For those unfamiliar, the term "Natural Hygiene," which appears periodically in these interviews, is a health philosophy emphasizing a diet of mostly raw-food vegetarianism, primarily fruits, vegetables, and nuts, although for revisionists eating some cooked food, it can also include significant supplementary amounts of grains, legumes, and tubers.

Ward transferred coordinatorship of the Natural Hygiene M2M to long-time member Bob Avery in 1997, and is no longer associated with the Natural Hygiene movement. To learn more about the N.H. M2M (now called the Natural Health M2M), or for information about getting a sample copy, you can find out more here.

IN OUR PREVIOUS TWO INSTALLMENTS talking with Ward Nicholson, [former] Coordinator of The Natural Hygiene M2M, we focused on his research into the evolutionary past of our ancestors, what they ate, and also what chimpanzees, our closest living animal relative eat, as well as the genesis of fire and cooking, plus a brief look at hunter-gatherer diets and changes in the human diet since the advent of agriculture. In this, our last of three installments, we move on to discuss with Ward his insights about "The Psychology of Idealistic Diets and Lessons Learned from The Natural Hygiene M2M About Successes and Failures of Vegetarian Diets."

Problem: Finding unsanitized reports about the full spectrum of real-world results with vegetarian diets

Each issue, we set an optional topic to be discussed, usually relating to health or Natural Hygiene, but it's only a suggestion, and people can ignore it if they want and talk about anything--which, believe me, they sometimes do! We even encourage this, because sometimes you can glean the most interesting insights from what people say that is supposedly "off topic," or only indirectly related, than by what they say directly "on topic." The conversation that develops between everyone is this amorphous thing that continues to change in an organic sort of fashion, shifting with the sands of who joins and drops out and what happens in the members' lives, and what things are said that hit a nerve with folks.

This is just a rough guess, but I would say in the four years the M2M has been in operation, overall we have had maybe 75, perhaps as many as 100 people write in letters to the M2M telling something about their experiences with Hygiene. The real value, though, is you get to know the people who stay on-board for some length of time on an ongoing basis, and in considerable depth, which gives you much better insight into their Hygienic or other vegetarian or "radical diet" experiences and experiments, the predispositions in their thinking, and thus a basis for judging what is really going on with people.

I would not claim that the M2M is a scientific sample. However, I do think it is a unique forum for getting at the truth of people's dietary and health experiences, because:

• Those who write in are enthusiastic about Hygiene or vegetarianism or other "natural food" diets based on some kind of first principles, so you know they are trying hard.

• Their words are unfiltered and unedited, which I believe gives a much better glimpse of the truth of the rank-and-file's results than what we get from the public statements made by the ANHS (the American Natural Hygiene Society, the national organizing body) and the IAHP (the International Association of Hygienic Physicians), who have an image to uphold.

• The ability to cross-examine people tends to elicit the truth from them over time, with the resultant honesty it forces in people unless they are going to drop out. And,

• I think you can pretty reliably assume that even where they are not being completely honest about their level of health and behavior, since people will tend to present even their failings in the best light, you can be pretty sure that if they have problems to discuss, they are really experiencing them.

I learned plenty about this, of course. However, what surprised me--at first, anyway--is that I have learned far more instead about what I call "the psychology of idealistic diets." I discovered that a sizable proportion of Hygienists are experiencing problems and disappointing results--even pronounced problems--on the diet, often in spite of adhering faithfully to the Hygienic program over considerable periods of time (many months or a number of years).

Not everyone does well on raw and/or vegan diets ("failure to thrive"). So the first thing I would say here to set the stage for discussing the psychology of an idealistic health and dietary system is that in Natural Hygiene's case, while it certainly works well for some people, it just doesn't for others, regardless, apparently, of the time span. Yet you don't hear about this in mainstream Hygiene--not from the ANHS or in the books and magazines that are sold anyway. There is a real see-no-evil, hear-no evil, speak-no-evil syndrome. (I have also been told by a Hygienist not connected with the M2M, who has had contact with higher-ups within the ANHS, that they are aware of some of these failings, but simply choose not to mention them.) If problems are acknowledged, they are attributed to lack of discipline in following the program, or in screwing up the details, or not giving things enough time, or that one is focusing only on diet (even when, in fact, they aren't) to the exclusion of other health factors. But never are they attributed to the idea that Natural Hygiene could be incomplete in some way.

I know that I myself found this hard to believe initially, because having read many of the Hygienic books including those by Herbert Shelton (whom I still have a tremendous amount of respect for as a great synthesizer and original thinker in many areas) that were so very convincing as to the wonderful results that were gotten, I thought here at last was a system whose logic and results both showed it to work. And the system was so logical and seemingly all-encompassing as laid out by Shelton, how could it not work for everyone?

The controversies that arise over dietary failures provide an entry point for observing the psychology behind idealistic diets. Eventually, however, I could no longer deny the obvious, and most who have been with the M2M any length of time will tell you this is one of the more eye-opening things about participating in it and being exposed to lots of different people: There really are numerous problem-cases on the Hygienic system of health and diet. Once faced with this, you have to come to terms with it one way or the other. And of course, it is in how people explain the problems where all the controversy lies. We will get into how people react to this state of affairs in depth, but for now I just want to put this on the table here for people to think about.

GO TO NEXT SECTION OF PART 3

(The Attractions and Pitfalls of Purist Black-and-White Dietary Philosophies)

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SEE BIBLIOGRAPHY

SEE TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR: PART 1 PART 2 PART 3

GO TO PART 1 - Setting the Record Straight on Humanity's Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets

GO TO PART 2 - Fire and Cooking in Human Evolution

GO TO PART 3 - The Psychology of Idealistic Diets / Successes & Failures of Vegetarian Diets

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