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In recent years, there has been considerable improvement in popular comprehension of the problem. Reasons: medical research linking overeating and heart disease, consumer campaigns against low-quality food and incomplete labeling, the counterculture's war on all things artificial, the conviction that thin is chic. The popular response, however, has been confused. Having begun to suspect that eating as usual is not good for them, Americans are often frustrated in their quest for something better. Dietary prescriptions tend to be contradictory. Nutritionists disagree on the merits of milk drinking, argue over the value of vitamins and debate long and learnedly over the role of diet in health and weight control. Their disagreement and a shortage of conclusive scientific data on nutrition have left Americans sure of only one thing: too much food, one of the perils of plenty, can be dangerous to your health.
Man has long invested the simple and necessary act of taking in nourishment with heavy ritual. Therefore, it is fitting that one of the kinkiest divisions in the army of culinary skeptics, the health-food addicts, should operate with almost religious conviction. Believing that good health, not to mention beauty, longevity and even sexual potency, depend on the proper foods, they spurn most pre-packaged products. Instead they insist upon vegetables grown in soil that has been enriched with manure rather than chemical fertilizers, meat from animals raised without growth-stimulating hormones, bread from which no grain particles have been removed.
The variety of such foods is vast. At Erewhon Natural Foods in Los Angeles, natural-food gourmets can find deep jars full of grains, nuts and buckwheat spaghetti. They can also pick up such exotica as whole-wheat bread with avocado and tomato filling, and ginseng, an herbal root from Red China.
Some eat such foods for religious reasons, believing that certain items nourish the soul as well as the body. "Eating is a spiritual movement," says one of Erewhon's customers. "It upsets me to see people eating junk. It's just an escape, like drugs or alcohol." Followers of the late George Ohsawa, a Japanese-born philosopher, subscribe to a macrobiotic diet that relies on tea, brown rice, beans and nuts. That program may slight fats. A New Jersey girl who followed it too strictly died of malnutrition, and parents who limit their infants to the guru's menu risk rearing mentally retarded offspring.
Durable Experts. Others believe that certain foods can prevent or control disease. Honey is supposed to help those with cancer, pumpkin seeds those with prostate trouble. Beet juice is believed to benefit the blood, while carrot juice, it is claimed, helps dissolve cancers and heal ulcers. There must be some advantages to eating properly. Septuagenarian Gayelord Hauser, who has been writing about health for almost 50 years, is still going strong. In fact, a number of such experts have proved durable. Carleton Fredericks, 62, still has a following as does Jonnie Lee MacFadden, widow of Physical Culturist Bernarr MacFadden.