Letters to the Editor
-
Sounds like a marketing gimmick that's at the same time more genuine than any other diet book
I'm a vegetarian who respects vegans, and to whom cries of "sanctimonious!" sound like the cries of the slacker kids in school against the smart kids who actually work and try things that are hard.
It's pretty obvious, through the examples mentioned in this piece, that the angle and tone the book is taking is just another variation on modern and edgy marketing--it stands out, it grabs your attention.
To single it out as having some kind of sinister agenda seems a bit unfair, though, especially when you stop and think about what the "agenda" really is. The book's "agenda" is to get you to consider where your food comes from, what processes are involved in creating it, and what effects that has on those people and creatures involved in those processes.
In other words, its agenda is to put your consumption into a larger, honest context, instead of solely focusing on what makes you fat.
Viewed in this light, it seems to me that most other diet books come off looking bad, because they're completely selfish and self-obsessed in nature: what is good and bad for me, what will make me look good, and so on. No talk about anything beyond the opening of your own mouth and the supermarket.
So, which is a worse agenda: educating people about what actually is involved in the food they eat, or an author's pursuit of personal profit by focusing solely on the narcissistic vanity of someone who'd rather remain ignorant of the messy realities behind our sanitized food consumption?
The writer seems to have fallen into the same knee-jerk reaction that much of society has to truths it doesn't want to have to deal with--demonize the source, reject the notion that what we do unthinkingly can be wrong, and make hapless victims out of people who are perfectly empowered but prefer to remain ignorant.
It's only natural to feel this rejection reaction--it's the same thing that addicts feel when confronted--but it should be a signal to open a door of understanding, not to slam it shut and blame the messenger.