Food is bad for you

Last week I mocked the Atkins movement. That isn’t to say I mocked the Atkins Diet when followed strictly, but rather the whole “anti carb” movement that suggests that adding “Atkins Approved” foods to their diet will make you loose weight. The whole concept is naive and weird. While poking around the Quarter to Three forums, though, I noticed this thread, which proves that there is a LOT more territory beyond Atkins on the Obsessive Diet Weird-o-Meter.

First up are the Fruitarians, who make vegans look like gluttons by eating nothing but fruit. They open their fruit holes to preach simplicity (what’s more simple than eating a bushel of apples every day?) and “eating fruit to serve the loving consciousness on this planet.” The whole thing is pretty …fruity and more than a little elitist.

One can see a trend developing here: the more restrictive and contrary to modern medical advice your diet is, the more enlightened and healthy you are. From this we can predict a constantly escalating battle of the diet nuts (including the All Nut Diet) as they all try to wedge themselves into a more restrictive and a more difficult to attain dietary counterculture. “I eat nothing but creamed corn! I’m the most enlightened!” “I eat nothing but shredded newspaper and gravel! I’ve got to be the healthiest!”

I thought it couldn’t get any weirder than the Fruitarians, though, until someone pointed out the ultimate in restrictive diet: The All Air diet, also known as Breatharianism. That’s right, they trump every other restrictive diet by not allowing you to eat at all. To quote their website:

Our bodies don’t require physical food and they have only adapted to live on it because we have forced them to do just that. Food is not only unnecessary, but actually harmful to our health and well-being. Everything in life , including food, has an energy pattern which is influenced by the powerful transmissions of our consciousness, plus the consciousness of others around us. When we consume this food, it then mixes with the energies of our bodies and causes our energy patterns to be so distorted, that it’s difficult to see clearly.

Prana, which is a very high frequency vibration (higher than visible light), is what the body was actually intended to use to sustain itself. This is an intelligent energy and brings many benefits to our lives, such as; increased consciousness and health. To receive this type of energy, our brain has very powerful energy receptors, known as the endocrine glands. These endocrine glands, specifically the pineal and pituitary glands, increase in size over several years when you stop eating.

…The injurious, life-shortening practice of eating food for pleasure forced these critical glands into retirement, as the body slowly adjusted to meet the new condition….or perish. So, instead of dropping dead in his tracks, man dies by degrees. The dying process science calls disease and aging, while futilely searching within the body for the cause.

So there you have it. Food is bad for you. The next time Sally Struthers shows up at your door asking you to help save the starving masses in Africa, just give her a brochure on Breatharianism and point out how blessed and enlightened these starving people are and how wonderfully swolen their brain glands must be by now. Then offer her some low-carb bagels.