Article October 5, 1899 ISSUE

Food Fear

Philadelphia Press

"There is a new disease," said a bright woman yesterday, as several of us sat over the teacups. "The scientific name of the malady is a big mouthful, of course. But in simple Anglo-Saxon it is just the 'fear of food' or 'food fear.' "

It sounds like a paragraph from one of Frank Stockton's delightful nonsense stories,—but it isn't. It is a sober, serious problem and doctors are diagnosing it as such. If you doubt the existence of this fear go into some high-grade grocer shop and ask to see the health foods. You will be astounded. The list of these would take up columns in a newspaper. New ones are coming to market every year. Healthy men and women are calling for "predigested nutrition" and "sanitary foods." Hundreds of otherwise reasoning and reasonable people sit down to a table in doubt and leave it in dread. Dyspeptic food faddists are responsible for the malady. Food fear is said to be a direct result of the mania for diet questions which has been raging over the country during the past few years.

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