The Newest No-Food Diet

Usually, for your weekend reading pleasure, I try to post something interesting and edifying from around the Web, but this isn’t necessarily edifying; it’s just gross and tabloid-worthy, but I couldn’t help myself.

BECAUSE IT INVOLVES A TUBE IN YOUR NOSE!

The UK’s Daily Mail reports on a new, ‘no-food’ diet:

“The KEN, or Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition diet, involves eating absolutely nothing at all.

Instead, for ten days at a time, a patented liquid formula made up of protein and nutrients is dripped directly into the stomach via a plastic tube that goes up the patient’s nose and is taped on to their face.”

I was particularly struck by this remark from one KEN dieter, which speaks to the complicated meaning food has in our psyches and in our social interactions:

‘Not eating for ten days gives you a break from thinking about food — which, for me, was associated with stress and guilt. Socialising was difficult though — it’s hard to nurse a black coffee while everyone else is eating’

Apparently, it’s pretty effective at helping people lose weight and keep it off; the main side effects are constipation and bad breath.

{Oh, besides the side effect of having a tube taped to your face all the time.}

I can’t speak to the desperation to lose weight that might make this endeavor seem appealing, but the whole process does seem a sort of perversion of what God intends food to be: God’s love made both delicious and hospitable.

Read the article here.

{See you Monday.}