XPost: alt.tv.mst3k, alt.fan.mst3k
[ START. The Brains are in the theater. ]
Eating for Death
TOM: My favorite _Columbo_ episode! Patrick McGoohan plays this world-famous chef being blackmailed and ...
By Bernarr Macfadden
CROW: Um ...
TOM: Yeah, exactly which parts of that name are spelled wrong?
_Physical Culture_, March 1922
MIKE: I forgot to renew my subscription!
THE crime of the age is meal eating timewithout
appetite.
CROW: Also that Sacco and Vanzetti thing. But mostly eating.
TOM: Snacking is the misdemeanor of the age!
It is the direct cause of more suffering,
weakness and disease than any other evil.
CROW: Even more than not appreciating your parents?
It poisons the life stream at its very source.
TOM: Its Snackables!
``The blood is the life.''
MIKE: The spice is the life?
TOM: The blood is spiced?
The quality of this
liquid determines vital activity throughout every part of
the body.
CROW: I think Bernarr Macfadden grossly underestimates the importance of acetylcholinesterase.
MIKE: You're *always* accusing people of underestimating the importance of acetylcholinesterase.
CROW: I just think it's very important is all.
You can be a palpitating force, a veritable human
dynamo,
TOM: You can be a large turtle-like artificial intelligence!
CROW: You can be a leading importer of cheese to Denmark!
MIKE: You can be several key innovations in the history of Timothy hay!
or you can be a half-alive mass of human
flesh >not unlike the jelly-fish.
CROW: Jellyfish are made of human flesh?
TOM: Ew ew ew ew ew ew *ew*.
It is the quality of
your blood that determines entirely to which class you
belong.
CROW: Is this gonna be one of those stories where Bernarr Macfadden finds out his blood was replaced with a high-grade polymer and suddenly nobody will talk to him anymore?
Eating without appetite means devitalized blood.
MIKE: Or that you're putting more melted cheese on everything.
The stomach is not ready to digest food at such times.
TOM: It's off wandering around, taking in museums, reading good books, and then you throw a big slab of bean-and-cheese burrito at it.
It appetite is a strong craving food for
CROW: A lesser craving for pottery shards.
which
definitely indicates that the stomach is ready for
digestion.
TOM: Why not just wait for the stomach to call?
CROW: Yeah, like, 'Hey, stomach here. I'm raring to digest!'
The food eaten is then keenly enjoyed.
MIKE: Well, it is like 2016.
TOM: So?
MIKE: So who calls for *that*? That's more like a tweet or a text message or something.
CROW: Excuse *us* for maintaining some dignified propriety, Mike.
The pleasure in eating serves a very valuable
purpose.
MIKE: It gives us a reason to go eat a second time, sometime.
It not only causes an unusual activity of the
salivary glands, but also of the glands of the stomach.
TOM: Glands! Is your stomach going through puberty?
CROW: It's so awkward to have esophageal zits.
So that when the food arrives in this organ, digestion
and assimilation progress rapidly and satisfactorily.
MIKE: Though not without some sarcasm.
Now when you eat without appetite, these
invaluable functional processes are inactive or entirely
absent
TOM: They take one sabbatical year and everything comes crashing down!
and the food can do nothing but lie like lead in
the stomach.
MIKE: Stop eating lead! There's your problem.
You say it won't digest.
TOM: *You* say it won't digest. We're just nibbling some here.
Why should it? No
self-respecting stomach will allow itself to be outraged
in this manner, without protest.
MIKE: My stomach's wracked with depression and low self-esteem though.
CROW: Well, so you can eat any old time.
MIKE: Which ... fits.
Eat at meal time if you are hungry, but if the
food has no taste respect the mandates of your stomach
MIKE: And sprinkle on the MSG powder.
and wait until the next meal or until your appetite
appears, even if it takes several meals or several days.
TOM: If you never eat again, then you may be losing weight.
The ``eat-to-keep-up-your-strength'' idea that
has been advocated for generations by allopathic
physicians,
CROW: *And* Popeye!
MIKE: Gotta respect Popeye on strength.
has sent, literally, millions of people to
premature graves.
TOM: Underneath a giant avalanche of casseroles and loaves of bread!
Even a person in good health can miss one meal or
fifty meals, for that matter, without serious results.
CROW: Fifty meals! You'd be spending your whole day eating at that rate.
TOM: You know you miss all the meals you don't eat.
But abstinence of some sort is absolutely essential if
appetite is missing; and is especially necessary in many
illnesses.
MIKE: Like chronic mouthlessness.
TOM: McWhirtle's Indigestibility Fever.
CROW: Temporarily made of cardboard; can't take liquids.
There is no sauce better than hunger;
CROW: Except bleu cheese salad dressing.
and there
can be no health of a superior sort, unless food is eaten
with enjoyment.
MIKE: Wait, so now enjoyment is a sauce?
CROW: *Yes*, and it's made of bleu cheese.
When you eat a meal with what is known as a
``coming appetite''
TOM: My appetite went upstairs and it can't find the way back.
CROW: ``The stairs are past the third door!''
MIKE: ``I can't find the door!''
CROW: ``Are you in a room or in the hall?''
MIKE: ``I ... don't know?''
you are often treading on dangerous
ground. This ``coming appetite'' is often due to
overstimulation of nerves
MIKE: By the penetrating electropasta needles.
rather than to natural bodily
demand, and is, therefore, frequently of the voracious
character. It compels you to overeat.
TOM: To be fair, ordering a box of Hypnofood didn't help.
You are not
satisfied until you eat so much you cannot hold any more.
CROW: Eat until fingers don't work. Got it.
At such times a fast is often necessary. But if
you cannot do that it is absolutely essential that the
meals should be very light,
TOM: Chew on a balloon, or possibly a bulb of some kind.
MIKE: Any method of general illumination will do.
if you desire to avoid
illness that might be serious in character.
CROW: Try illnesses that are lighthearted in character, such as clown flu and the a deficiency in vitamin giggle.
Three square meals a day will send any one to an
early grave.
TOM: Diversify your meal with triangles and ellipsoids.
You may be able to follow a regime of this
sort in growing years, but when full maturity arrives
look out for trouble if you persist in this habit.
MIKE: In your fallow years just sit in the middle of a room not eating and waiting for death to overcome you.
Three light meals or two medium heavy meals daily
will prolong your life and increase your efficiency
mentally and physically.
CROW: Four times a day grab an open-faced sandwich.
TOM: Six times a day, just gnaw on the kitchen counter.
MIKE: When feeling restless, lick an oven door.
I eat but one hearty meal a day, and that is
preferably taken at noon, though sometimes it is eaten in
the evening. Occasionally I eat a light meal in the
morning or evening,
MIKE: Thursdays I spend passed out in a bathtub full of potato salad.
if I have a craving for food, though
these light meals frequently consist of fruit alone or
nuts and fruit with a warm or hot drink.
TOM: Occasionally I rub a slice of lettuce against one cheek.
But the main point that I want to emphasize is
CROW: Food is a good idea but it will never be made practical.
the necessity of avoiding the habit of eating by the
clock >without appetite.
TOM: Wait until your clock cries and then feed it all it needs.
Wait for a definite feeling of hunger. Let your
stomach dictate your eating habits.
MIKE: And leave me some of the garlic-stuffed olives, people.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/eating-for-death/
CROW: I had death for lunch, can't we have joi de vivre for supper?
MIKE: Who wants a bowl of hot, buttered MURDER?
TOM: And with that, everybody, good night and be merry!
MIKE: Happy.
TOM: Whichever.
CROW: Night, folks.
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Disclaimer: Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations and premise and all that, are the property of ... uh ... I was going to say Best Brains, but I guess it's Shout! Factory and Consolidated Puppets? Or something? I'm not
positive. Well, it's theirs, and I'm just using it as long as they don't notice. Bernarr Macfadden's ``Eating For Death'' appeared in the _Physical Culture_ magazine from March 1922 and I believe it to be in the public domain. I ran across it from the
Modern Mechanix blog linked above, and it's a crying shame that's gone defunct because it was so much fascinating reading. Supporting Snorks: Sad Wikipedia sub-section, or saddest Wikipdia sub-section?
You can be a palpitating force, a veritable human
dynamo, or you can be a half-alive mass of human
flesh >not unlike the jelly-fish.
--
Joseph Nebus
Math: Reading the Comics: Seeing Out The Year Edition
http://wp.me/p1RYhY-UR Humor: My Poor Wrist
http://wp.me/p37lb5-16I --------------------------------------------------------+---------------------
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