Quirky

One of the odd mannerisms of Benjamin Franklin was his vegetable diet. He was working for a printer when he encouraged the printer to not eat meat and he say's "I wished to get myself diversion in starving him". It is interesting that even though he tells the printer that this is a healthier way of eating he looks at it in a jovial manner a way to play a practical joke. The printer did suffer from the diet and finally ordered pig inviting guests to join him but, the pig was cooked early and he ate the whole thing before his guests came. Another practical joke he was a part of was when his acquaintances wrote poetry one of them wanted him to pretend it was his because the other fellow always criticized everything he wrote. Sure enough he didn't criticize it when he thought it was from Benjamin. They told him the next day. His acquaintance went to England with him even though he had a wife and a child because he didn't like her relations and planned on never coming back. Even though Benjamin had someone watching out for him he was around some strange characters when he was 18. He courted his wife and promised to return to her since they were too young and he was not set up in a business yet to get married. Now back to the vegetable diet, I wonder if it was the consequence of being beat and abused by his brother that led him to start that diet a means of controlling his environment which sometimes people with eating disorders do. It is interesting that even though the situations change in people's lives with eating disorders they don't change the way they began eating when they were stressed but, continue in the disordered eating through life as it seems Benjamin did. Although he was on a ship when they caught some cod and he says that he is glad we are reasonable people who have to come up with reasons to do things. He decided to eat the cod because they found a little fish inside a smaller one and since it ate it he thought it ok to eat the fish. What is it about eating disorders that frame eating habits that continue through life when in fact the eating habit was only started because of a stressful relationship and a need to control one's environment but, controlling eating? Even when the stressful relationship leaves someone's life they retain the eating habits that were formed why?