Catharyn Elwood: Nutritionist
(Page 2 of 11)
March/April 1972
By Hal Smith
PLOWBOY: FEEL LIKE A MILLION was first published in 1956. What changes, if any, in national attitudes toward health and foods have you noticed since then?
RELATED CONTENT
John Shuttleworth discusses his experiences living the self-reliant life that Mother Earth News is ...
A Plowboy Interview with Shuttleworth, who discusses everything from the business of the magazine i...
The Plowboy Interview with Amory Lovins, author of the 1976 essay, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not T...
The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert May/June 1981 SCIENCE FICTION'S "YELLOW JOURNALIST" IS A HOMES...
ELWOOD: The changes have been fantastic! It's like a tidal wave. In Washington we once had to advertise and do so many things to get a crowd out for one of my appearances . . . but now I'm wanted everywhere. People are anxious to learn about nutrition today. I'm going to repeat my class at Montgomery College because 340 people registered for the last one. Others at the University of Northern Virginia heard about the course so I'm teaching it over there too.
PLOWBOY: How do you account for this change in attitude about nutrition?
ELWOOD: I don't know. Perhaps it's because we've hit rock bottom. Our diseases are so frightening, our hospitals so overcrowded, we don't have enough doctors and people are tired of having to live on drugs for the rest of their lives. I have a friend my age who is now on a drug program for Parkinson's disease. She has to take L-Dopa every day for the rest of her life. Vitamin B 6 is supposed to be a very specific natural treatment for Parkinson's disease, but here she is taking L-Dopa. People are tired of that and don't want to treat their bodies that way any more.
PLOWBOY: You recommend Adelle Davis. Are there other nutritionists that you endorse?
ELWOOD: Mercy, yes. I recommend anyone who's written anything good on nutrition. All our nutritional information really comes from the research laboratories and it's usually reported in the medical literature.
PLOWBOY: But there are so many "experts" and they often seem to contradict each other. How's the layman to know whose guidance to follow?
ELWOOD: I know the poor laymen are confused and I wish I could say that this is the way to do it. My program works and the people who follow it get results. They start feeling like a million instead of a million years old. You should read the fan mail . . . it's most rewarding.
But then I hear the success stories of other methods and, instead of criticizing them, I say, "Let's find out about it. How did you do it? How did you achieve the cure?" This has made me sympathetic to a good many things that are far out and which don't seem to make any sense.
Macrobiotics, for example, doesn't make any sense — there isn't any vitamin C in the strictest diets — yet I know half a dozen people for whom macrobiotics worked when nothing else would. Whether it's a matter of resting the body, whether there's something soothing about brown rice . . . I don't know what it is but I've heard fabulous tales of success. ( The macrobiotic diets have also produced some miserable failures. They—especially the brown rice-only version—do lack essential nutrients and cases of macrobiotic—induced starvation, anemia and abnormal susceptibility to disease have been reported.—Ed. )
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
Next >>
