Rex Harrill <[log in to unmask]>: >I agree. My complaint really was directed toward snide comments like "mucus boy" >and the attempts to laugh ideas one doesn't like out of the arena. I tend to >enjoy a chuckle-worthy quip, but hard-hearted ridicule is another story. Tom: Calling Ehret "mucus boy" is quite mild. The reality is that Ehret promoted food obsessions and the pathological fear of mucus. Ehret promoted anorexia as the optimal diet. He was a crackpot and a crank, and I believe that he has harmed far more people than he ever helped. This is based on my experience as a former "true believer" in Ehret. The choice Ehret believers face is to be laughed out of the arena or run over with science, for there is little or no scientific basis (or truth) in Ehret's teachings. Again, if you promote your diet as a "god", then people will expect it to deliver like a "god" would. (And we expect the gurus, the "prophets" of their false "dietary god", to be "pure" as well.) Rex Harrill <[log in to unmask]>: >Maybe this is the heart of the present controversy. I never notice "cure-all" in >guru writings. I do notice a recurring message that *drugs are poisons*. And Tom: A prominent fruitarian advertises her diet as curing cancer and other serious diseases. (Side note: said fruitarian "guru" may be a fake as well.) Still other fruitarians (and some hygienists) promise or imply that their diets are cure-alls. I will end by coming back to a point I made a while ago on this topic. To those who defend the diet gurus who lie and put dogma ahead of health: why do you think that the only way to sell raw diets is via lies and exaggeration? Are raw diets so bad or problematic that they cannot be promoted in an honest way? (My view - that raw can and should be promoted in an honest way - was given in a previous post.) Tom Billings