Cults essentially perform psychological experiments on their members through implementing thought-reform processes without members' knowledge or consent. Reading, education, and knowledge are encouraged and provided through such agencies as Armed Services Radio and Stars and Stripes, and through books, post libraries, and so on. If cults do any education, it is only in their own teachings. In the USMC, physical fitness is encouraged for all. Cults rarely encourage fitness or good health, except perhaps for members who serve as security guards or thugs.
Many cults encourage or require unhealthy and bizarre diets.
Typically, because of intense work schedules, lack of funds, and other cult demands, members are not able to maintain healthy eating habits. Cults are accountable to no one and are rarely investigated, unless some gross criminal activity arouses the attention of the authorities or the public. In the USMC, the methods of instruction are military training and education, even indoctrination into the traditions of the USMC, but brainwashing, or thought reform, is not used. Cults influence members by means of a coordinated program of psychological and social influence techniques, or brainwashing. The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives , Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich, Jossey-Bass, 1995.