what should we call our blog? (really, help!)

I’ll admit it - I read this book.  I knew what I was getting into, and I was happy with an easy-to-read description of veganism that I could get through in under an hour. I knew that I didn’t want to be a vegan, but wouldn’t mind incorporating some mindfulness into my eating, and that cutting back on meat is muy bueno for animals and for the environment as a whole.

Okay, disclaimer over.   What I, and presumably many others reading the book, interpreted as the sassy, somewhat annoying, but overall easier-to-read-than-science-jargon tone of the book is now being derided as encouraging eating disorders.  Says this Salon profile: “Thanks to ‘Skinny Bitch,’ women who hate their bodies no longer need rely on their own self-loathing to stoke the flames of what seems like motivation but is actually self-flagellation — penance for the sin of being too fat. Now dieters can have the convenience of a former model (Barnouin) and a former modeling agent (Freedman) putting their transgressions in the black-and-white terms of right and wrong. ‘If you eat crap,’ they chirp, ‘you are crap.’”

I didn’t pick up on the way the book’s tone might sound to individuals struggling with eating disorders (one of the many joys of not suffering from one), but now that it’s been pointed out I have no trouble believing it.  We all beat ourselves up over something, and sometimes the voices in our heads sound a lot like “Skinny Bitch.”  

Like anything, this book seems pretty harmless in moderation.  It reaffirmed my belief that limiting dairy is the health thing to do (although, to be fair, it’s not hard to convince a lactose-intolerant person of that!).  And it made me think about the additives that go into processed food, making me want to eat a lot less of it.  But no book, including one photographed in the hands of VIctoria Beckham (see above photo), should be touted as the gospel, or the little voice that belongs in our heads.

And anyway - I’m on to the absolutely fabulous and infinitely better Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  This one’s written by a NY Times journalist and was one of the Times’ top 10 books of 2006.  I will definitely be keeping you posted (sneak preview: there are 45,000 products available in the grocery store, and a full 25% of them contain corn.  Scary!).

See today’s NYT blurb and the original NYT review of Skinny Bitch.

 ~Amy