Why is it that when you eat those ninety nine percent fat free Yoplait yogurts that come in unnatural flavors like boo berry crunch or coffee banana, you don't really feel like the women in the Yoplait commercials who act like their practically having an orgasm when consuming this tasteless, bland, pretty nasty fat free mush that's loaded with artificial sugars, sweeteners, hfcs and saccharin? And afterwards, you don't really feel guilt free. You just feel hungry. You feel like roaming around looking for subsidence. You might binge on the empty calories of Wheat Thins or chocolate doughnuts which starts off a vicious cycle of nutrient deficiencies. The more you binge on junk, the more nutritionally deficient you become.
Try a lifetime of this. It might lead to some pretty serious consequences like eating neurosis, constant bingeing on carbs and general deterioration of health not to mention the pure idea of living your whole life as a sacrifice to the slave of the fat-free.
Lierre Keith tells you why those fat free yogurts taste like crap in her compelling book, "The Vegetarian Myth". Before you get all defensive about the value of having desserts disguised as health foods in your diary aisle, consider the ideas presented in this book that are pretty valid even to the most middle of the road dairy enthusiast and deserve the critical thought Keith gives them.
First, the idea that civilization is a source of human happiness and contentment is a myth and you don't need to quote the statistics of sky high depression rates to believe it. Second, the idea that eating plants is better for you than eating animals and that plants don't want to be eaten any more than animals do and have some pretty nasty chemical tricks up their stems to ward off predators i.e. us. Third, the idea of symbiosis which has no expression in our industrial civilization at all. The idea that we evolved out of the need to consume the energy of the sun and since we can't photosynthesize, digest grass, but we can digest the animals who eat grass and thus the energy of the sun makes it to us.
These ideas are so important, so fundamental to life itself but yet so many modern civilized people have no idea abut them. So many people are removed from their food and are brainwashed to eat the differentiated products of the agriculture industry that many people have never tasted real food or don't even have the slightest idea of the cycle of big fish eating little fish.
Keith's at her best when she's explains the Cholesterol Myth and how the low fat diet was propagated in order serve the economics of an agriculture industry rather than telling people to eat what they want, which would be high fat delicious foods and actually enjoy their lives. Oh, Keith's chapters on this subject are fascinating, hard to put down and a well needed eye opener.
What it comes down to, is the old question of the Matrix-red-pill-or-the-blue-pill question that so many people would rather read the easy to digest food stories of Michael Pollan rather than really discuss the underlying issues that our food system represents. Those being agriculture leads to empires which leads to endless war for resources which leads to Peak oil, overpopulation, diseases of civilization and so much more.
Which is why I really highly recommend this book to everyone even those who are not vegetarian or interested in food issues. Keith goes where so many best selling authors can't go because they have to please a whole wide range of people to maintain their massive audiences.
My favorite part comes at the end when Keith goes so far as to envision, even if only for a few paragraphs, a world without agriculture or civilization for that matter and how we can go back to the wild, be fed indefinitely by bison and salmon. It may be idealistic, and Western concepts of property ownership and capitalist tendency would not survive. We'd have to teach our children the lessons of the circle of life, symbiosis instead of capitalism and exploitation. We'd have to do away with idea that he who owns the means of production has a right to exploit those who do not. We have to teach children the truth instead of the lies of Christopher Columbus so we can, as Keith puts, at least attain adult knowledge and act according and within the limits of our one and only finite planet.
Also, one last note, I know a lot of the reviewers of this book have and will go into great detail of their own dietary habits and what they eat or don't eat. I don't think that's as important as the question of what do you enjoy your life? Do you live a life of sacrifice to the Gods of Low Fat constantly worrying about early death or do you enjoy life and food? I know I enjoy my Greek yogurt with 14 grams of saturated fat. But don't take my word for it, try it for yourself and see what a difference it makes.
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