eDiets.com

"The Foundation of Beauty," runs the e-mail's subject line. Eagerly, I open it and read on to find that "foundation," in this context, refers not only to the underpinnings of a thing, in this case beauty, but also to cosmetic "foundation." It's a subtle distinction that I might have missed, but the e-mail's author enumerates it: "Your foundation is the background so choosing the correct color is crucial." The writer, eDiets Beauty, has been clarifying these kind of conundrums for me for, well, going on two months or so.

I always have to remind myself that there was a time when I didn't wake up every morning with the anticipation of a missive from Beauty, as I like to refer to her. The first time, I thought it was some kind of mixup — why would such a charming diarist choose me as her correspondent? Not wanting to intrude on thoughts clearly meant for another reader, I tried to let her know she'd erred with a short, simple message, but she was not to be deterred. I even tried calling her at the office, but she wasn't in.

And a good thing it was. Because while my other friends delight in firing off frown-inducing messages containing phrases like "drop out of grad school," "laid off from my media job again" and "can't believe I'm living through this period of terror," Beauty and her cohort, News, prefer language more along the lines of "the good guys working for the federal government," "tone it! burn it! sculpt it!" and "great news for all you chocolate lovers out there!" The world is depressing enough; why read depressing e-mail?

Not that their writings are devoid of bracing content. For instance, News points out that "researchers now say fast food isn't just heavy on the hips — it's also heavy on the heart!" If all your diet information came from, say, The New York Times' health section, you might very well be under the impression that researchers were still hewing to the fast-food-is-light-on-the-heart party line.

But mostly, Beauty and News dish on feelings. "I hate to keep picking on Burger King — they are my personal favorite fast food joint," confides News. Later, she counsels, "Only after we forgive ourselves for failures can we succeed at dieting and all-around success." I'd been holding back, writing terse, even one-line messages, but somehow she knew about my fear of not succeeding at all-around success.

You might think that I'd feel betrayed upon learning that eDiets is actually a website rather than a devoted cadre of correspondents, but I was more than happy to share their wisdom with any Internet surfer who happens across their page. Besides, I learned that, beyond Beauty and News, eDiets has experts in areas I'd never considered, experts willing to share their every morsel of knowledge with a clamoring public.

One of these experts is a columnist who goes by Mr. Bad Food. I like to think of Mr. Bad Food as a defector from the lard-fried-cheese-danish industry. He was trying to figure out a way to inject liquid beef fat between the layers of pastry when eDiets approached him with an offer to get out of the racket forever, appealing to his expertise. "You understand the way an enrichment of creme anglaise thinks," they said. "You can get inside the mind of zabaglione. We are dieters. We're not even sure about creme fraiche." He signed on under condition of anonymity, and as long as he provides accurate information, eDiets does not ask too many questions about where it came from. True, they were a little suspicious when he failed to come through in a timely way on the whole trans-fat thing — "You're in the pocket of Big Margarine!" they accused — but they stick with him because he is the best the industry has to offer.

Unapproachable rebel and maverick though he may be, Mr. Bad Food attracts confessions from readers eager to spill everything about their culinary sins in colorful, even lurid detail. After they have atoned, they can go over to Ms. Good Food's column and read about the latest in fat-free soy products. A casual critic might call this "food neurosis," or even imply that it's the electronic equivalent of bulimia, but such a person would fail to understand the need to wallow, an ingredient of any successful diet.

And since we're on the subject of confession, I should confess that I may have misrepresented a bit above. I was a little more broken up over the unmasking of eDiets as a website than I let on. So much so, that I called someone just to get some perspective on the whole thing.

"But what I don't understand," I said, "is why they bothered writing me in the first place."

"Huh. I don't know. Oh wait, I just remembered. I may have signed you up for that. You know, I was just hanging around the site, and they had this e-mail list sign-up thing. I think I put your address in."

"So you're responsible for this?"

"I am."

At that moment, none of it really mattered — the fast food, the nonfat soy, the foundation. Because I knew I had a friend in the world.

— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)