Drink Milk and Die

Marianne commented on At Risk:

I read this book thinking it would be sort of a funny satire-type thing, not a serious book giving serious advice about eating and nutrition….and it turns out it is not really either thing. I read the entire book, and what it actually is about is pushing a completely vegan diet. I’m not sure the motivation of the authors was good nutrition or even diet or weight loss at all, their agenda was getting people to stop eating meat and dairy. I can’t remember how much time they spent on encouraging exercise, but I don’t think it was much. The majority of the book spouts scientific facts about meat and dairy and why neither thing is any good for anyone. Agree or disagree (I myself didn’t find it all that helpful), but it’s NOT a book about diet or exercise.

This is a fair criticism of my post: I did not make explicit the vegan agenda–not to use a loaded term or anything–that makes up a large portion of the book. (Actually, it’s not just veganism. You have to buy vegan organic foods, and they give you a list of recommended brands, many of which this veganophile foodie in the greenest finickiest foodiest city on the planet has never heard of.) There are volumes that could be written about the attitudes towards bodies exhibited in that book. I wanted to tackle one particular aspect from a personal angle.

Also, I have a healthy respect for veganism when it’s adopted for political or health reasons by people who seem not to hate themselves or others. I’ve met my share of Savonarolic vegans, but their counterparts are not exactly scarce amongst the omnivores either–and as a recovering anorexic omnivore, I recognize the pathological attitude as one that can attach to virtually any dietary program. While I have never met any in person, I know there were Atkins fanatics who derived sanctimonious pleasure from abstaining from tortilla chips and strawberry jam.

I should point out, though, that veganism can exacerbate the threat posed by eating as punishment. Veganism in an omivorous culture is not a casual committment. It’s feasible, but it requires planning and dietary education. If you aren’t paying informed attention, it’s really easy to cheat yourself of vital nutrients, and to create deficiencies that you might not notice immediately. Healthy veganism is incompatible with a philosophy of deprivation. Surviving as vegan means assiduously replacing all those foods that are no longer on your menu, frequently with rich substitutes. Anorexics in particular have a tendency to confuse “emaciated” with “fit,” and cannot be trusted to worry about red flags like dizzy spells.

While I agree that this book is very pro-veganism, it is pushing veganism in a “healthy” “eating” way. Veganism is a diet, both in the technical sense and in the fatphobic sense, if the people telling you to be vegan are telling you to avoid cheese because of teh FAT!1!!, which will make you teh lardass. These vegans are taking advantage of a poisonous phobic attitude towards food, nourishment, and (female) human bodies in order to get women to reject meat and dairy, not encouraging them to become political agents with respect to their consumerist habits. It is possible that this is a calculated attempt to exploit body-hatred in order to spare the pilloried chickens, rather than veganism for fatphobia’s sake. Given the base level of constraint advocated by other diet books, I see no reason to assume that.

There’s also a punitive attempt to impose control and responsibility where it might not be possible. It’s sort of like the difference between, say, making pregnant women into self-advocates and telling pregnant women that a glass of red wine in the second trimester will cause their children to be born without heads. What I reacted to most strongly was the undertone of purity that is anti-human. That type of perfection is an unattainable goal, and therefore an end in itself. The point is not to achieve it, but to fail and make oneself miserable in the attempt.