|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Of Fakes and Flakes
| Article
# : |
10168 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
1,997 Words |
| Author
: |
Linda Simon
Linda Simon is professor of literature at Skidmore College
and a frequent contributor to The World & I. |
THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE
T. Coraghessan Boyle
New York: Viking, 1993
476 pp., $22.50
Our current hunger for lite, low-fat, high-fiber food, our dread of cholesterol, and our worship of beta-carotene reflect an appetite less for food than for medicine. We look for substances to prevent cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis, whether those substances come to us in the form of white tablets or green flowerets. We prefer products called Almost Eggs, Better than Butter, and Farm Fresh Nondairy Creamer because we believe that real eggs, butter, and cream are hazardous to our health. We clip recipes for a longer life.
Our obsession with diet seems to be inspired by a desperate quest for eternal youth and vigor. But there is more: our hope of controlling our lives, of asserting our will against biological destiny. Diet becomes central to our goal simply because of the necessity to eat, continually and repeatedly, in order to live. We might sell our Nordic Track or let our dues to the health club lapse, but several times each day we are reminded that we must fuel our bodies. It is no wonder, then, that food has been the focus of many health reform movements throughout the twentieth century.
In the early 1900s, thousands of Americans hoped that a change of diet would cure a malady commonly known as neurasthenia. Prevalent among educated, upper middle class men and women, neurasthenia caused the kind of symptoms previously known as melancholy and later called depression. Sufferers went to their physicians complaining of headaches, poor appetite, insomnia, and trouble with their memor. They were tired, they told their doctors; they were irritable; they had a multitude of physical symptoms--constipation, indigestion, dizziness, for example--that seemed the result of no particular cause. "The name neurasthenia is on everybody's lips," one physician wrote in 1906; "it is the fashionable disease."
Neurasthenia was a response to complex social and cultural changes that caused some men and women to feel powerless and overwhelmed. But psychotherapy was in its infancy, and physicians focused on alleviating physical symptoms, most commonly digestive problems. Dyspepsia and constipation, especially, were enemies of the largely sedentary neurasthenics. In a society where adult males were advised to consume more than 3,500 calories and 110 grams of protein a day, indigestion was common. Some prominent
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
