> From: “Meltsner, Kenneth”
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003 8:18:04 PM US/Pacific
> To:
> Subject: if there’s ever a Nuerenberg trial for food crimes, here’s a
> candidate….
>
> I’m appalled, and I’m living in Wisconsin — I thought nothing could
> surprise me in the fried/cheese-bearing foods category…
>
> Ken
>
> September 23, 2003
> Cheeseburger and Fries, Wrapped Up in One
> By TANIA RALLI
>
> If the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has its way, beef will
> not be just for dinner anymore.
>
> Looking to emulate the success of Chicken McNuggets and fried
> mozzarella sticks, the group is hoping to inject some red meat into
> the American snack food diet with cheeseburger fries. The fries, which
> look like a squat version of standard French fries, are made of a
> meat-and-cheese compound that tastes — as the name suggests — like a
> cheeseburger.
>
> Breaded, then deep-fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce,
> cheeseburger fries have found their way onto menus in several states
> including Nebraska, Minnesota and Texas since June. There is also a
> version being made available to public school cafeterias.
>
> “The challenge is getting people to think of other ways to eat beef,”
> said Betty Hogan, director of new product development for the
> association.
>
> Beef, mostly in the form of hamburger, still dominates the menus of
> fast-food restaurants and bars across the country. But even the
> enduring popularity of the hamburger is not enough to counteract the
> long-term decline in national beef consumption. Twenty years ago
> Americans ate 77.1 pounds of beef per capita and 51.3 pounds of
> chicken. In 2001, the figures were 66.2 pounds of beef per capita and
> 75.6 pounds of chicken.
>
> That reversal took place in part because of the popularity of
> McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, which were introduced in 1983, altering
> the public’s perception of chicken by turning it into a quick and
> convenient food. Beef was still largely relegated to the evening meal,
> and the National Beef Council’s popular slogan — “Beef: It’s What’s
> for Dinner” — seemed out of step when fewer families were sitting down
> to dinner together.
>
> Looking for other avenues into the American diet, the beef industry
> noticed that restaurants sell over 900 million portions of chicken
> strips and fried cheese sticks, many of them as appetizers.
>
> “You just don’t see beef-based appetizers,” Rob McLaughlin, vice
> president for product management at the Advance Food Company in Enid,
> Okla., which is manufacturing cheeseburger fries.
>
> The fries themselves are surprisingly light, weighing only about one
> ounce each. The meat, so that it holds together, is firm like a
> meatball. And while the taste is not distinctly beef, biting into one
> does impart the lingering flavoring of processed cheese.
>
> Steve Mason, owner of the Brass Rail restaurant in Beatrice, Neb.,
> said he served five fries in a portion and charged $2.95. “They’re
> very profitable,” he added.
>
> Like most bar snacks, cheeseburger fries pack quite a dietary wallop.
> Each individual fry has about 75 calories and four grams of fat. The
> fries for schools have less beef per serving but still have about 60
> calories and, in fact, more fat — a total of 6 grams — in each fry.
> And nobody eats just one.
>
> Developing a beef-based snack was a process that took about two years.
> According to Dr. Tony Mata, the technical coordinator of the
> association’s research and development branch, the final shape of
> cheeseburger fries was almost an accident. “There’s an interesting
> twist to how this product came about,” he said. “We were actually
> working on a cheeseburger by the slice.”
>
> The idea had been to manufacture precooked patties that tasted like a
> cheeseburger by combining ground beef and cheese.
>
> “It was supposed to have the same dimension of a regular hamburger
> patty,” Dr. Mata said. The consumer would simply heat the burger in a
> pan or microwave, place it in a bun, and dress it like a regular
> burger.
>
> “It looked good on paper,” Dr. Mata said. “Then we tried it at the
> laboratory, and the initial appeal was horrible.”
>
> Dr. Mata and the development group decided to rework the product,
> changing its shape, adding batter and bread and dropping it into the
> deep fryer.
>
> The new prototype was tested in Evanston, Ill., at the Keg of
> Evanston, a popular bar near Northwestern University. Satisfied with
> the response, the association enlisted a food scientist, Steve Moore,
> who is known in the business for his expertise in developing breaded
> coatings. In the past Mr. Moore worked on breading projects like onion
> rings, jalapeño peppers, seafood and even French toast sticks (in
> effect, adding breading to bread).
>
> “I started the project by putting a variety of flavors together with
> coatings,” Mr. Moore said about the cheeseburger fries.
>
> He likened the coating process to walking a tightrope, since the
> moisture of the meat and cheese must be carefully controlled for the
> breading to adhere. Otherwise, when the product is deep-fried, the
> heat of the oil will produce enough steam to blow off the breading.
>
> “You always follow wet by dry,” he said. So, before the meat and
> cheese could be battered and breaded, the shaped mixture had to be
> coated in a fine flourlike substance called predust to dry the surface
> of the moist mixture.
>
> Picking the right cheese was also an issue. Mr. Moore tested
> everything from premium sharp cheddar cheese to processed American
> cheese.
>
> “We didn’t want it so cheesy that we overwhelmed the beef flavor,” he
> said.
>
> “When people bite into it, you want them to get the wow effect: `Wow,
> this tastes just like a cheeseburger,’ ” Mr. Moore said.
>
> After testing different types of cheeses, Mr. Moore settled on a
> processed restricted-melt cheese, meaning that it is manufactured to
> withstand high temperatures.
>
> “Some cheeses are so restricted melt that we bit in and it looked like
> little yellow pieces of plastic,” he said.
>
> He created three flavor profiles. The first tasted like plain beef
> with salt and pepper. Then he made a prototype mimicking the flavor of
> beef fried on a flat-top grill, as at McDonald’s, and another that
> suggested a charbroiled flavor, like a Burger King hamburger.
>
> Tasters like the charbroiled flavor, but said it did not make sense to
> have something like that also taste deep-fried.
>
> “It’s hard to please everyone,” Mr. Moore said.
>
> When Advance Food began producing the cheeseburger fries at the
> beginning of the year under license from the cattlemen’s association,
> the company limited distribution to the central states but the product
> is now available across the country.
>
> “We think that we will sell about a million dollars’ worth this year,”
> Mr. McLaughlin said.
>
> All this, of course, pleases the National Cattlemen’s Beef
> Association. “We want beef in dessert if we can get it there,” Ms.
> Hogan said.
>
> Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
>

The struggling fast-food icon is hoping to regain its luster with a splashy new ad campaign. Don’t count on it. The problems run deep at America’s leading burger empire. McDonald’s (MCD) just announced its seventh earnings decline in eight quarters. The stock price is hovering near a seven-year low, and the CEO is warning of layoffs. It’s not just the weak economy. Toss in rising anti-American sentiment around the world and a recent report highlighting America’s child-obesity problems, and it does indeed seem like the worst of times for the Golden Arches.

The company’s response: Bring in the great persuaders. Under pressure from Wall Street, McDonald’s has retooled its top marketing team, hired some celebrity pitchers, and launched an aggressive new U.S. advertising campaign.

The McMarketers are certainly experienced. Larry Light, named chief global marketing officer last month, has logged nearly four decades in the business, including key posts at Bates Advertising and BBDO Worldwide. Longtime McDonald’s insider Bill Lamar took over U.S. marketing duties in August. And just last week, the company brought in Kay Napier, a 20-year marketing veteran from Procter & Gamble (PG). For additional consulting help, the company has even coaxed Happy Meal inventor and marketing legend Hal “You Deserve a Break Today” Schrage out of retirement.

So what’s coming out of this bunch? A reported $40 million advertising campaign touting McDonald’s new value menu. Produced by DDB Worldwide in Chicago, the “Got a Buck, You’re in Luck” theme is reportedly fronted by, among others, a real estate tycoon (Donald Trump), two tennis stars (Venus and Serena Williams), and a loudmouth lawyer (Johnnie Cochran). It also features the return of two McDonaldland characters (Grimace and the Hamburglar).

According to McDonald’s spokesman Bill Whitman, the campaign is about good food and great value. “We’re conveying that message with celebrities people know and with characters they feel good about,” he says. Little more than two weeks into the campaign, McDonald’s claims that sales have risen 2 percent. The new marketing push is the public face of a turnaround plan, announced in September, that includes a $1 billion budget to remodel stores during the next two years.

Yet while McDonald’s is certainly focused on its new message (Whitman repeated the phrase “great value” nine times during a brief chat with Business 2.0), the strategy seems misguided. With its sudden conversion to lower prices, McDonald’s is playing a desperate game of catch-up. Wendy’s, for one, has had a national value menu in place for more than a dozen years, and Burger King announced its own “99 cent” menu last month. So no points here for innovation.

But even more confounding is the choice of spokespeople. Does anyone associate Donald Trump with value? Or Johnnie Cochran? Are we to believe that either of the über-athletic Williams sisters regularly eats a Big N’ Tasty burger, at any price? And how does pairing any of these folks with mysterious fuzzy characters help get the word out?

It all feels like another desperate experiment in a long line of desperate experiments (McCafes, a McKids clothing line, a McDonald’s ketchup brand, the Golden Arch Hotel in Switzerland, the Chipotle Mexican Grill and Donatos Pizzeria, and on and on).

McDonald’s difficulties — market oversaturation, increasing competition, menu problems, disgruntled franchise owners, and more — are too big for a quick marketing fix, no matter who, or what, is doing the persuading.

———–

—— Forwarded Message From: Ray Le Maistre Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:45:49 -0000 To: ‘Ian Andrew Bell’ Subject: RE: What would you do without your phone or e-mail?

======================================================== http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4369605,00.html

THE ENEMA WITHIN

Ian Belcher took some persuading to go on a colonic irrigation holiday, even at a Thai beach resort. It is, he discovered, quite astonishing what gets flushed out in the course of a week’s treatment. But did he feel the better for it?

Ian Belcher Guardian

Saturday March 9, 2002

When photographer Anthony Cullen heard the clank of glass on porcelain, he didn’t need to examine the contents of the toilet bowl between his legs. He instinctively knew he had just passed the marble he had swallowed as a five-year-old; the small coloured sphere – “I think it was a bluey” – had lodged in his colon for 22 years. His nonchalance was understandable. Having flushed 400 pints of coffee and vinegar solution around his large intestine through 10 enemas, and taken 100 herbal laxatives, he had become hardened to extraordinary sights. He had already excreted yards of long stringy mucus “with a strange yellow glaze”, several hard black pellets and numerous pieces of undigested rump steak. Like an iceberg breaking away from a glacier, the marble was simply the latest object to drop off the furred up wall of his colon.

Within 30 minutes it had become a burning topic of conversation among guests at The Spa resort on the Thai island of Koh Samui. Most listened, nodded earnestly and smiled, a flicker of mutual support, before describing their own bowel movements in unnervingly graphic detail. It was just another day at the tropical health farm where conversations that would be deemed unpleasant, if not obscene, in any place outside a gastro-intestinal ward, are mere idle chit-chat among the sun-soaked clientele.

They may have travelled across the world to The Spa’s thatched beach huts, encircling its renowned restaurant whose Pod Ka Pow Nam Many Hoy – prawns and chilli, stir-fried in oyster sauce – is a house speciality, but not a morsel of food, nor a single calorie, will pass their lips. Instead they order around 70-odd gallons of coffee and vinegar, lemon or garlic solution – lightly warmed, please waiter – to be squirted up their anus. You are unlikely to find this particular dish on Masterchef.

The roots of their truly alternative activity holiday lie in our modern lifestyle. Some doctors, such as Richard Anderson, inventor of the Clean-Me-Out Programme, claim our high stress existences and over-processed diets – chips, pizzas, burgers – have left us with clogged-up digestive systems. And that, according to advocates of intestinal cleansing, makes us disease time bombs, at increased risk from cancer, heart trouble, infertility, diabetes, premature ageing and, pass the smelling salts this instant, wrinkles.

Their solution is to fast: to put nothing in one end, while simultaneously purifying yourself by propelling significant amounts of liquid up the other. “It’s like changing the oil in your car,” says Guy Hopkins, the 60-year-old owner of The Spa, whose eyes glint with evangelical zeal when he talks about colonic irrigation. “If you don’t do it every so often [your body] isn’t going to run that well. We constantly put the wrong fuel in our bodies and, sure, they keep on going, but cleanse yourself and you’ll be amazed how much better you’ll feel.”

A tempting sales pitch, yet when my editor suggested a first-person report, I had grave reservations. As someone whose only concessions to healthy eating had involved switching from butter to olive oil and occasionally cutting the fat off my steak, the fast sounded frankly insane. Then I began hearing about the “lifestyle benefits” of the cleanse, of the 90-degree heat and tropical beaches. Words such as “de-stressing” and “life-changing” were tossed around.

I weakened, dithered and finally relented. The photographer, Anthony, it was agreed, must also fast.

Our preparation began well before we spotted our first palm tree. The Spa recommended we prepared with a fortnight of abstinence from meat, processed foods (adios my daily staples, pasta and bread), milk, cheese, booze, coffee or soft drinks. Instead, our gastric juices were stimulated by salads, fruit, slightly cooked vegetables, herb teas and water.

It wasn’t easy. Both Anthony and myself are what might charitably be termed “stocky”, enjoying cooking and, more importantly, eating. Within days, food, or lack of it, had become an obsession. We had long phone discussions about interesting ways to grill aubergine; Anthony bragged about his spicy ratatouille. Life was changing.

As the first toxins were expelled and severe caffeine withdrawal set in, I experienced headaches, aching muscles, a lack of energy, and an increasingly short temper. I also faced a new menace: the liver flush drink. Designed to sluice out your system, it’s a vile mix of olive oil, raw garlic, and cayenne pepper blended with orange juice. I’ve no idea if it worked, but my urine turned clear and I always got standing space on the tube.

We stuck rigidly to the diet until disaster struck: an upgrade on the flight to Bangkok. Our willpower collapsed and over the next “lost” 12 hours we demolished peanuts, smoked salmon and oyster mushrooms, roast goose, cheese, port, champagne, Baileys and chocolates.

We had four more days before the fast, but while I got back on track, the photographer went totally off the detox rails. He consumed beer, Pringles, coffee and, as we waited for the Koh Samui connection at the airport, slipped in two Burger King chicken sandwiches, a huge pile of fried onion rings, a large Coke, followed by a chicken dinner on the plane. He was clearly heading for a remarkable first enema.

By the eve of the cleanse, I’d already lost over 2kg, weighing in at 86kg. Anthony was a little heavier, at 91kg. After demolishing an emotional last supper, we met our fellow fasters. They appeared a cosmopolitan crowd, confounding fears of being stranded among the sandals and lentil brigade.

There was Derek James, an engineer from Leeds, and Margaret Barrett, a sales rep from Cambridge, both in their mid-20s and aiming to clean up their acts after “caning it” while working in clubs in Tokyo. Nicky McCulloch, a 27-year-old Australian teacher, hoped to sort out a range of allergies, including wheat and alcohol. She was travelling with Mez Hay, a worm farmer with a shock of blond hair and strident ocker accent. Passionate about Italian food, along with steak, chops and sausages from her parents’ farm, Mez admitted she was keeping her friend company and hadn’t put in a single second’s preparation. “I didn’t know about it,” she snapped. “Who the hell are you, the bloody fast police?”

Others also had tangible goals, including tackling stomach complaints, severe constipation and mystery lumps. Most were keen to stress – a cynic might say too keen – that losing weight was not the goal. “It’s a bit extreme to travel half way round the world just for a diet,” argued Mez. “You’d be a bit superficial. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind shedding a few pounds.”

That didn’t promise to be a problem. After checking our pH levels – too low and the fast isn’t advisable – we immediately learned that while we wouldn’t be eating, a great deal would still pass our lips. The relaxed, stress-free week on the beach would involve a Stalinist adherence to a pill-popping timetable. Each day started with a charming 7am detox cocktail of psyllium husk and bentonite clay. It had the texture of liquid cotton wool, but would be crucial for pushing toxins and garbage through my system.

Ninety minutes later, we had to swallow eight tablets. They looked like rabbit droppings, tasted like rabbit droppings but were, in fact, a mix of chompers (herbal laxatives and cleansers to attack the accumulated gunge in our colons) and herbal nutrients to help compensate for those missed during starvation. We had to repeat these two doses every three hours, every day, with a final handful of pills at 8.30 each night. There was just one more lesson, the small matter of the self-administered enema. Our teacher was the sickeningly lean, tanned resident alternative health expert, Chris Gaya, who appeared to have stepped straight out of a Californian aerobic video. He made the colonic irrigation equipment – bucket, piece of wood, plastic tube, bulldog clip and nozzle – sound like straightforward DIY, although it’s unlikely to feature on Blue Peter in the near future.

All we had to do, he informed us, was to lie on the wooden board between a stool (stop giggling at the back) and the toilet basin. There’s a hole at one end of the board over the loo; above it a nozzle connects to a tube, which in turn leads to a five-gallon bucket of liquid hanging from the ceiling. We would liberally coat the nozzle, which was the width of a Biro ink tube, with KY jelly, lie back, think of profiteroles with chocolate sauce, and slide on.

Controlling the flow of liquid with a bulldog clip, we were to let it flow until we felt full, before massaging it round the colon (roughly following three sides of a square around the lower belly) and releasing. Fluid would, apparently, be flowing in and out of our backside at the same time. “We’ll be on the board for around 40 minutes,” cooed Chris. “So let’s make ourselves as relaxed as possible. Put on some soft music, light a candle, create a romantic atmosphere.”

We clearly took different approaches to seduction. But mastering the enema, once I’d got over muscle-clenching nervousness, really wasn’t difficult. I somehow ended up with my right foot half way up the wall, but five gallons went in and out without major trauma. By that night I’d shed another kilo, and although light-headed after 24 hours without food, felt strangely satisfied with the mix of supplements and detox drinks.

Next morning, my first enema of the day down the pan, I sat in the restaurant staring longingly at the menu, and found inspiration in the shape of two women nibbling their post-fast fruit. They exuded some of the rudest health I’d ever seen.

Carol Beauclerk, a “global nomad” with a mop of curly black hair, was a vegetarian, practised yoga, meditated and warmed up for her fast with a 17-day hike in Nepal. At 54, she had the energy and enthusiasm of someone half her age. “This place is really jumping,” she enthused. “I’m now hoping to do a week-long fast each year.”

Two tables away, scribbling in a diary, was Claire Lyons, a 32-year-old British journalist who had recently completed 21 days without eating. Having not gone near a set of scales, she had no idea how much weight she’d lost, but told me, “I feel great. Once I got past day 10, over the hump, it was surprisingly easy.” Claire oozed serenity, but three weeks without food is unlikely to leave anyone hyperactive.

By mid-afternoon, their shining example was all but forgotten. I was feeling awful. Tired, lethargic, simply lousy. Having not eaten for 36 hours my body was apparently going into detox mode. Margaret, who had felt nauseous since waking, had actually thrown up, and was questioning her motivation. Nicky, meanwhile, had produced “something about nine inches long, it was very dark, very scary”.

Things were no better for Mez. Already ravenous, she was spending an inordinate amount of time sniffing around plates of steaming Thai curry in the restaurant. She had also failed to grasp the basics of colonic irrigation. Instead of letting the liquid flow out, she had taken a massive amount in – until she was about to burst – before struggling to sit on the toilet and release it. “I had a huge stomach,” she gasped. “I was thinking, this must be wrong. If anyone can take the whole bucket in one go, they’re sensational.” I made a mental note to watch out for spectacular explosions from chalet six.

It wasn’t all bad news, however. I discovered we were allowed the luxury of a daily bowl of vegetable broth. It made me pathetically happy, savouring every drop as if it were a Gordon Ramsay creation. Filling perhaps, but it did little to halt the weight loss, and by the end of day two, a further two kilos had vanished.

By next morning, tiredness had been added to my hunger. I seemed to have been up half the night on the loo, the result of drinking a copious amount of fluid. My bodily functions had also taken a turn for the truly bizarre. I experienced flu-like symptoms as I started to expel 36 years’ worth of toxins with headaches and aching muscles; my nose ran constantly, my eyes were sore and weepy, my ears waxy. I felt like something out of The Omen. I had also plucked up the nerve to put a colander down the toilet. Close examination showed I had passed several feet of long brown string that shimmered as if subtly illuminated by a photographer’s light.

And I wasn’t alone. Margaret had picked through her colander with chopsticks to reveal yellow fatty chunks, Mez had filled hers to the brim with brown stringy “chicken skin” mucus (“We’re talking litres”), as had Derek, whose output included a strip about eight inches long, while Anthony described his as “patchy, like rabbit droppings”. Similar surreal conversations with virtual strangers became the norm, achieving levels of intimacy beyond the range of couples who have been together for years. Perhaps avoiding frank discussion of bowel movements is one secret of a long-lasting relationship. That night, as I escaped the dense tropical warmth, and flicked through books on diet and nutrition in The Spa’s library, I discovered a remarkable document: The Healthview Newsletter. Inside, octogenarian bowel specialist, V E Irons, attempted the Herculean task of selling colonic irrigation on its erotic potential. I would lose my frigidity, he promised, my sex life would go stratospheric.

“How could anyone fully enjoy sex when he has up to 15 years of encrusted fecal matter and mucus in his colon?” asked Irons. “HE CAN’T – and HE WON’T. If you want to remain sexually potent for your entire life, start cleaning your colon today. I’m 87, and I still enjoy sex. And if I can at my age, I know you can at your age… so get on with it!” It was of little consolation to Mez, whose hunger had now assumed epic proportions. She was considering eating her apricot moisturiser, she told me.

That night produced the most vivid dreams of my life, a typical symptom of detox, with blockages disappearing from the mind as well as the body: I’d attacked Vietcong gun positions in a hot air balloon, I’d played golf with exploding balls, I’d been savaged by a grizzly bear. Other guests’ dreams were more grounded in reality: Anthony and Mez had raided their parents’ fridges, with the worm farmer devouring steak, potatoes and cheese sauce. And some simply begged for the psychiatrist’s couch. Nicky, who in reality sees her divorced father only sporadically, dreamed he had turned into her boyfriend. Freud would have enjoyed that. Indeed, in private conversations with guests, well away from my notebook, many fasters admitted to having recently split up, or having travelled to Koh Samui to get a long-distance perspective on relationships. I had unwittingly stumbled on Relate-On-Sea. There was further physical fall-out, too. Day four was supposedly the worst of the week, with toxins expelled through the skin and lungs, as well as the kidney and colon. I didn’t disappoint. My nose, ears and eyes deteriorated, my sinuses throbbed, I was yet more sluggish. It felt like a beer, wine and whisky hangover. Increasingly strange things appeared in our colanders. Derek was shocked to find rubbery nuggets, Mez had found black oval shapes “up to five inches long”, my offering had an almost luminous green tint.

As if to celebrate crossing the halfway point of the week, many of us switched enema solutions. Abandoning coffee and vinegar, I flamboyantly opted for garlic, claimed to get rid of parasites. It seemed as natural as ordering gin and tonic instead of margarita, but when I casually told my girlfriend in a telephone call to London, there was a long silence. “Are you aware how tenuous your grip is on reality?” she asked. “Are you with a cult?”

I clearly needed to get out more. Many people hadn’t left The Spa for days, it was developing its own micro-culture. But when I summoned up the energy to sip mineral water in a bar in nearby Lamai town, I felt instant paranoia. The lights, the noise, the crowds, the smell of food. It was a world in which I didn’t belong.

I returned to the womb to find new guests. John Twigg, a burly 37-year-old Kiwi, had prepared by drinking more wine. “It’s made of grapes,” he argued. “Grapes are vegetables, so what’s the problem?” He was joined by the Lycra-clad Mimi and Dave Hatherley from Fairbanks, Alaska, who had an unnerving habit of finishing each other’s sentences. Forty-two-year-old Mimi ran, biked and did step classes five times a week; Dave, 43, ran, skied, hiked, climbed and mountain biked. They were both “into vitamins and nutrition” and while fasting were also exercising hard because “the results will be better”. After talking to them, I felt strangely giddy.

My mood and physical condition, however, were about to go through a dramatic change. By lunch – sorry, by the second dose of herbal laxatives – on day five, my nose, eyes and ears had cleared, and I had more energy. Remarkably, without nibbling a single shred of food for 120 hours, the irrigation still washed out huge amounts of gunk. I passed six-inch strips of gristle and what appeared to be large chunks of fillet steak. I don’t know how I ever afforded them, let alone swallowed them.

At least I could contribute to the increasingly competitive enema discussions. Someone had always passed something harder, brighter, more bizarre. Margaret’s chopsticks had unearthed some gristle, about a foot long, and hard, black pellets. She was so impressed she took a photograph. A few chalets away, Mez had passed “rubbery brown, fat worms” with a strange purple glaze, which she insisted on showing to me in her bathroom. But the clear winner was Anthony’s 22-year-old marble. Perhaps the most bizarre thing, which I didn’t appreciate until days later, is that it all seemed perfectly normal at the time.

When I next bumped into Alaska Dave, he was jogging rapidly between the restaurant and his chalet. As panpipe music played in the background and he told me about today’s three-mile hike, I noticed he wore a strange electrical device. It was a zapper that emitted an electrical current to kill parasites, and carried the printed warning: “For research only. Not approved for use on humans.” Even for The Spa, that clearly wasn’t normal. The improvement continued into day six. A nearly detoxified brain and bloodstream meant I awoke clear-headed, and full of energy. The enemas now produced less, but it was darker and harder as the fast broke away the older, more ingrained plaque.

It was the same story the next day. Our bodies seemed to reflect a mood of demob happiness. I had rarely felt so healthy, so energised, in my adult life. That didn’t, however, mean the end of the bizarre revelations. John passed “something from an alien movie” into his colander – and then videoed it for his office colleagues. He was joined by an outsized oil worker, Pipeline Pete, embarking on his 10th fast. “The first time I came,” he boasted, “they needed to dig three cesspits.”

And there were more. Early that evening, I found Mez huddled over a well-thumbed tome in the library. “Jesus, have you read some of these?” she groaned, handing me a book of ex-guests’ awed testaments. “I’d have bet £1,000 my bowels were clean,” wrote Chris Markvert, 67, “seldom have I been so surprised.” “Great pooing,” said Roy from San Francisco, “the best month of my young life.” And RTM contributed seven pages of increasingly manic scrawl, which included interesting facts about the Vikings.

It also contained graphic photographs of people’s enemas, footnotes in The Spa’s history to go alongside stories of legendary guests, such as the alcoholic whose detox included hiding whisky bottles and wandering naked into neighbouring resorts; and “Kathmandu Joan”, who fasted for 140 days over two and a half years, passing over 70 green and black “buttons” and clearing up an abdominal disorder.

We couldn’t compete with that, but by the morning of day eight, the fast was being credited with impressive results. It had, people claimed, got rid of allergies; removed worrying lumps that had necessitated appointments with gynaecologists; eased severe period pains and sinus problems; helped people lose kilograms while improving their skin and strengthening their nails. I’d lost well over 6kg, had an indecent amount of energy and, as people kept observing, had developed unnaturally bright eyes. I wasn’t aware they were cloudy before, but felt I had earned some flattery after 14 enemas and no food for roughly 170 hours, 35 minutes and four seconds. The cost of the seven-day programme, by the way, is £184, and accommodation in a chalet for the week adds another £60 or so.

The first post-fast meal of papaya made my toes curl with pleasure, but, as George Bernard Shaw observed, “Any fool can fast, but it takes a wise man to break a fast properly.” Raw fruit and vegetables should be the order of the next three days, but within hours Anthony had consumed two Snickers bars and a fish supper. It appeared to have no ill effects. They came 24 hours later. After demolishing piles of local prawns, we unwisely sipped a shot of Mekong whisky. Toxins tasted good, very good indeed. So good in fact, that by midnight, we had drunk a bottle each. The next morning, on the beach, my glasses were smashed, toxins pulsing around my bloodstream, the hangover indescribable.

But the week was not wasted. As a nutritional Philistine, I was inspired to read more, to learn some basic lessons. It’s hardly double-blind scientific research, but I defy anyone to examine a post-irrigation colander with its chunks of apparently undigested family roast and not make some small changes to their diet. I love meat; the smell, the taste, the texture, but now it only makes a rare appearance on my plate.

Frankly, even that’s too much for the gurus of cleansing, who believe a truly health diet revolves around fruit, vegetables, nuts and pulses – the more that’s raw or steamed the better. Along with fish, they’ve become the staples of my diet. If I occasionally lapse – and nothing will make me give up Christmas turkey or goose – a flashback to The Spa reins me in.

While I’ll take caffeine, alcohol and chocolate to the grave, I’ve also cut back on most dairy and wheat products. It might make me the dining companion from hell, but I do, at least, have the stories. People are constantly appalled yet fascinated by the idea of cleansing, and for some masochistic reason, demand the grim details between starter and main course. As they wait for their medium rare fillet or pork Dijonnaise, they crane forward to hear more about the decaying contents of people’s colons.

As for Anthony, he never considered giving up meat. Or cream sauces. Certainly not Snickers. Life, as he sees it, is too short. And who am I to argue? But remember, this is the man who has lost his marble.

Ray Le Maistre Editor/Online producer Total Telecom – www.totaltele.com ray.lemaistre [at] total.emap [dot] com Fixed Tel: +44 (0)20 7505 8630 Mobile Tel: +44 (0)7718 966448

Alternative e-mail: ray_le_maistre [at] hotmail [dot] com

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—–Original Message—– From: Ian Andrew Bell [mailto:hello [at] ianbell [dot] com] Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 3:28 PM To: Ray Le Maistre Subject: Re: What would you do without your phone or e-mail?

On 3/22/02 1:40 AM, “Ray Le Maistre” wrote:

>
> It’s not a new idea, and has probably been written about before. Countless
> times during the past 25 years I have read newspaper articles about
families

…

Ray, this article ROCKS! Entirely the type of stuff I love for people to find. Next time, can you please paste the text as well as the URL so that it gets archived on FOIB?

Keep ’em coming!

-Ian.

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