We’re long past the age of trendy vegetarianism and sanctimonious veganism. We’re neck deep into the voluntarily gluten-free and locally sourced era—the ketosis and paleo epoch—but, there’s always room for a new lifestyle that involves bizarre dietary limitations.
Behold, some of the hottest, new eating habits for the current year! Presented for you to evaluate and choose, so that you might bring them up assertively when ordering at a restaurant—to flummox and chagrin the already-too-patient waitstaff serving your ass.
This diet requires you to eat insect protein as a replacement for vegetables and meat. Earwig flour, cricket meal, tube grubs and other crawly critter products are your friends, as you avoid disgusting chicken, beans or wheat. There are already commercially-marketed snacks made of bugs out there, so it won’t be long before the Earwigger finds itself at boutique cafes and on special menus at conventional restaurants.
Eschewing the low-carb mentality that has dominated the 21st century, the Candyman diet focuses on deriving nutrition from sweet confections. The food pyramid starts with a solid foundation of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, then a plateau of delicious gummi, with chocolate-covered fruits coming next, marshmallow and nougat topping that and crowned with a subtle amount of licorice. The movement’s mascot is actor Tony Todd, who played the titular "Candyman" in the 1992 film of the same name. That said, Todd himself wants nothing to do with them, and they are notably discounting that the character was responsible mostly for hooks to the face (and not dietary advice).
In this lifestyle diet, only round foods are permitted. Gone are such abrasively angular foods as candy bars, eclairs, dinner rolls, waffles, Wendy’s hamburgers and those crazy Japanese watermelons. In are oranges, lollipops, meatballs, regular hamburgers and those spherical personal watermelons. There is heated debate in the Round-Up diet community as to whether toric foods like doughnuts and bagels should be permitted, with the two camps bitterly opposed, going so far as to call one another "spheroids" and "torusheads," respectively.
These bold individuals are taking eco-conscious, locally-sourced diets to the extreme—eating nothing but invasive species or pests found in their area. Rats, mice, squirrels, Asian carp, cane toads and kudzu are in with a vengeance. Don’t get fat—eat that rat!
This diet is fairly flexible, as alternative diets go—it allows you to eat anything Roseanne Barr would. Naturally, this includes a large spectrum of plants, animals, minerals and a healthy dose of Ambien. Side effects of this diet include alleged racism and a shrieky singing voice.
Now, don’t confuse this with the already popular Paleo diet, which simulates the eating habits of pre-agrarian early man. This diet is different from that, in a few key ways—notably, you can’t eat anything that doesn’t grow in a cave. Mushrooms are in, as are albino suckerfish fillets and bat fritters. Side effects include your children being born without eyes.
Of Coursicans subsist entirely on horse, horse byproducts and horse-flavored things. They recently petitioned chewing gum manufacturer Hubba Bubba to make horse gum, with modest success. Also, the Fiji water company has recently introduced Horse2O—action horsewater, to appeal to this ever-growing crowd. They are known to eat glue and consume large amounts of gelatin.
This diet upends the trend of the popular "Raw Food" lifestyle and turns it into Monday’s most-electrifying dieting entertainment: you eat foods based on popular professional wrestling figures. There’s the High-In-Iron Sheik Week, the Andre The Giant "Anybody Want A Peanut" Legumes-Only Week, the Cold Stone Steve Austin Week (that’s all ice cream), the Latino Heat Week of spicy Mexican food, the "Mean Greens" Okerlund Raw Vegetable Week, and naturally, the Macho Ham Randy Savage Week of pork products.
The Clear Conscience diet forbids the eating of anything you can’t see through, at least a little. Water, Crystal Pepsi, Jell-O, rice paper, skinned grapes, jellyfish, raw egg whites and vodka are the most popular foods for people embracing this lifestyle, which claims to have "transparent motives," be "crystal clear" and other puns pertaining to a lack of opaqueness.
Starvers, as they’re known, don’t starve themselves—quite the opposite, in fact. You see, the core of this dietary group’s motivations is in helping others, rather than themselves. Based on the popular admonishment that there are "starving children in Africa," issued to youth who don’t consume all the food on their plates, the Starvers deliberately help themselves to too much when they’re eating, but for a reason; believing in direct action, anything they cannot consume is bagged, vacuum sealed and sent directly to Africa, where it will surely feed all those kids from the TV commercials with the big eyes.
Stringers cap off their empty stomachs with cans of non-toxic Silly String. From what they claim, a mere six cans a day can provide all the nutritional requirements for most adults without spray-product allergies.
Ampingtons believe that a slender figure and keen mental insights can come with a diet of no food, no sleep and this one weird chemical that you can make in your garage. Side effects include risks of explosion, conversations with inanimate objects and a powerful lust for collecting copper wire. So, there we have it—the new lifestyle dietary movements we’re sure to see more of in this and forthcoming years.
I expect that the menu at all your favorite places will change to accommodate these, just like the "lose the roll, get a bowl" and the "I’m loudly vegan" eras. If you’re not sure which one of these new, first-world luxury diet plans is for you, contact someone who shares a name with some kind of fruit.
Here’s to your health!
