Essene Gospel of Peace

The Essene Gospel of Peace is an ancient tome filled with arcane secrets found deep in the vaults of the Vatican Library health woo bullshit written by and published in 1928. In it, Jesus tells his disciples to eat raw vegetables, take frequent enemas to cleanse the colon, and not to eat meat.

If you haven't figured it out already, it's a hoax just like every other set of religious scriptures that claim divine authorship (such as the Holy Bible). People are still buying the hoax almost 90 years later, even though the Vatican has denied Szekely ever visited its library or that the manuscripts he cited ever existed. Another claimed source was a manuscript in the monastery of Monte Cassino, Italy, conveniently destroyed in World War Two.

Several sequels have since been published, also claiming to have been translated from gen-yu-ine first century texts. All of his sources appear to be as elusive as Joseph Smith's golden plates.

Szekely was a writer, philosopher and psychologist of Hungarian descent who from the 1920s collaborated with Nobel laureate Romain Rolland on health woo projects (International Biogenic Society) &mdash; unfortunately Rolland's Nobel Prize was for literature, not medicine. In 1940 Szekely and his wife opened a health spa at Rancho La Puerta near San Diego, California, which is still promoting a version of the paleo diet. The spa's diet, which avoids processed carbohydrates and meat, in favour of fish and raw vegetables, is unsurprisingly good for weight loss. Their broccoli and pea guacamole sounds particularly suspicious.