The Monkey Chow Diaries

NPH is bemused by the Monkey Chow Diaries. Here's a guy who has committed to eat nothing but the food that zoos feed to monkeys for seven days. The stuff claims to be a "complete diet for all primates, including the larger apes."

The experiment can be seen as a juvenile stunt, the kind of thing that the internet now allows to be seen by millions. By NPH thinks it's more than that. Here's someone very publicly asking questions about how we North Americans relate to food. How much money do we spend on food? What function does food play in our lives? To the people who live on the continent that consumes the vast majority of the world's food resources, these are pressing questions, and the Monkey Chow Diaries is asking them, at considerable discomfort to the interlocutor.

NPH suggest that the experiment is a kind of postmodern fast, a science and publicity propelled meditation on the most powerful of human appetites.