Diet books, a cornerstone of the $60 billion industry, do more than prescribe meal plans; they offer comprehensive philosophies about who we are and how we should live. Dr. Adrienne Rose Bitar, in her book "Diet and the Disease of Civilization," delves into the narratives woven into popular diets, revealing how they reflect and shape our national consciousness. Instead of focusing on calories, Bitar suggests we should be counting concepts.
The Fall of Man: A Recurring Theme
Bitar identifies a recurring theme across various diet sub-genres: the "Fall of Man." This narrative arc, spanning from fantasies of the past to hopes for the future, hinges on daily efforts to improve the individual body. Diets are organized around a mythical point on the timeline of human development, united by this central story, which is often embedded in nutritional advice.
Four Diets and Their Narratives
Bitar examines four popular diets: Paleo, Devotional (or ‘Eden’), Pacific Islander (or ‘Primitive’), and Detox diets. Each diet offers a unique perspective on the relationship between humans, nature, and civilization.
- Paleo Diet: This diet recommends forsaking all processed foods and products of agriculture, positioning dieters at the 'moment' before humans' domestication of plants and animals. It argues for a return to the eating habits of our Paleolithic ancestors, emphasizing unprocessed fruits, vegetables, and meats while excluding dairy, grains, and refined sugars. The Paleo diet invokes narratives of evolution, suggesting a genetic similarity between modern humans and their Paleolithic counterparts. It highlights the evolutionary ‘mismatch’ between contemporary eating habits and those shaped by natural selection. Paleo offers ‘a story about humanity, about evolution, about civilization and disease. The body of the individual dieter is situated in a long, deep history of mankind. The dieter is biologically indebted to the Paleolithic Era and, in turn, the coming generations will be indebted to him’. This diet encourages dieters to internalize an evolutionary story about their own bodies.
- Devotional (Eden) Diet: This heavily vegetarian diet, supposedly eaten by Adam and Eve, is also very fruit and vegetable heavy, most often forsaking all meat. Devotional diets propose a similar regimen to Paleo, but embrace these foods (and the dieter’s conviction to get healthy) as evidence of God’s love and divine plan for Christian bodies. They argue that instinct is embedded in your body because God gave you the body. If you’re channeling your instinct, you’re speaking to God. In this sense, ‘God’ is the Devotional Diet’s way of saying ‘Nature’. The instinct that has come down through the ages, all the way from Adam and Eve. Just like in the Paleo diet, where the caveman’s impulses are embedded in your body, you have to revive the instinct that God gave you. So, by avoiding sugar for ten days, you should be repulsed by candy bars because God only gave Adam and Eve strawberries and grapes.
- Primitive (Pacific Islander) Diet: This diet operates toward rejecting ‘global commodity’ foods (sugar, coffee, tea), relying on so-called ‘pre-colonial’ or ‘native’ foods, such as yams, fish, or taro. Primitive diets propose a radical shift to indigenous foods of the Pacific Islands, attempting to recreate the health purportedly experienced by pre-colonial natives in their simple meals of fish, fresh fruits, and root vegetables.
- Detox Diet: This diet attempts to entirely rid the dieter’s plate of industrial foods, proposing that such products of modernity are poisonous for individual bodies and the planet as a whole. Detox diets attempt to entirely rid the dieter’s plate of industrial foods, proposing that such products of modernity are poisonous for individual bodies and the planet as a whole. Detoxers aren’t just pointing their fingers at toxic foods like tuna tainted with mercury or real problems like toxic lead levels in public water. Instead, they believe that civilization is itself toxic - in terms of air, water, exposure, mental stresses, everything - because their concept of the body is spongy and permeable.
Natural vs. Unnatural: A Moral Dichotomy
These diets often equate 'natural' with 'good,' framing the 'unnatural' as a deviation from pre-agricultural, pre-colonial, or biblical practices. Medical professionals identify the "diseases of civilization," also known as "diseases of affluence" or "Western diseases," such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, or obesity. In these diagnoses, civilization itself is considered ‘diseased’. Civilization represses human nature, inhibits the body’s natural inclination towards health, and that repression leads to disease. Modern, processed, hyper-palatable foods override and corrupt your natural palate; the body begins to crave and eventually poisons itself with artificial, worldly foods.
However, the diagnosis of a ‘diseased’ civilization demands that instinct itself become disciplined. Paleo diets, for example, argue that you have to teach your instinct to reclaim its natural power.
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Over-Civilization and its Discontents
The concept of "over-civilization" has a long history, with older diagnoses like neurasthenia or dyspepsia attributing ailments to the havoc wreaked on human bodies by modern life. The farmer chained to a desk job in the big city suffers from dyspepsia, because he’s repressing his wild spirit. The American way of life and corporate culture restrict the body and constrain the spirit, causing diseases from within.
The Data and the Diet Book
Bitar's research involved studying diet books as texts, rather than focusing solely on the diets themselves. She distinguished what is and isn’t a diet book, sticking to single-authored monographs. These texts are often disposable, with very little resale value. But as soon as I started reading, the argument was apparent. It’s hard to miss this larger story about humankind, nature, and the corrupting influence of civilization. She also challenged some of the existing scholarship, because many theorists get mired in the ugliness of dieting. Contemporary diets especially are not just for a woman trying to fit into a little black dress.
Sincerity and Belief
The narratives in diet books elevate the day-to-day. The authors are not cynics. They’re sincere, naïve, hopeful, and ultimately willing to believe. These authors are not just hucksters. Smart, educated people believe these narratives.
The Role of Science and Religion
Diets strategically position themselves with authority, using top-down directions on how to eat and live your life. The Paleo Diet incorporates science and evolutionary theory, while Devotional diets argue that instinct is embedded in your body because God gave you the body. In this sense, ‘God’ is the Devotional Diet’s way of saying ‘Nature’. Just like in the Paleo diet, where the caveman’s impulses are embedded in your body, you have to revive the instinct that God gave you.
Some diets, like Paleo or Detox, present a narrative of conspiracy about ‘Franken-foods’ or the ‘Nutritional Industrial Military Complex’, where processed foods and healthcare are in cahoots to make you obese and then sell you insulin. The same is true of the Eat Right 4 Your Type and other body-typing diets. These take any form of difference in the human body and essentialize it into a kind of personalized nutritional approach. The ‘blood type’ diets are particularly nefarious, replicating these racial stories of some people being ‘older types’ than others. Those polygenic theories were discarded in the early 20th century.
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Imperial Nostalgia and the Third World
Primitive diets often look to non-Western societies as a sort of living relic: a vestigial specimen of a more innocent past. This contributes to an idea of the Third World that is this ‘timeless’ place of innocence, natural beauty, where people have an intimate relationship with the body and its needs. And now, with the intrusion of Western Civilization, these people succumb to the siren song of its toxic foods. The term ‘Imperial Nostalgia’ is useful here. Westerners are bemoaning what has been lost. But in these diets, the narrative is more than just nostalgia - the story is such that ‘they are dying now, but we’re next’. The Third World is set up as both this homogenous, eternal place, and a kind of ominous omen of what is to come. The colonial powers are just next in line.
The Toxicity of Civilization
The narratives of Detoxification are showing how the shifting, increasingly damaged environment can hurt everyone. Detoxers believe that civilization is itself toxic - in terms of air, water, exposure, mental stresses, everything - because their concept of the body is spongy and permeable.
Diseases of Civilization: The Evolutionary Mismatch
It is increasingly recognized that certain fundamental changes in diet and lifestyle that occurred after the Neolithic Revolution, and especially after the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age, are too recent, on an evolutionary time scale, for the human genome to have completely adapted. This mismatch between our ancient physiology and the western diet and lifestyle underlies many so-called diseases of civilization, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis, which are rare or virtually absent in hunter-gatherers and other non-westernized populations.
The Western diet, characterized by large amounts of red meat, dairy products, refined grains, and sugar, is positively correlated with acne, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
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