First, Do Some Harm

Redpills come in a wide variety of grades and dosages. As far as health and nutrition is concerned, a classic “gateway” redpill is hospital food. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be laid up in the hospital, or to visit a friend or loved one there, you probably won’t need to be told how terrible the food is. I remember vividly, back when I was perhaps a little less health-conscious than I am now, visiting my grandfather after he had a stroke. A nurse appeared and dumped a scuffed plastic tray on my grandfather’s lap. This, apparently, was lunch. Item one: a plate of three different kinds of watery mush, which pooled separately and refused to mix, as if somehow they were chemically incompatible with one another. Item two: a small cup of the thinnest squash I’d ever seen. Item three: a token, rather sad-looking, banana, exiled to the outer rim of the tray. And that was it. How, I asked myself, would any of this help an 81-year-old man to rally from a devastating stroke that had left him immobile and incontinent? The situation was only made worse, for me at least, by the fact that I had to try and feed my grandfather this dreck myself.

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