BONUS: The Conservative Diet Books of Yore

I have I have an appropriate one. When does either one of us ever come in with one and be like, I got it? Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that believes diets are a matter of personal responsible bootstrap. I wonder where we're going in this episode. I'm Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hobbs. If you would like to support the show, you're already doing that. Thank you.

So much. And today we are combing the shelves of Aubrey's Diet Book Collection. This is going to be the first of many such combings.

And according to a text message you sent last night, we're today talking about conservative diet books. Yes. We're talking about the G O P, but it stands for Go on a plan. No. That wasn't that good. That wasn't that good. I really like the like the the challenge here is I don't think anybody calls a diet a plan. Yeah, I know. I give me time to look at that. I'll come back.

So we're normally doing a diet book deep dive. I'm calling this a diet book buffet. A little smorgasbord. You had this great idea of just doing a tour of the diet book collection and picking out a few that like didn't have quite enough there there to sustain a whole episode, right? And as I started to look.

at the collection, like A, that's a lot of the diet books. A lot of the diet books are like, it's not enough for a whole episode, but it's very funny and silly, and let's talk about how funny and silly it is. As I started to look through the collection, it became clear that there were these little like sub themes. Like there are a bunch of diet books that are just about. Like the wine diet or the pasta diet or the popcorn diet or the junk food diet. There's a bunch of

Celebrity diet books written by people who have absolutely never been fat. Why does Cher have a diet book? Okay. Oh my uh so they're all these little subsets, and I thought for today we would start out with one of those subsets. Oh yeah. Which is politically conservative diet books. And straight up, some of these people are politicians, some of them are political actors. Either way, they are folks who have been like upfront about their political conservatism. Get out the paleo.

I'm gonna keep doing this. Out the paleo. Good job. Throughout. So for this one I pulled more diet books than I used. There were a couple there's one that I pulled that was called A Diet Plan for Uncle Sam. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get into this. And then it was just about like Federal budget. And like obliterating the social safety net. Oh, I thought it was gonna be like roast bald eagle and shit. No. Unfortunately.

No, it was a bummer, but it was not the kind of bummer I was looking for. Oh, a fun bummer. I was looking for a fun bummer, and it was just a straight up bummer. There was another one that I was like, I think this might actually be a whole episode as a Sort of like an episode in two parts. One of them is um the Boston Police had a very popular diet book.

Yes. Yes. If it was popular enough, which it definitely was not, I would have been like, we should do this on if Books Could Kill. Do you know what I mean? Like, hang on, I'm coming over. We're doing this one because that's garbage. So today we're going to look at three different diet books.

It is a classic maintenance phase crescendo, so brace f yourself for things to get wilder as we go along. Okay. The first diet book that we are going to look at, hang on, I gotta Close out of everything and open up the folder of pictures of these diet books. And then I'm gonna send you one of them. Garbage obstructing progress. Is that Is that one I didn't see it coming. That one has a verb. Okay, Mike, I sent you a picture of the cover. No fucking way.

I got you a present. What okay, so good God. Okay, so it's the iHeart America diet by Someone named Phyllis George and Bill Adler. And the cover is like this bright Rubik's Cube red with like a a nice, like swirly wedding invitation font. And it says I Heart America and the heart. is like an image of like a Barbie doll woman. It's like a woman like blond, white, gleaming teeth. Yeah, my whenever

Whenever I see like Republican imagery like this, I'm just ready for a fucking horror show. I'm sure she's nice. The Barbie doll woman is Phyllis George.

It is the author of the book, ostensibly. Uh her career started as uh the winner of Miss America. She went on to become a sports reporter and a news reporter. Okay. And at the time that she published this book. It was her last year as the first lady of Kentucky. Oh, okay. Yeah. She has she has a sort of Miss America. News anchor lady kind of look.

Technically the title of the book is the I Love America Diet, but every time they do the heart, so I'm only calling it the I Heart America Diet. I feel about this like I feel about like so I live in Portland, Oregon. There are Nike bikes that you can use all around town. Many cities have like just like bikes that you can like pick up and use. Ours are provided by Nike. Nike has a store in town called Nike Town, as it does in a number of places. On the side of the bikes it says bike town.

But my brain always reads it as bikey town. Bikeytown, same. Whenever I'm in Portland, I'm like, I guess it's the bikey town bikes. And I feel similarly about this, which is like, look, I could try to rewire my brain to read that as the I love America diet. But it's always gonna be the iHart America diet with the Barbie doll lady in it. Also a ton of people you know TSA pre check? Uh-huh. How it's like pre-dash and then like a Czech emoticon.

But everyone ignores that, so they'll just say like I have TSA pre. This is where I fully turn into that like fucking TikTok about us. Where I'm like, This week I thought we'd go light and I ended up with eleven pages of notes. I think about the TikTok all the time. I really I'm like, they really Nailed it and I know because of the amount of personal embarrassment I feel when I catch myself doing those behaviors. Called out. Called out.

So lovingly, but absolutely clean. I know, we we appreciate you and we're we're wildly self conscious now. And we're mortified. So Phyllis George with this book joins the pantheon of lifetime thin people with the goddamn audacity to write a diet book. Oh yeah, look look what I did. Miss America wrote a diet book. Okay. This is how I became symmetrical. Wow, thanks. Appreciate that. Her co-writer and I would guess the main writer of this book. is Bill Adler

whose bio just says like he's a literary agent and a writer and he co authored the iHeart New York Diet, which I also have. Is that just a bunch of like pizza slices and sewer wraps? Step one, former rat king with other rats. Future maintenance phase bonus app. This book was published in nineteen eighty three, so it's exactly as old as I am.

It was published again in her last year as First Lady of Kentucky, and it was blurbed by like one million med school professors. Interesting. We will get into why that is momentarily. The main thing that we are gonna focus on for this book in particular. is the description on the flap of the book jacket. Okay. Because it really does encapsulate. Like I skimmed the whole book and I was like, no, actually I think the strongest text to look at is the actual

pitch that they're making to readers. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna send you, we're gonna go through bit by bit. We're not gonna do the entire thing because it's longer than it needs to be, but we are absolutely going to talk through the first couple of paragraphs of it. Okay, putting on my bifocals. There you go.

It says, This is a diet for sensible Americans. Like you and me. It's safe, it's sound, it's sure. Of course it works because it's based on the official recommendations of U.S. government agencies. It's like no other diet you've ever been on or heard of before, doubtful. Because it's not just a diet. It's an integrated three-way program that permits you for the first time in your life to take control of your weight destiny. It tells you what you do. All caps to beat fat with workouts. Anybody.

Can do. It's not just a diet. It tells you what to eat. It tells you how to eat. It tells you what workouts to do. You're describing a diet. It's just like such god, it's such boilerplate this stuff. It's like this is like nothing else. We're gonna tell you to eat less and move more.

It was really striking to me to be looking at something again that is my entire lifetime ago and be like, oh, this is new marketing. Right. Every dive is doing this same thing, which is just like they're all like we're not like the other girls. We're different. It is fascinating how like five minutes after the first diet There was the first diet being like, We're not a diet. Yeah. We know diets don't work. Are you ready for our next chunk of the description? Gives

on programs. No. And that one doesn't really work. Sorry. Yes, I'm ready. Sorry. Okay, so I'm sending you the next chunk of the description. All caps, and there's a fabulous bonus. sentence case. You can be healthier than you are. You can live longer with increased vigor. That's because you'll be following the U.S. Federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The recent scientific breakthrough praised by doctors everywhere.

The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports asks a strong, vital America depends on physically fit Americans. Can we depend on you? If you love America, the answer is yes. It's patriotic to be trim and healthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Problematic through lines. In this little paragraph. Well, I picked this one out because I was like, ooh, cameos. We've got the president's physical fitness tests. Um, we've also got

The US Federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which came up so much in our food pyramid episode. They are the basis of the food pyramid. Food triangle, but yes. Also we've got those guidelines being praised by doctors everywhere, which like They weren't even really praised by doctors within the USDA. The guidelines doctors everywhere said uh about. And then we've got this absolute Fucking bananas shoehorning in of like Real patriots are thin.

Yeah, dude. It's weird that they're saying it this explicitly. Usually it's like between the lines. And also just like, I was reading this one and I was like, this is pure camp. Yeah, I know. This is the problem with this, is it's har it's hard to be offended by it. It really looks so weird and surreal. This uh description also lists out The things that you can do on this diet. Which also felt really reminiscent of uh diets that we have heard about, talked about, all that kind of stuff.

This is a list that should have bullet points in front of it, but it doesn't cause I'm texting it to you. Is the exercise plan just standing up and saluting the flag and sitting down over and over again? It's actually just like joining the military and going to booth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just push ups. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh it says Lose up to eleven pounds of fat a month, not water, as on fad diets. Eat the kind of foods you've always loved, even ice cream, never never diet food.

Make the switch to lifetime stay slim habits easily, pleasantly, deliciously. Learn how to transform your favorite recipes into scrumptious, nutrition-packed slimming delights. Oh, this is very similar to the Scarsdale diet thing where in general when it talks about the diet like in the introduction, it's like you can do anything. Don't worry about being hungry, Bestie. And then once you get to the specifics. It's like prisoner of war camp rations and like hours of exercise.

And they just like coexist peacefully. Here's the thing that I would say about this particular diet is like normally I'm like, Yes, that is the pattern. In this case, it is USDA and FDA guidelines that they're sort of operating off of. So it's less of that just like You get one ounce of cheese every week. Enjoy it. Savor it while you can. Like it's less of that. It reads much more like kind of any number of eighties low fat or low calorie diet meal plans.

A bunch of the meal plans are like most nights for dinner, you're getting a whole baked potato plus a protein plus a cup of vegetables.

Right. Because it's essentially a diet book that was created to popularize public nutrition guidelines, right? Right. So it's not like completely off the rails. The fascinating thing to me is that they like include a small number of recipes and the recipes that they include Seem fine, they don't seem like bad recipes to me, but I am confused as to how these ones made the top of the list.

Okay. So they have like a few dinner recipes, they've got a couple of soup recipes, they've got some dips, that kind of thing. They have A lot of recipes that seem very time limited for your use in the year. So they have a recipe for gingerbread. Okay. They have an eggnog recipe. Festive liquids. They have a recipe for something called cottage cheese dip. Oh no, the cottage cheese in the eighties. It was so much. I

have listen, it's Stockholm Syndrome has been debunked, but I have it with cottage cheese. I continue to enjoy cottage cheese. I have tried to get into cottage cheese. So many times I've tried. I'm like, I wanna like this. It seems fine. And every every time I do it, I It's like opera. It's not for you. Yeah. Aubrey, what if we wrote a diet a diet book? We've talked about this.

Yeah. We like did the same intros like you can eat anything on this plan, you can move however you want to, you don't have to be hungry. And then like we actually did it. We just like provided a bunch of like bomb ass recipes. And we were like, You can make these, you can not make these, you can eat them or like literally anything else. Any whatever portion makes you feel full and happy. Like whatever. And then we just call it a diet book.

Or like it's a diet book, but it's literally just like physically eat anything what you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god. Listen, any excuse to get I have this recipe for like uh shrimp that's poached in coconut milk and like ginger and a butt like

It's fucking killer. I would get that out into the world. Yeah. The last thing I will say about this particular Is that so they've got the front spread and the back spread of the book covered in blurbs. Okay. Then you open the book and the first Thirteen pages of this book.

are blurbs that they absolutely should have cut. Okay. As someone who just released a book, there's like you are thinking really strategically about blurbs when you pull together a book, right? Or are you? So they got blurbs from killer names. One of them is from Walter Cronkite. Oh my God, really? I just sent it to you. Okay. He says, I know too well how difficult it is to reconcile good eating habits with the demands of the hectic work day.

And this book appears to me to provide a practical guide that tackles this very problem. Oh so like I didn't I didn't read it. Like Shirsty told me about it and like what she's trying to do. I have a hard time. with like managing my eating habits and I understand that this book says that it will teach me how to do that. This is what she's asking you to do. This is like when I get asked to blur books uh and I'm just like I will not be reading this book uh But I can provide!

I can provide like a factual quote. This was emailed to me in PDF form by John. John seems fine. Wait, have you ever blurbed a book? No, because I don't have any time to read because all I do is read terrible books and then like one fun book a month for book club. And all those are already like out in the world, so those people don't need blurbs anymore. She also got a blurb from Ed McMahon. Oh, really? Just sent it to you. It just says

The most comprehensive diet I have ever read. What does that even mean, comprehensive? Ha ha ha! That means it's n I don't know if it's comprehensive because I definitely didn't read it. I'm tired of these fragmentary diets. I need a comprehensive diet. Anyway, that's the iHeart America diet. That's all I wanted to do is just be like This is very goofy. This is sort of the theme of the episode, like

We talked in the goop episode about like dunking on things but making it nutritious dunking. There is no nutritional balance.

Thiamen out of this. Book two. Michael, are you ready? Book two. Gimme. Book two is called The Love Die. Oh, the Love Die Another Heart cover. Another heart on the cover. This one's written by someone named John Dobert. Uh John Dobert has written a number of other books. Titles include How to Improve Your Child's Education, Give Yourself a Chance Finding Your Role in a Competitive Society, John Dobert's First Aid for Marriage and

If being a Christian is so great, why do I have the blaz? That one actually sounds good. I also have the blaz. Maybe he has tips. This one was published in nineteen seventy-seven. The tagline for this one is How to diet successfully using that most powerful of all motivators, love. I'm intrigued. I'm going to send you the description from the back of the cover.

Get ready. Uh it says a simple but complete explanation of the catalyst, which can make any reasonable diet a resounding success. The catalyst is love. Everyone has a capacity for it. Everyone has seen evidence of its universal appeal and power. John Dobbert shows how to harness the enormous power of love to benefit dieting. The writing. Yeah. The goal is to build a deep seated, unified inner attitude that controls the dieter's behavior.

An attitude motivated out of love for the dieter himself, his friends, his family, his career, and his self perceived purpose in life. The author shows not only how to use the love we have, but how to obtain all the love we will ever need to get slim And stay that way. Is this chat GPT? You're right to be confused by this. Use the love we have, how to of obtain the love we need.

To get slim. Why would I need love to get slim? I need self hatred of the way that I look and feel. Mike, I'm gonna tell you what, this is the one of the books that we're talking about today where I read the entire thing cover to cover. And I am no more clear on any of the answers to any of the questions raised by this.

Description. God. The the real I feel like Jordan Peterson is the one that really cracked this code. The trick to these books is to write something totally incomprehensible. And then if anyone is like, uh, this doesn't make any sense. Then you could just be like, Looks like somebody didn't get it. I guess you don't understand these intellectual concepts. You might be wondering, Michael, why this is on our list of uh books written by conservative political actors.

Please enjoy the cover. Oh wait, what? Oh, it took me a second. Okay, so it says I mean, first of all, this graphic design is on point, as usual. It is. Microsoft Word ninety-five. They figured out the arch function. So it says the love diet and there's like a little tagline by John Dobbert. Small fonts. Forward by James Dobson. Yeah. The infamous

Focus on the family prime minister, whatever the fuck he is, but like he's this like this anti-gay, anti everything fun ghoul. Absolutely. If there was gremlin shit being said about queer people in national politics It was either being said by James Dobson, furnished by James Dobson. or like parroted by people who were close to him. Like he is like the Nexus, right? Like if you're like mad about Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, you're also probably mad. Right.

James Dobson, right? Like he is again like the beating heart of a lot of this stuff. But also very, very trim. People are always talking about his six pack. His neck bands. We'll get there. Just a a trim little man. the point that this was published, he was an associate professor of pediatrics. at USC. At the time, he was best known for his book Dare to Discipline, which advocated for the use of corporal punishment by parents on kids. I love it when they try to present this as like

As like a bold new idea. It's like finally beating kids. It's like, yeah, that's what we've been doing for like thousands of years and it's bad. Also, it's nineteen seventy-seven. So this isn't necessarily even an idea that has like gone out of vogue in the way that it has gone out of vogue. When I think of love, I think of beating children. I think of the guy who's like, gay people are all gonna die and it's gonna be their fault. Also beat your kids more. The love diet. Yeah I just want to make

This was also the year that he founded Focus on the Family. So he had his eyes on bigger things, right? It was either. Become a lifestyle influencer or become an anti-gay grifter. If only Instagram had been around back then. Chapter titles for this one include Born again and obese. That's an absurdity. Oh no. Ooh.

Your diet must be self imposed. Okay. Group pressure is great, but at midnight it's only you and the refrigerator. Okay. Tithing food for health? Giving away ten percent of all my food. That's the that's the key to losing weight. I look at a meal and I cut off ten percent of it and I put it in the collection plate. I just save the potatoes just in my little hand. The last one is absolutely unquestionably the darkest, which is

Am I important enough to live longer? Oh God. Right. It gets so dark so fast. This is the one unproblematic chapter that every diet book has. It's the conclusion of Elizabeth Taylor's diet book. Maybe everything else I say in this book is like not gonna make you happy. So one of my big questions in picking up this one is just like What the fuck does James Dobson have to say about weight loss and dieting? Yes, I am desperate to know this. Yes. Okay, so I read the whole foreword.

There's absolutely no there there. Oh, really? His forew is basically just like, I'm writing this because I'm really good at setting goals and hitting them. I'm very accomplished. But even accomplished people struggle with their appetite. Setting goals and reaching them, James Obergefell. So he has this introductory paragraph where he's talking about like I'm a very accomplished person, but even accomplished people have a hard time with this thing.

And then the rest of the foreword is just like two pages and it's just like, here's what readers can expect to find in the rest of this book, the end. Oh, wait, really? That's also like a factual Walter Cronkite one. I think there's a decent chance that someone

wrote most of this for him and he wrote the introductory paragraph where they were like, You have to write about why you s uh send me the introductory paragraph. Okay, so I just sent you a picture of the first paragraph of James Dobson's foreword. Uh as a person who has worked long hours and carried heavy responsibilities through the years, I am well acquainted with the rigors of self-discipline and self-control. Why then am I such a patsy when it comes to control of my appetite for food?

And why are millions of Americans struggling with the same ridiculous weakness? The answers, according to John Dobert, lie in our inability to marshal the proper motivation to get thin and stay thin. Uh this is boring. Yeah, it's super boring. Yeah. So that genuinely like the hook of what makes this like such a sort of like notable conservative diet book is like the most boring part. There's no like evil genius stuff in here. It's like don't

Don't you have a Thanksgiving to ruin, James? Yeah, he doesn't name check like Jerry Falwell or anything. Like it's like it's a real bummer. The other day as I was shoving a child back into the closet against their will, I thought about the exercise that I needed to be stronger.

Boo. Okay. So another one of my questions was just like, what the fuck does it mean for it to be the love diet? Yeah. The argument for the connection between love and dieting in this book is so unbelievably tenuous. Okay. He just keeps saying love is the greatest motivator, so harness love as your motivation to diet. Is it I don't even understand what his fucking argument is. Is it like get thin so that people will love you, like you'll be more successful at dating? Oh Michael, you are that is

The thinking of someone who's operating on Love Level One. I'm just like, yeah, I'm just like, I I paid a dollar fifty for this book. I want like some useful advice, but I guess it doesn't even do that. Let me tell this is I found the clearest passage that I could where he's like spelling out what love has to do with motivation to diet. What's love? Okay. Oh he's he's stacking another metaphor on top of his already try hard metaphor.

Yep. He says love levels can most readily be compared to gears in an automobile. It is necessary to get the diet rolling just as first gear gets the car rolling. First gear, however, cannot meet the demands and conquer all types of driving, and love level one cannot meet the demands and conquer all impediments to dietary success.

Traveling in first gear for a long duration is impractical and may cause mechanical failure. Jesus Christ! That's the end of that paragraph. Oh that's as good as it gets? I'm so sorry. I it is so It's funny to me to think that like I'm like, did any editor everything? Because like it doesn't even make sense. This is such like Michael Scott vibes where he's like, look, I'm gonna break it down.

A business has to make more money than it spends and then like draws out this extended metaphor on this like extremely easy to understand concept. Yes. Like, oh, in levels. So Well can I walk you through the three love levels? Ooh, yeah, because now I'm I'm I've been in first gear and I'm experiencing mechanical failure. I this is normally where you would say something like

Like I'm intrigued and I appreciate that you didn't because you're not because there's nothing to be at here. But I I love empty I love empty verbiage. So take me with you. According to Dobbert, according to this author When he's writing about love level one, he's talking about dieting from a place of love, using your motivation love is your motivation to diet, right? Is sort of his overarching thing. And he says that love level one is about

Dieting from a place of love of yourself. Okay. His version of this sort of like love of self is just really similar to the concept behind Khloe Kardashian's Revenge Body. Oh yeah. That show. Do you remember that show? Only from you talking about it. If you are dieting on love level one, if you are dieting for a love of self. Here are his tips. for how to get yourself more motivation. Okay. He says that you should undress in front of a full length mirror, jump up and down, and quote

Count the seconds until the rolls settle? Oh my god. Motivation tip number two, ask an honest friend to tell me how I really look. Oh, these are mean, Aubrey. Motivation tip number three, Mike. If those were too dark for you, hang on to your fucking butt. I can't because of jiggling too much. It's still it's still vibrating from when I'm chip in right here. Picture yourself self confined to a nursing home as a result of sickness.

Caused by overweight. What? That's not even a useful tip. Just imagine myself in a nursing home. Also, it has the weird like 60s, 70s language of like caused by overweight. Oh yeah. It's just such a weird turn of things. People with overweightness, Aubrey. We're using people first language. Michael, are you ready to hear about love level two? Love level two.

Is this like caring for my family or something? And then like level three is like caring for my community or some shit? Stop trying to skip ahead, because you're not gonna guess level three. The pro I'm trying to impose like some form of coherence onto this book, which is clearly just incoherent. Love Level Two is about love of sort of the collective. He calls this the group theme.

He talks about like teachers being motivated by love of their students, pastors being motivated by love of their congregants, doctors being motivated by their love of patients, so on and so forth. So he is sort of like thinking and talking about like, okay, what does it mean to diet from a place of love for other people?

He has some motivation tips for people who are dieting at love level two. Okay. I'm gonna send two of those motivational tips to you. Motivate me. He says even a small weight loss causes your attitude to be one of confidence. Since you know how many lives you're affecting through your dietary compliance. Aubrey, maybe this is just because I just read your book, which is like coherent and like nicely written causes your attitude to be one of confidence.

Like why do you just say even a small weight loss gives you a more confident attitude? It's the writing is So bad Is he being paid by the preposition? Look closely at each child as he sleeps and examine how much he means to you. and what he would be facing if you, your love, and your earning power were suddenly gone. This is so weird. I'm gazing at myself jiggling in the mirror. I'm gazing upon my small children. It's just like think in the most negative terms possible at all times.

Right. And it's like think about what a failure you are and will be. This is the Jane Lynch meme. I'm gonna create an environment so toxic Like that is what is happening here. Right.

Michael. Are you ready? For love level three. I think I figure it out. I think it's gonna be God. Ah fuck, god damn it. Is it? It's love of god. Dobbs include me in. So he offers some examples of what dieting at love level three looks like. Okay. I'm sending those to you. Okay, he says. If my weight is controlled and I'm healthier, I'll live longer, which gives me more time on earth to serve my master

If I'm successful in setting an example of results in my diet, others will ask me how I succeed and I'll witness that my God assisted me. My witness may result in a convert to my beliefs. Ow. So I'm recruiting people to Christianity with my like rippling abs. Yes. I'm like, thanks, Bible. He created everything and he's also like a man on this planet full of like

You know, billions of people. Right. Uh, John's getting a little fat, huh? The funny thing is, as a former Christian kid, I actually think that like New Testament morality is like pretty lit. But nobody actually implements it. Jesus talked all the time about like how, you know, rich people can't get into heaven and you should care the most for like the weakest among you. But there's just a whole economy of fucking grifters who are like, no, no, no, no.

No, Jesus said the opposite of what you think he said. He wants you to be rich. He wants you to be thin. It is really wild that in you know, some setting somewhere. Somebody read the Bible and out the other end of whatever machine creates these people came like Joel Osteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I the Bible, yes. I just want you to be hot and shit.

That's what Jesus wants. Um, would you like to hear some motivation tips for people at Love Level Three? He says, pray periodically during the day to seek assistance to overcome temptation. Pray before each meal, asking assistance for appetite control. Nurture the belief that failure to adhere successfully to your diet displeases God.

Yeah. This is like maybe false idol territory. It's wild as fuck. I've been doing some reading lately about uh spiritual abuse. Is this a term you've come across? Uh it sure is. It's like a lot of church leaders. will use your sort of sense of morality and like, you know, your entire world view.

through religion to basically get away with terrible shit, right? For like sexual harassment or exploiting you for money. Sure. This honestly feels like a form of spiritual abuse, right? Where it's like he's explicitly invoking your like moral and religious worldview.

To sell a book. Absolutely. To me the the good parts of religion. are a just a weekly invitation for people to think about things larger than themselves and like, how am I doing good in the world? How am I affecting other people? And he's he's explicitly like clawing that back. He's like, no, no, no, no.

Sunday morning is to think about like how many sit-ups you did this week. And like if you don't do more, you'll die and your children will never forgive you. Yeah, exactly. It's very strange for anyone with even passing familiarity with the Bible. Yeah. But At the same time, there is an entire cottage industry. of evangelical diet books, evangelical weight loss programs, right? Like there's like a million of these. They are legion. It's also very funny the idea that

Jesus would want you to adhere to like conventional modern beauty standards because, of course, beauty standards have changed over time. So, like, why would Jesus? be like, Oh yeah, in the nineteen nineties I want everyone to have like a long skinny torso. And like right now, Jesus wants you to have like thick hips. Cause like that's where the that's where the fad is. Look, Jesus reads In Touch Weekly. He pays attention to who wore it best. He has some thoughts. Jesus says bootcut is out.

Skinny jeans are in the middle of the year. Oh bunny, I think you're behind the times now. Is that not that's out. We're out. We're old. I ordered a pair of skinny jeans on the internet the other day, so that's why I'm like, I'm I'm on trend. I'm a forty year old man. I know what people are doing. This is what uh having a fifteen year old niece. Oh see, you actually know what the kids are doing. Yeah, because I get corrected on it.

What are you doing? Why are you wearing that? You're at my school and that's what you're wearing? She's like Kaigo has a whole song about this.

You're wrong. Okay, Michael, are you ready for our third and final conservative diet book? Problematic level three. This one is not actually a diet book. I will set it up that way. Okay. This one is just straightforwardly a cookbook. There's no calorie counting, there's no weight loss rhetoric, there's no nothing. This one is just I thought it would be fun to yell about the existence of this book with Michael Hobbs. Yelling about recipes, our favorite thing. I am sending I'm

Sending you the book cover to look at and to describe for the listener. Hell yeah. I feel like I will hear when you get it. Oh what? Yeah. Wait. What? Yeah This exists? This exists and I own it. I'm so sorry. Holy shit. Okay. Where where to begin? Wow. There's so much happening on this book cover. There's so much happening. Okay, so it's a man and a woman.

Like facing the camera with their backs to each other, like leaned up against each other like two news anchors or something. They're both wearing sleeveless denim vests. He is holding a rifle and she is holding some sort of like terrifying looking fucking knife. I think it's a hunting knife, yeah. Oh, like a hunting, like stab a deer knife and The name of the book is Kill It and Grill It, and it's by Ted and Shimaine Nugent. A guide to preparing and cooking wild game and fish.

So this is like how to fucking kill animals and eat them, basically. It says Includes a recipe for deer, elk, wild boar, rabbit, bear, wild turkey, duck, and more.

I feel like bear is the odd man out there. Everything else I can get at Costco. Absolutely. There are definitely bear recipes in this one. Mike, what do you know about Ted Nugent? All wait, did he do know when to hold him and know when to fold him? No, that's Kenny Rogers. That's Kenny Rogers. Could not be more different. All I know is that he's like a right wing. But I don't know what he was like

before that. He's like an Elizabeth Taylor figure where it's like I know her from the perfumes, but not from like The main thing that she's known for. Yeah, you know him from his appearances on Fox News and I think that's a good thing. We are gonna listen to the opening riff of this song, which I think will get you oriented to who he is. Bammy. Let me, let's wait till the beat.

So you get the idea. Ted Nugent official YouTube has 192,000 subscribers? Yeah, it's both higher and lower than I would expect. There's like Pokemon reaction YouTubers who have like more than that. I mean listen, he's a seventy-four year old man from Michigan, you know? So he's like a eighties rocker guy? Like hair. It sounds like hair metal, but then the cover of the album does not

look hair medally. He is reliably described as like a hard rock musician. That's sort of how folks describe him. Seventies, eighties was sort of his high point. Okay. Um since then he has really seemed to make most of his career out of being sort of like a personality. Yeah. Which for him means like astonishingly regressive. Outspoken racism, proud racism, big gun advocate. He is a full disaster. Wait, to go back to my acronym, he's a geriatric obstructing progress. No kids.

I thought that one was good. He uh was and is an extremely outspoken Trump supporter. He refused to get vaccinated for COVID and then got COVID. And uh when he announced that he had it, he only referred to it as and I quote the Chinese shit. God. Jeez. He called President Obama, quote, a subhuman mongrel. Oh my god. I mean he is like ne- level. Here's my question for you, Mike. What year do you think this cookbook came out? Who graphic design says I wanna say 90s actually. Like it looks late.

Because there's weird there's gradients. That's a good catch. In the color. And then the background of the image looks like one of those fucking magic eye things where you'd blur your eyes and it would be like, oh my god, a dolphin. It looks like that. Like that's the aesthetic. And then... God, the lighting is terrible. Uh there's like weird like just like a a random pink light that is like lighting up his hair but not hers. I think that's to be like, doesn't it look like stage lighting?

For like a hard rock musician, perhaps? It looks fake and weird and then I'm gonna say I'm gonna be wrong, but I'm gonna say nineteen ninety-six. Ooh, you are a lot closer than I was. I assumed this was like late eighties, early nineties. Okay. This book was somehow published.

In two thousand two. Wait, really? Yes. I guess conservative aesthetics are a little A couple years behind. Sure, sure, sure. There's no Helvetica here. The blurbs on this book are Fully unhit. Is it like Ted Cruz? No, no, no. You're not gonna guess. It's wild. They're so wild, they're unguessable. Oh no. Uh I'm sending you a blurb and then you're gonna read it. Okay. We're gonna talk about it and then I'm gonna tell you who it's wrong.

What can I say about Ted that he hasn't already said himself? Ted is a true original. Whether you love him or hate him, agree or disagree with his philosophies, side with or oppose his politics, you always know where you stand with good old Uncle Ted. He means what he says and he says what he means. Hillary Clinton. Oh, interesting. Well. The twist. Not Hillary Clinton. No. So first of all, just tell me your take on this blurb. Like, this is a blurb for a cookbook. I mean, it's just the whole

thing of like, well, he says it like it is. And like, well, just because he's wrong and bad. He's being authentic, though, for It's like right, but I don't like the wrong and bad part is what I object to. I don't think that he's being disingenuous. Yeah, totally. These are the things that you say when you can't say anything else about someone who is an asshole, right? Yeah.

That blurb, by the way, comes to us courtesy of Joe Perry from Aerosmith. Wait, really? Yeah. That's also a bit of a like, I didn't read the book blurb, but I'm doing this as a personal favor. That's all of these. Get ready. Yeah. Uh I sent you another one. I've known Ted for years and I can't say I always agree with him. I can't even say I often agree with him. It's just a huge asshole.

But I respect him for this reason. In a world where fame makes people fat and satisfied, weird, Ted continues to fight for his belief. He loves nature and, as this book proves, page after page, he feels that living without passion is not really living. That I agree with him on wholeheartedly. Barbara Walters. Mitch Album, the dude who wrote Tuesdays with me. No. There's a cameo from the Tuesdays with Maury guy?

This is also so chicken shit. To just be like, well, I don't always agree with him. I can't say I always agree with him. I can't even say I often agree with him. Right. But I respect him. for continuing to fight for his beliefs, which I ostensibly find abhorrent. This is like such fucking like brain disease among like people like us, like over-educated liberals, it's like, well, I don't agree, but at least he's fighting for his beliefs.

But like his beliefs are bad. He's fighting for things that make the world worse. Yeah. It's weird to be like, oh, I like it when people fight for their beliefs, regardless of their beliefs. No. I mean, listen, right now today, Pete Evans is fighting for his beliefs, right? Like there are plenty of people who really believe the stuff that they're talking about that we have talked on this show about, right?

Oh God, Mike, I'm getting so much worse at putting together sentences. I think I've been infected by the love diet guy. Yeah, yeah. Now I only know how to say things in confusing ways, question mark? You have an attitude that is out of confidence in something. There's one quote that says Ted Nugent is beyond argument one of the good guys, attributed to.

Charlton Heston. Look, as a piece of shit, I respect the fact that Ted Nugent is a piece of shit as well. There is a page inside the book where the header is just Praise for Ted Nugent?

Oh nice. And it includes quotes from George W. Bush and Tom Ridge. Oh. Why are politicians blurbing? A wild game cookbook from a guy who from like a total weirdo. From like a deep weirdo who again is just like Proudly shouting his racism from the rooftops. And his biggest hit was at this point a solid 20 years. Right. Better suited to be a VH one I love the eighties commentator than to be like anyone's presidential endorsement or what like it's just weird. It's just weird.

Right. The introduction has a title. That title is Celebrate the Flesh. Oh, oh God. Other notable chapter titles include Rock and roll Hogmanda. Hogmando? I like my pork pissed off. These don't even make any sense. I like my rare but not that rare W And a chapter just called This is Two Words. It's gonna sound like four words, it's two words. First word No goddammit The first word is sex fride What? What? Sex pride? You've melted down. We lost Aubrey. It's so...

It's so ridiculous. Okay, okay. I'm pulling it together. What kind of sex are they having on the ranch? Uh sex fried fish slab. It's like one of those things they say as like a vocal warm up before you go on stage. Sex fried fish leather. New York. Unique New York. Yeah. Red leather, yellow leather, sex fried. Man, I'm trying to piece this together backwards. So it's like I have a slab of fish and instead of frying it, I'm sex frying it. I don't know. There's a whole note on language.

That the book opens with it's like you know, two sentences that's like Hey man, this language has been nugentized or something where you're like, Oh, okay, I get it. Content warning. This book contains total gibberish. He has some recipes in here. Mostly it's like little like essays or whatever. Like he does some writing and then each chapter there's so many chapters. Each chapter has like one to three recipes in it. We were like, this is not a great cookbook.

This seems like one of those books that's just like very blatantly a cash in. Absolutely. Where like he probably wasn't meaningfully involved. And it's just like put them on the cover, people buy it. No one will actually read it or engage with it in any way. After all of those chapter titles, my notes just say, I get it, you're straight. Like fucking Jesus. Message received. Chapter 16, Vaginal Intercourse with My Wi. Like, all right, Ted. All right. We already got it with sex fride.

So he does have recipes in this cookbook. There are not a ton of them. The first one that I want to talk about is a barbecue sauce. Uh the recipe title is Barbecue Sauce for Javelina and then in parentheses Good for All Piggage. All right. Maybe he was involved. This seems like the The kind of like subliterate like quote unquote wordplay that he would be doing. A ghostwriter would have reined it in at some point, and he is not reining it in at any point. The ingredients

Oh my god. Tomato sauce, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic, onion bits, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and prickly pear fruit juice. The instructions for this recipe are to mix the ingredients together, quote, in amounts to your own taste, and then simmer it. It's f it is very funny if like

Sorry, can you stop performing masculinity now? I'd actually like to get the amounts for the recipe. Totally. Like weird toxic bullshit is like making the recipe useless. There is also a recipe that they note is contributed by Shimayne, his wife. called Coca Cola Stew. Oh God. Uh for Coca-Cola stew you are supposed to season and sear off some venison. You then put that venison in a slow cooker with Potatoes, carrots, onion, two cans of Coca-Cola classic. Okay. And a jar of sweet chutney.

Sweet like jarred sweet chutney that you can get in the US. is like jam. Yeah, that's too much sugar, I feel like, for braising. Right. It's just like simple syrup basically that you're braising this in. It would be great if you had some vinegar or some lemon juice or you had some red pepper flakes. Or you had like Some thing. Before we had those TikTok

Fetish content recipe videos, quote unquote. We had Ted Nugent's recipe book. What? Have you seen the fucking TikTok videos? I don't know what you're talking I mean, I've seen TikTok, but I don't know what videos you're talking about. But you've seen those like deranged ones where it's like, I'm gonna make this in the sink.

And it's like you take all this pasta and then you pour like a whole thing of pasta sauce on it and you get in there with your hands and you mix it up and it's like then you add a bunch of slices of American cheese and something like peanut butter or like it just gets

like aggressively more demented as it goes along. And it's like these things exist only to be shared on Twitter for everybody to be like, ew, gross. But then the the current theory is that these are actually just like fetish content. And it's like women getting into food with their hands and getting like really dirty and sort of talking about it, you know? They're like, oh, just go in and get really slimy in your hands. And it's like there is an audience for this, but it's not home show.

Once again, you and I are on different parts of the internet. Learning about different people and different things. I should say there's also like a middle section that are just like one million pictures of Ted Nugent and his wife and his kids. There's a picture of her Posing with like a bow and arrow. I find it totally plausible, Aubrey, that you are one of the only people who actually read this book. This does not seem like an organic grassroot.

Like uprising of people who are like, what can I do with this venison and my six pack of Coke in my pantry? I will say I'm uh flipping through the book right now. I'm on page fifty-seven and so far all of the recipes have been for venison. I'm livid about the lack of bears. That's why we're here. It's a real bummer. There was one bear wreck.

Uh there's a recipe just called Big Game Meat Cakes. Oh god, tone it down, Ted. Jesus Christ. It's just meatloaf. Oh. Salt pepper ketchup, which he spells catsup. Chopped onion and one pound of ground lean meat. The insecurity is just like leaping off of the page. It's a style. It's like it's okay to eat meatloaf dead. You don't need to be like It's my man fried meat slap. It's like this is just a normal meal, Ted. Um, that's all I have for Ted Nugent. Do we have any wrap up thoughts?

What have we learned? I think the interesting thing about this is that pretty much every diet and every diet book has like an extraordinarily conservative logic to it, which is like Personal responsibility, you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Right. And I think what was interesting about all of these uh books was that when asked to fill a book full of wisdom related to that worldview.

The first book that we looked at just reprinted the USDA guidelines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second one couldn't do it. It's like a very short book and it's all gibberish and nonsense. Right. So it's just very interesting to me that like

when asked to expound upon these already very conservative views about dieting. Right. You can't go much more conservative than just like dieting to begin with. Right. Also The phrase conservative diet is like kind of a pleonasm because the whole thing is like instead of changing a social hierarchy, right? Where like fat people are poorly treated in society. The way that you respond to that is not by, well, let's treat fat people better. The way you respond is, well, I don't want to be fat.

Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of impossible to to not write a conservative diet. Absolutely. I mean, like listen, this is the same impulse behind sort of like looking at a person who's fatter than you and going, At least I'm not that fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we don't really think about our opportunities to like reject the entire fucking premise. Right. That's why our advice on this show is get out of these programs.