BONUS: The Conservative Diet Books of Yore

i have one 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 responsive bootstraps 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 comings and according to a text message you sent last night we're today talking about conservative diet books yes we're talking about the gop but it stands for go on a plan no that wasn't that good i really like like but the challenge here is i don't think anybody calls a diet a plan yeah i know give me time to work on 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 share have a diet book okay so there are 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 up front about their political get out the paleo let me keep doing these out i'm gonna have the paleo good job more 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 hell yeah yeah yeah yeah let's get into this and then it was just about like federal budgets and like obliterating the social safety net oh i thought it was gonna be like roast bald eagle and shit you know no it was a bummer but it was not the kind of bummer i was looking for oh a fun bummer i know 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 what yes what yes yes if it was popular enough which it definitely was not i would have been like we should do this on it books could kill do you know what i mean like hang on i'm coming over we're doing this one because it's garbage so today we're gonna look at three different diet books it is a classic maintenance phase crescendo so brace 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 going to 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 yeah okay so good god okay so it's the i heart america diet by someone named phyllis george and bill adler and the cover is like this bright rubik's cube red with like 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 blonde 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 it's like this is a red flag the barbie doll woman is phyllis george it is the author of the book ostensibly not nice uh her career started as 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 yes obviously 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 bikey town same whenever i'm in portland i'm like i get into the bikey town bike 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 going to be the i heart america diet with the barbie doll lady in it also a ton of people you know tsa pre-check how it's like pre-dash and then like a check emoticon but everyone ignores that so they'll just say like i have tsa pre-dash and then like a check emoticon but everyone ignores 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 11 pages of notes i think about that 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 yes out so lovingly but absolutely i know we we appreciate you and we're we're wildly self-conscious now and we're mortified okay 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 yeah this is how i became symmetrical wow thanks 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 i heart new york diet which i also have is that just a bunch of like pizza slices and sewer rats step one former rat king with other rats future maintenance phase bonus app this book was published in 1983 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 people and it was published in 1983 in med school professors interesting we will get into why that is momentarily the main thing that we are going to 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 so i'm going to go ahead and read this book and i'm going to go ahead and read this book i'm going to send you we're going to go through bit by bit we're not going to 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 to eat it tells you how to eat it tells you the ways 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 diet you're 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 the description give 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 problematic through lines in this little paragraph well i picked this one out because i was like oh cameos we've got the president's physical fitness tests we've also got the u.s 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 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 it 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 hard to be offended by it it really is so weird and surreal this Description also lists out the things that you can do on this diet, which also felt really reminiscent of 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 because 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 boot camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just push-ups. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It says, lose up to 11 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 foods. 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. Yeah. 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 80s low-fat or low-calorie diet meal plans. Like, 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. It's 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. Okay. 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 80s. It was so much. I have, listen, Stockholm Syndrome has been debunked, but I have it with cottage cheese. I continue to enjoy it. I enjoy cottage cheese. I have tried to get into cottage cheese so many times. I've tried. I'm like, I want to like this. It seems fine. And every time I do it, I just, it's like opera. It's not for you. Yeah. Aubrey, what if we wrote 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, divided a bunch of, like, bomb-ass recipes. And we were like, you can make this. You can make these. You can not make these. You can eat them. I don't give a shit. Or, like, literally anything else. Any, whatever portion makes you feel full and happy. Like, what if, 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, shrimp that's poached in coconut milk. And, like, ginger. And, like, it's fucking killer. I would get that out into the world. Yeah. The last thing I will say about this particular tip. Okay. 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 13 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, Oh. So, like, I didn't, I didn't read it. Like, Shirsty told me about it. And I, you know. That's 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 blurb books. And I'm just like, I will not be reading this book. 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, What does that even mean? Comprehensive? That means it's, 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 I Heart 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 value. No, you're not learning anything. You're not growing as a person. You're not getting thiamine out of this. Book two, Michael, are you ready? Book two, gimme. Book two. Book two is called The Love Diet. Oh, The Love Diet. Another heart cover. Another heart on the cover. This one's written by someone named John Daubert. John Daubert 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 Daubert's First Aid for Marriage, and If Being a Christian is So Great. Why do I have the Blahs? That one actually sounds good. I also have the Blahs. Maybe he has tips. This one was published in 1977. 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. 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 Daubert 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 attitude. 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 that. 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 motivated out of love you're right to be confused by this use the love we have how to 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 together 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 95 they figured out the arch function so it says the love diet and there's like a little tagline by john dockerfield small font 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 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 neck veins okay we'll get there just a trim little man at 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 yeah it's like yeah that's what we've been doing for like thousands of years and it's bad also it's 1977 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 literally everyone's lives worse 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 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 10 of all my food that's the that's the key to losing weight i look at a meal and i cut off 10 of it i put it in the collection plate i just saved 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 really his forward 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 to lose the battle that you dedicated your entire life to 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 forward is just like two pages and it's just like here's what readers can expect to find in the rest of the book and then the rest of the forward is just 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 uh send me the introductory paragraph okay so i just sent you a picture of the first paragraph of james dobson's forward i'm so excited uh as a person who has worked long hours and carried heavy responsibilities through the years i am well acquainted with the 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 concern 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 yep 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'm 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 it is so funny to me to think that like i'm like did any editor ever yeah yeah 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 and make more money and make more money and make more money then it spins and then like draws out this extended metaphor on this like extremely easy to understand concept yes yes like oh in levels so can i walk you through the three love levels oh yeah because now i'm i've been in first gear and i'm experiencing mechanical failure i this is normally where you would say something like i'm intrigued and i appreciate that you didn't because you're not because there's nothing to be i'm not there's nothing here but i i love empty i love you according to dobert 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 it's 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 chloe 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 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 it's jiggling too much it's still it's still vibrating from when i was jumping right here picture yourself 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 i know it should be overweightness 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 i'm trying to impose like some form of coherence onto this book which is clearly just 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 lies 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 trying to figure out what i'm doing right now this is what i'm thinking right now this is what i'm thinking right now this is what i'm thinking right now this is what i'm thinking right now this is 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 uh michael are you ready for love level three i think i figured it out i think it's gonna be god oh fuck god damn it is it it's love of god jobs 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 oh so i'm recruiting people to christianity with my like rippling abs people are like yes wait a minute mike none of you was jiggling in the mirror yeah i'm like thanks bible he created everything and he's also like 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 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 i'm the bible yes i just want you to be hot and shitty 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 this for a long time been doing some reading lately about uh spiritual abuse is this a term you've come across 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 worldview 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 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 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 yeah 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 1990s i want everyone to have like a long skinny torso and like right now jesus wants you to have like thick hips because 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 boot cut is out skinny jeans are in oh oh buddy 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 on trend i'm a 40 year old this is what uh having a 15 year old niece will do to a person oh see you actually know what the kids are doing because i get corrected on it yeah what are you doing why are you wearing that you're at my school and that's what you're wearing she's like keigo 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 oh yeah i feel like i will hear when you get it oh what yeah wait what this exists this exists and i own it i'm so sorry holy shit okay 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 shemaine 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 everything else i can get at costco absolutely there are definitely bear recipes in this one mike what do you know about ted nugent oh 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 gun dude now 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 yeah it's like he shows up and i'm like this is a uh i guess a famous person but he's like famous to other people for reasons i don't understand we are gonna listen to the opening riff of this song which i think will get you oriented to who he is i've heard this yeah that's him wait let me let's wait till the beat drops damn it oh yeah 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 74 year old man from michigan you know so he's like a 80s rocker guy like hair it sounds like hair metal but then the cover of the album does not look hair metal-y he is reliably described as like a hard rock musician okay sort of how folks describe him 70s 80s was sort of his high point okay um since then he has really been a big fan of the music industry and he's been a big fan of the music industry and he's been a big fan of the music industry and he's been a big fan of the music industry 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 okay there we go 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 right geez he called president obama quote a subhuman mongrel oh my god i mean he is like here's my question for you mike what year do you think this cookbook came out graphic design says i want to 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 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 1996 oh you are a lot closer than i was i assumed this was like late 80s early 90s okay this book was somehow published in 2002 wait really 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 unhinged 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 from 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 no it's a 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 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 beliefs 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 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 overeducated 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 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 but i'm like now i only know how to say things in confusing ways question mark you have an attitude that is out of confidence 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's 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 why are politicians blurbing a wild game cookbook from a guy who from like a total weirdo like a deep weirdo who again is just like proudly shouting his racism from the rooftops yeah and his biggest hit was at this point a solid 20 years ago right better suited to be at vh1 i love the 80s 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 chapter titles include rock and roll hog mando hog mando i like my pork pissed off these don't even make any sense i like my rare but not that rare and a chapter just called this is two words it's gonna sound like four words it's two words first word the first word is sex fried what sex fried you've melted down we lost aubrey 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 new york unique new york yeah red leather yellow leather sex fry 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 overrides it i don't know i don't it's like you know two sentences that's like hey man this language has been new gentized or something where you're like 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 are so many chapters each chapter has like one to three recipes in it we're like this is not a great cookbook this seems like one of those books that's just like very blatantly a cash-in absolutely we're like he probably wasn't meaningfully involved and it's just like put him on the cover people buy it no one will actually read it or engage with it anyway 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 wife like all right ted all right we already got it with sex fried 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 kind of like subliterate like quote-unquote word play 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 for this barbecue sauce are tomato sauce the quantity listed is just lots 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 for it is very funny of like sorry can you stop performing masculinity now i'd actually like to get the amounts for the recipe totally you're like weird toxic bullshit is like making the recipe useless there is also a recipe that they note is contributed by shemaine 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 okay potatoes carrots onion two cans of coca-cola okay and a jar of sweet chutney sweet like jarred sweet chutney that you can get in the u.s 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 end it would be great if you had some vinegar or some lemon juice or you had some red pepper flakes yeah 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 yeah and you mix it up and it's like then you add a bunch of slices of american cheese and some 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 you know there is an audience for this but it's not home chefs 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 grassroots 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 57 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 recipe in here at some point 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 astonishing it's okay to eat meatloaf ted 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 extraordinary conservative logic to it which is like personal responsibility you got to 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 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 bad yeah and we don't really think about our opportunities to like reject the entire fucking premise right that's why our advice in the show is get out of these programs i'm out of them i'm out of them you