Knowing Adolf Hitler was a NewAge, vegetarian, occult-worshipping type, I can't grasp how - after years of kindergarten, elementary, jr. and senior high, and maybe even a college education - The Hitler Youth still grow into adulthood, hearing their master's call:

"Toxins are like cholesterol clogging an artery, except they block the path to woo-woo transcendence instead of the left atrium. Or, as Vanessa Grigoriadis puts it in New York magazine, “Food is the focus of an enormous amount of modern moralism ... One wants to be skinny because one wants to be healthy; one wants to be healthy because one wants to be good.” As religion declines among elite urbanites, a new scripture—“sprouting and enzymes and whatnot”—is swirling into the void.

The problem with this way of thinking is that food and weight are not matters of morality. Thin is not “good,” carbs are not “bad,” and in a world of actual pressing political and social ills, your dinner plate should not be the ground zero of your ethical renewal. Don’t call me evil—or “toxic”—because I’ve never quested after the liquid sublime. (Also, your breath smells like dandelion root.)

But the cleanse mentality is more than just judgmental and irritating: It’s dangerous. Making each meal a drama of discipline, deprivation, and control? Floating along on a superior high that isn’t really about how much weight you’re losing (but actually kind of is about how much weight you’re losing)? Seeking to express your achievements, be they moral, social, or financial, in the most visible terms you can manage? Does anyone else think this sounds a lot like an eating disorder?

Yep,...

 

"We've already gone against what seems to be a law. So why not break other rules? Why not defy right down to the laws of physics?”

Reading this, for me, is almost like sex:

Rebecca Gowns, a 25-year-old freelance editor from Los Angeles, says queer women like herself are drawn to the occult because they “seek outside validation” but don’t want to be talked down to by priests and pastors. Astrologers and psychics are more like trusted, nonjudgmental friends.

I do like being right,...