Tired of shopping, cooking and cleaning up? Baffled by trying to figure out how many calories, vitamins, and minerals are contained in every mouthful? So is Adam Scott -- so he's trying to avoid all the bother by simplifying it all to the nth degree -- he's eating only monkey chow for a week and documenting his progress (?) on his blog at http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html . (NOTE: See Update at bottom of our article for clarification on term "monkey chow.")
Somehow Mr. Scott got his hands on a bag of the chow zoos use to feed their monkeys and apes. This pelletized, nutritionally complete food is supposed to provide a complete diet for primates (which includes humans). He's eating just the chow, which he describes as tasting like "shredded wheat combined with dog food and baked at 400 degrees." Yum.
On the theory that a monotonous and unpalatable diet will decrease food intake, we might expect that Mr. Scott will lose some weight -- but we'll see. The only other items he's consuming are water, black coffee (to stay awake), and vodka (to help him get to sleep). Depending on how much trouble he has sleeping (vodka does have calories), he may end the week trimmer, if not healthier.
In fact, the monkey chow diet may indeed be nutritionally valid. Kudos to Mr. Scott for trying. While we haven't analyzed it the way we have the McDonald's diet, let's assume for the moment that the chow does indeed provide people the balanced nutrition they need, in a calorically efficient manner. Our concern is that this is just like the very low-fat Dr. Ornish diet, in that it has theoretical merit but would be very hard for people to stick to in the real world. It would seem, furthermore, that anyone with the willpower to stick to the monkey chow diet would have the willpower to comply with a more traditional (and tasty) healthy diet anyway. Even monkeys enjoy bananas once in a while.
And this may be where the food police and overzealous regulators have gone wrong. You can't simply tell people what to eat, without considering all of the other roles that food plays in our lives -- such as pleasure and socializing, to name just two. Perhaps instead of eating like monkeys, we can find a way to eat like humans. (Food technology, not zoology, might offer some answers.)
We know that the plethora of diets in the marketplace can be confusing -- and ACSH certainly does not endorse most of them, nor do we endorse this one.
Ruth Kava, Ph.D, R.D., is the Nutrition Director and Jeff Stier, Esq., an Associate Director at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
UPDATE:
Editor's note: We received the following letter about this article.
Dear Sir or Madam:
We search the Internet periodically for various reasons. In one of those searches we came across your web page, http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.758/news_detail.asp . We noticed your generic use of our valuable trademark CHOW with monkey. Your use of "monkey chow" seems to be referring to monkey food in general and not the MONKEY CHOW brand monkey food produced by Purina Mills.
CHOW alone has been registered in the U.S. as a trademark for animal feed since 1915. PUPPY CHOW, DOG CHOW, CAT CHOW, and KITTEN CHOW are also registered trademarks for pet food and are owned by Societe des Produits Nestle S.A., an affiliate of Nestle Purina PetCare Company. Any use of CHOW related to animal or pet food that is not connected to our products damages the uniqueness and value of our trademarks.
Please help us preserve the distinctiveness of our famous and valuable CHOW trademarks by treating them as such either by capitalizing them and/or not using them as a generic term for animal food. We would greatly appreciate it if you would share this information with your staff and the writers of this article and remove the references "chow" if not referring specifically to our brand of food from the article on the above-referenced web page.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Stacy B. Brankovic
Sr. Legal Assistant, I.P. Dept. - 11T
Nestle Purina PetCare Global Resources, Inc.
Checkerboard Square
St. Louis, MO 63164
Editor's response:
Though we have repeated the original blogger's use of the term "monkey chow" as a generic, we do not wish to create any false impressions about the product in question or, worse, lead any potential human dieters astray: the product Adam Scott claims to have consumed was ZuPreem Primate Dry Diet Animal Food.
