Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Hunger in the Throat - I've been doing it wrong!

I came by this article today by complete and utter chance and, although I do find the concepts described in the original article hard to accept, I was more amused by the comment threads.

First of all, yes that is the actual phrase used by this Dr. Joel Fuhrman MD to describe real hunger. So if you ever felt hunger any place that is not the throat then too bad, you're just a good old fatty like moi. See? Real hunger is felt in the throat, not the stomach. What most people feel is Toxic Hunger, and if you want to read about "specifics" of it I suggest you hit the article because I don't feel like paraphrasing. All in all, it's a dubious but harmless article, just like the many thousands I have read in my quest to better eating/dieting and then summarily forgot about them.

Then I read the comments. The first ten or so are, quite understandably, people voicing their concern about this "Toxic hunger" and how it seems like this is just the Doctor's way of selling his books by being featured in a blog about nutrition.Then Elijah Lynn shows up, showing such entuthiastic support of Fhurman's doctrine that I initally figured he was the man himself. My suspicion wasn't helped by the fact that after Elijah Lynn took the time to personally refute any dissent expressed by other commenters ("I am 27 now and only feel hunger in my throat, true hunger!") Fhurman himself shows up to back up his original post.

I will be honest now and admitt that I did not read the massive wall of teal deer the Dr. posted, but it was only because I was immediately distracted by the next few comments. My guess is after Dr. Fhurman saw that his ideas where getting shot down, he went back to his blog and alerted his minions of this because, after his comment, all there is left is comment after comment of people praising him and his books.

This guys already sounds shady enough ("True, I coined the term “toxic hunger” to describe this phenomenon, just as I coined the word, “nutritarian” to describe the diet-style I recommend.") and a little full of himself, but the outpour of comments from his followers starts looking a bit cultish. Why does this guy need so much validation? Why does he NEED to prove that his books are the real thing, you just have to buy them to find out? And what about his followers? Why must they convince every last person in the universe that hunger, you're doing it wrong? If you are certain of yourself, you just go "Meh, they won't experience the joy of being a Nutritarian, sucks for them" and go along your merry way, right?

His website is precious, though.