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Published on Visualizing Ecology (http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecowinter)

Amanda Hakan wk7

“Dr. John Harvey Kellogg persuaded great numbers of the country’s most affluent and best educated to pay good money to sign themselves into his legendary nutty sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan, where they submitted to a regime that included all-grape diets and almost hourly enemas (Pg.299).

 

Let me jus start by saying that anyone in their right mind would realize that a strict diet of eating only grapes and having hourly enemas would be a joke…or so you would think. As Michael Pollan said, John Harvey Kellogg convinced our country’s “most affluent and best educated” to pay ridiculous amounts of money to participate in a mass-weight loss. I find it really depressing that our country is so involved with not only self-image and losing weight but media and pop-culture. They are so vulnerable and easily persuaded. Just because someone has a Dr. written in front of their name does not make them any more credible to write a book and make a strict diet of meat and cheeses. When the Atkins diet was introduced to our country it was an explosion of anti-carbohydrates. No one ate anything with starch, basically confined to only meat and cheeses.

I was talking to Emily yesterday about how although neither of us had anything to do with the Atkins diet or any other fad-diet for that matter; we still had a subconscious negative connotation that followed eating carbohydrates. Its very strange to thing that even if you don’t think you’re participating in being persuaded like the rest of the country for easy tips and fast ways to lose weight, it still somehow manages to sneak into the back of your brain.  I think people just need to be more aware of what their own body needs and not what silly doctors, books, or anyone for that matter, is telling them. If they really want to lose weight so bad, eat healthy and take 15 minutes out of your day to go exercise. 
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