HEALTH FOOD DEATH ALIVE AND WELL...

I remember being a kid in the 1970s. Yes, I'm that old. Get over it, OK? My dad lived in the East Village. This was the heyday of "health food". And a time when such food was not consumed by the masses but primarily by ascetics and masochists. People did things like drink their own urine and allow themselves to be stung by bees for the supposed health benefits. This was before Whole Foods, clearly.

So, there was a small health store on the corner of 9th st and 1st ave in the East Village of NYC that my dad and I would go to occasionally (for what reason, I am not sure). I remember him remarking at how oddly unhealthy all the employees and shoppers appeared: Greenish skin, bones jutting out in places where bones don't normally jut, dark circles under their eyes. And at that time it was almost like you weren't a proper health food person unless you looked kinda like you were dying, wore black slippers from china town, and carried a mesh bag full of kale, mung beans, and bee pollen.

Flash forward: 36 years later. I am living in Georgia. It is not the 70s. Highways and fast food. Virtually everybody is at least 10 pounds overweight: They, I assume will die of things other than anemia. And as far as I know, the term "macrobiotic" is no longer in use. But I discover, one day that "death by health food is not dead".

One afternoon, I go to a small independent health food store on my way home from therapy and choose to eat  my beans and greens in their "dining room", with cutlery made from corn starch and plates made from recycled UPS boxes. Across from me sits a person, neither 100% man, nor 100% woman, neither young nor old, neither dead nor alive, but most definitely100% miserable. He/she eats thin, under salted lentil soup and stares blankly ahead. Flat affect, green skin, bags under eyes (which match the mesh bag), clothes which all are some version of the color of mud. Suddenly, magically...I am transported back to the East Village of the 70s. Here in this chubby corporate city, there are still the walking dead of the health food world, kickin' it old-school.