Letters to the Editor
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While the style is ... "interesting", the diet recommendations are good
Ms. Klausner seems overly concerned with the style of this book. While I agree that the style is not for everyone (I found it quite funny, but I've never had an eating disorder, so I'm not qualified to judge its effect on those who have), the diet recommendations (which are, as Ms. Klausner points out, basically to eat a vegan diet) are reasonable.
Compare Freedman and Barnouin's diet recommendations to those in Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live. Dr. Fuhrman is an honest-to-god MD, with years of practice in nutrition, and Eat to Live is overwhelmingly well referenced -- the last 60 or so pages are references, most of which are to medical journals. Presumably Ms. Klausner would admit Dr. Fuhrman's qualifications in this department.
And, what does Dr. Fuhrman recommend? Not quite as extreme a vegan diet as Freedman and Barnouin, but it's in the same genre: red meat essentially never, chicken very rarely, fish only occasionally, and he recommends getting most of your calories from vegetables. (If you actually plan out a diet where most of the calories come from vegetables, it will look overwhelmingly vegan; 3 pounds of broccoli have about the same number of calories as 1/4 pound of steak.) He also essentially says that animal fat is evil, and the only way to avoid animal fat is to eat vegan.
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Veganism doesn't dictate your weight!
As a vegetarian (but not a vegan) I totally understand the impulse to evangelize about the treatment and processing of food animals, but I can also understand the author's anger with the bait-and-switch technique, not to mention the whole hateful tone of of this type of book: maybe some women think it is funny to be sworn at and abused by other women, but whatever. It's a taste thing and I can't claim it should be illegal.
However: the central premise, that being a vegan will make you skinny, is flawed. As several posters have already pointed out, "overweight" or "non-skinny" vegans are abundant. I know many of them. Vegan eating is not necessarily slimming; many vegan foods are carobohydrate and calorie rich, even high in fat, like, say peanut butter.
I have also know a couple of "skinny bitches" who were into hard-core veganism not for the fabulousness but because (so they claimed) of ethical and health reasons. The two skinny vegans I knew were two of the sickliest, skinniest, palest, emaciated, dried-up looking girls, IN THEIR TWENTIES and their early thirties, that I have ever known. Both constantly sick, pale, blotchy, dry skin, with bony frail bodies. Everyone used to laugh at them when they'd proclaim that they ate vegan for their health.
After reading this article and some of the letters it just occurred to me that they might have been masking eating disorders with their veganism. However, I have known many vegans who were not doing so with their dietary practices. So they were not skinny--nor bitchy, I might add. Being a vegan does not make you bitchy. Just so everybody doesn't think ill of all vegans, based on this article.
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Outrageous outrage
So the writer is outraged that someone would dare to espouse a vegan diet, which she describes as "extremist?" I wonder if she is equally outraged by the millions upon millions of dollars our government spends promoting meat and dairy consumption and subsidizing these products that cause so many diseases so that they are affordable? You suck, bitch!
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"Skinny Bitch" is about right
One of my co-workers read "Skinny Bitch" & "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch" and has taken every word as gospel. Ever since she started following the "Skinny Bitch" diet, she's become crankier and snaps at anyone who crosses her. She also spends her lunch hours preaching to us about how wonderful the vegan lifestyle is.
She is not yet skinny, but the book has certainly helped turn her into a bitch.
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I am of two minds, each more or less in disagreement with all of you
(With apologies to Peter Ustinov for the title.)
On the one hand, I have no love for vegan self-righteousness, and too many Salonistas have drunk deeply of that Kool-Aid. Your dietary preference is arbitrary, capricious, and nutritionally unsound; it is sublimated anorexia in a very thin disguise. Your ideas are bad and you should feel bad.
On the other hand, the feminista whining about anorexia brings to mind once again the fact that feminists are the worst misogynists around. Do you really think that women are so weak and stupid that an ill-written, airheaded book will make them starve to death? Dogs aren't that dumb. If you think women are that idiotic, why do you support their right to vote? I give them more credit than that.
It's nice to see two stupid ideologies in combat with one another. The only misfortune is that only one of them is likely to lose.
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"jettisoned the book sales to bestseller status"
jet·ti·soned, jet·ti·son·ing, jet·ti·sons
1. To cast overboard or off: a ship jettisoning wastes; a pilot jettisoning aircraft fuel.
2. (Informal) To discard (something) as unwanted or burdensome: jettisoned the whole marketing plan.
Editors, please note.
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no it's a crackpot idea
I understand all progressive writers have to say that all PoVs are wonderful and earnest and 'there are good reasons to be vegan....but....' but in reality, at least the reality of human biology, veganism is a crackpot idea. It's a cult and like all cults it's founded on fear, magic, superstition and bullying.
So go tip your hat in the obligatory breathless warm embrace of PC post modernist claptrap (what about all the good things antebellum slavery or Hitler did.....?) but it makes you sound about as retarded as you can be. Humans are not herbivores.
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Brendon, not the same thing at all.
The only thing that "Skinny Bitch" and "Eat to Live" have in common is the lack of meat. The "Eat to Live" diet is sensible and sane and, as you say, well-researched by a practicing MD. The "Skinny Bitches" don't really care what you eat, as long as it's not animal. Their suggested menus contain very little actual food -- very little of anything, in fact. They're poorly thought out and rely heavily on unsustainable, heavily processed, expensive non-foods like the aforementioned vegan Canadian bacon.
All vegetarian and vegan diets are not alike.