecosophia]

I was thinking early this morning (well, early for me) about the latest round of fallout from my recent venture into the diet wars. You guessed it; I put up another post here talking about how the devotees of various evangelical food cults were taking my comments about how there's no one diet that's right for everyone as an opportunity to post long screeds about how their diet is right for everyone, without any sense of irony, and a bunch of devotees of evangelical food cults took that comment as yet another opportunity to post long screeds about how their diet is right for everyone. It's rather weird, to be frank. I've begun to wonder if they're not actually human beings, but animatronic Disney mannequins who lurch through their scripted-in-advance routines the moment somebody pushes the little button. 

One side effect of all this, though, is that I've been reminded just how many competing food cranks, living and posthumous, are out there. It seems to me that there's a certain unfairness in the way that some food cranks get all the attention -- I'm looking at you, Weston A. Price -- and others, like poor Bernarr McFadden, are all but forgotten today. With that in mind, and also in an attempt to further the cause of relocalization, I'd like to proclaim the One True Diet for everybody...

The 100 Mile Food Crank Diet!!!

It's quite simple, really. You're allowed to eat the foods prescribed by the food crank of your choice, provided that you live within 100 miles of the place where said food crank lives, or lived, or is presently buried. So Weston A. Price is the man if you live within 100 miles of Cleveland; otherwise, you've got to find a different food crank to follow. Since there have been so many of them over the three and a half centuries since the first diet book saw print, this should not be a problem. Those of my readers who live in New York or Los Angeles are of course inordinately blessed, since both cities have had bumper crops of food cranks for a very long time, but the rest of us aren't left out in the cold; here in East Providence, for example, I'm well within range of the generations of food cranks who have lived and thrived in Boston. (The macrobiotic writer I followed most closely when I was into that diet back in my 20s, Michio Kushi, lived in a Boston suburb, so I'm set if I ever get tired of a normal, healthy diet.) 

So if you want to pile into a fad diet theory, dear reader, all you have to do is look through the annals of dietary crackpottery to find some preacher of nutritional salvation who lives, or lived, or is buried within a hundred miles of your kitchen, and you're good to go. I don't advise taking this as far as becoming a food crank locavore, though; living diet gurus tend to object if you show up and try to cook and eat them, while dead ones are very dry and tough...

Comments

You're wrong!

[(Anonymous)]

You're wrong! Everyone should adopt the ZERO MILE FOOD GURU DIET!!! Only eat food in accordance with the principles of a food guru within 0 miles of yourself! If you cannot find such a guru, you can solve the problem by turning into a food guru yourself, so nobody has any excuse to not adopt the One True Diet.

Re: You're wrong!

[ecosophia]

This seems somehow reminiscent of Project Pope, the attempt by the Discordians to declare everybody a pope. I like it.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, I think you've previously pointed out the correlation between declining civilizations and food obsessions (via Spengler?). Does this obsession with diet unwittingly reveal the private acknowledgement from dieting individuals that things are seriously wrong and need changing, and that diet is one of the easiest (relatively) things to change, amounting to simply loading up the shopping cart with slightly different items to give the consumer the warm fuzzy feeling that 'at least I'm doing something about this mess'? In comparison the program proposed by the stoics seems a stiffer task.

[ecosophia]

Ding! We have a winner. Of course most of the crank diets also presuppose that you have plenty of disposable income and free time, so they're also ways of conspicuous consumption that allow the adherents thereof to parade their privilege and show how different they are from the grubby people of the working class -- it hasn't escaped my attention that all the foods labeled as "evil" are foods eaten by the working classes...

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if I do that, I'm going to amend your definition of "local" to 150 miles, so that if I ever move back to Madison from Milwaukee and I'm following a Chicago food-crank, I won't have to change. If I were to move back to my hometown in central Wisconsin, however, I probably should go back to eating like a normal person, since whatever weird food I would need to buy according to my theoretical Chicago-based crank might prove more difficult to purchase! ;-)

[ecosophia]

Heretic!

[(Anonymous)]

As in many things, moderation is key: find food cranks just after death, but before they've had a chance to dry out! That way, still nice and moist, but no objections (aside from the staff wherever they died, their family, and quite likely law enforcement of some sort).

[ecosophia]

I see you're a committed humanitarian. (If vegetarians eat vegetables, after all, what do humanitarians eat?)

What about the Entrepreneuring

[(Anonymous)]

Gee, JMG.

I set out to find a One True Diet in Mexico... wholly expecting to find something coming out of Mexico City so I could claim that I live further apart than 100 miles. Instead, I ran into the Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria (Nutritional Health Alliance), which was not created by a One True Prophet, but by a Conclave of Priestly Academics from Universities all around the country. I guess this greatly expands the area of influence of this one, don't you think?

But I digress. What of us that will not bend to the will of some Crank or another, but would rather remake the World into the image of our own genius... Is there going to be an "Invent your own Crank Diet" contest or what?

CR Patiño

Re: What about the Entrepreneuring

[ecosophia]

Oh my. That could be a lot of fun. I put dibs on the humanitarian diet (see my response to the comment above...)

Re: What about the Entrepreneuring

[(Anonymous)]

.

I am thinking along the lines of the Wheel of Colour Diet (C). Given that Science is a fraud anyways, we have sufficient basis to claim that stuff like proteins, carbs, fiber, etc, are all myths. So, given that we cannot rely on chemistry to tell us what is on our food, we will have to rely on what we can see with our very eyes to figure out the nutritive properties of foodstuffs.

Therefore, a balanced diet is one where all the colours in your plate are balanced (let me see if I can enlist my son's help for this). It is recommended that you try every colour at least one per week, but you will be ok as long as you do not mix colours that do not combine visually in the same meal. Also, the more colorful the more nutritious the meal.

Adding artificial coloring to your food is strictly forbidden, but acrylic paint patties are reluctantly permitted for those cases when a natural food cannot be found to achieve the right balance in the plate.

Beverages, on the other hand, shall be as monochrome as possible. Yogurt and other white food are given a pass as honorary beverages, but you have to grind them if they are solid. While I am an unrepentant coffee drinker, please notice that I have declared certain very famous carbonated drink to be kosher here, so there's potential for sponsorship.

The 100 Mile Food Crank Diet!!! MAP

[(Anonymous)]

Thought you were going the Locovore route with the title! I think someone needs to create a 100 Mile Food Crank Diet map like those ubiquitous "The most...in every state" ones.

[neonvincent]

This adds new meaning to "eating local." Fortunately, I'm in luck. My wife and I have been on the Atkins Diet (high protein, high fiber, low carbohydrate) off and on most of this decade. Robert Coleman Atkins went to my alma mater, the University of Michigan, which means that he and I both lived in Ann Arbor. I still live within 100 miles of U of M, so I don't have to change my crank diet.

As for my being an evangelist of this diet, I tell people it's a gimmick, but a gimmick that works, at least while one is on it.

The Alabama 3-Day Diet

[troyjonesiii.blogspot.com]

For some reason, I initially read "You're allowed to eat the foods prescribed by the food crank of your choice" as "you're allowed to eat the foods PROscribed...". I feel like that would be a much more fun diet, haha. People in South Beach would only be able to eat high-carb foods.

The only food crank diet I could find that originated from my area is the so-called Alabama 3-Day Diet, which, according to legend, originated from UAB (University of Alabama in Birmingham) Cardiac Unit. (They deny having anything to do with it of course, pointing out that they are in fact heart doctors, not nutritionists.) The A3DD is a bizarrely specific plan that restricts eaters to ~800 calories a day for three days, and requires very exact foods (e.g. Day 2 Lunch must be exactly 5 saltine crackers and either 1 cup of cottage cheese or half a cup of tuna), alternating with four days of "your normal diet". Also, this diet requires you to eat a cup of vanilla ice cream with your supper for each of the three days of the diet, so there's that.

I think I will pass, heh. (Although I do like tuna and ice cream.) I have lost 40 pounds or so since July though on a diet of my own devising, so maybe I will just declare myself a food crank and follow the diet I'm already following.

[m_hodgson]

Years ago, back in the '80s, I worked in a restaurant that was popular with visitors from out of town, mainly people attending events. One day, we had a call from what was then a well-known band saying they wanted to book a table and that one of them had 'dietary requirements'. It turned out that this band member adhered to a macrobiotic diet, which I knew something about as I'd read a book on the subject. He wanted vegetables and rice. Waitressing is often not the most rewarding job and I decided to play - I knew that he probably avoided vegetables of the nightshade family, and maybe garlic too, so went through a list of every nightshade family vegetable I could think of and smiled as he said 'No, no, no' to each suggestion. It was mean of me, I suppose, but I was young, bored and poor to boot and I wanted to prod someone. I reckoned, though, that I knew what this band member would actually like for dinner - we provided it, he ate it all and seemed very pleased.

[(Anonymous)]

We holy disciples on the 160.0 Kilometer Food Crank Diet declare all followers of the 100 Mile Food Crank Diet to be heretics of the worst sort! We also think you probably secretly eat polar bear cubs! With a side of non locally sourced giant squid sauce! We will not rest until all join the holy crusade!


;) Haassmasithiam

[amritarosa]

If I can't find any 100 Mile Food Cranks where I live, is it ok to eat 75 mile Food Pulleys instead? Or 100 mile Food Levers?

Relics

[rpc]

I have to admit I use Dr. Price's guidelines myself. Am I allowed to exhume him and move him within 100 miles of my residence? Even better, could the followers of the various diets divide up their respective gurus and use the parts as talismans/relics? (I'm proposing that for now we confine the practice to deceased gurus...)

Re: Relics

[ecosophia]

My wife suggests that if you do exhume Weston A. Price, one obvious way to venerate the relics would be to make a nice pot of bone broth...