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Decter and Podhoretz

the breakfast table
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from: Midge Decter

The Diet Police

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 9, 1999, at 11:54 AM ET

You remind me of a story about Franz Kafka. He and his friend Max Brod were what we nowadays call health nuts. One morning they were taking their obligatory hike in the mountains when Kafka turned to Brod and said, "You know, Max, we treat our health as if it were a disease." That, I think, is what's really going on now--along with a dose of the environmentalist Luddism according to which anything coming out of the ground is superior to anything manufactured by chemists in a laboratory. But that New York Times feature, of course, warns that some of these "natural" herbs may also be naturally carcinogenic.

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960
from: Midge Decter

The Diet Police

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 9, 1999, at 11:54 AM ET
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Midge Decter is an essayist and social critic who publishes in a variety of magazines and appears most frequently in Commentary. Norman Podhoretz is editor at large of Commentary magazine and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His latest book, Ex-Friends, was published this month.
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