1998: Neutral Almond Milk Hotel
1999: The Macrobiotic Fields
2000: Badly Drawn Soy
2001: Radiohead of Lettuce
2002: Kale and Sebastian
2003: SproutKast
2004: The Fast Food Nay-Shins
2005: Death Cab For Fruity
2006: Pepper Corn and John
2007: Vegan and Sara
2008: Fleet Flaxseeds
2009: Ted Leo and the Farmer’s Markets
2010: Odd Tofuture
2011: Bon Iberry
2012: Sleigh Bell Peppers
“
So this morning I see that professional fat-hater Jamie Oliver has posted a petition which he’s asking people to sign in support of his “Food Revolution,” and in which he’s included the bullshit stat that “obesity in the US costs $10,273,973 per hour” (sure) and notes, in all-caps, “OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE.”
Celebrities who have signed the petition are posted in rotation: Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria, P. Diddy, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen Degeneres.
It’s always nice to see wealthy people with access to the best food, comprehensive healthcare, personal trainers, private chefs, and individual nutritional plans put their names to a petition admonishing the fatties that OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE.
When there are people for whom that is not true, people for whom obesity is not preventable, for myriad reasons, to bray about how their bodies (our bodies; ourselves) are “preventable” is to engage in eliminationist rhetoric.
I will never not be fat.
This is what I (Raphael) have to say about this: I think there are two different issues here that are being conflated.
If the issue is about body image, then yes, no one should ever be made to feel bad about the way he or she looks. This is a huge issue that absolutely deserves to be taken seriously, and Jamie Oliver is an ass for stunts like parading around in a fat suit to make some broader point about “health.”
But if the issue is that lower-class people don’t have the time/money to get healthy, then that’s a real problem and shouldn’t be dismissed with a “Well, that’s the way it is and you’re insensitive for not understanding that.” Jamie Oliver isn’t just trying to make people feel bad about themselves, he’s actually trying to educate people on how to live healthier lives, teaching people how to cook better meals, and (primarily) advocating for healthier school lunches.
Did you think it was ridiculous when last week congress decided that pizza was a vegetable just so cafeterias didn’t have to spend more money on healthier food for their students? If so, believe it or not, you are actually on the same side as Jamie Oliver. Adam Conover wrote a very good blog post about this very subject about a month ago.
I’m aware this is a sticky issue, and a lot of times judgmental ideas about appearance are dressed up in false concerns about “your health,” and Jamie Oliver can be kind of obnoxious in the way that anyone who marries a supermodel and then criticizes others for not eating right is going to be obnoxious, and nothing was ever taken more seriously by putting Kim Kardashian’s name on it, but I guarantee you Jamie Oliver is not trying to tell you you can’t be fat. “OBESITY” doesn’t mean “fat,” and “PREVENTABLE” doesn’t mean “shameful.” Jamie Oliver doesn’t want everyone to look the same, he wants everyone to be healthy. He’s not trying to shame individuals, he’s trying to raise awareness about the unhealthiness of the food industry and pushing those with money and influence (your Jennifer Anistons and what have you) to use their money and influence to make a difference, rather than just focus on their own personally-tailored diets and four-hour work-out regimens.
I agree it’s problematic to have a rich skinny man at the forefront of this movement. It would be much easier to take seriously if it were a working-class fat woman who loved her body and wanted other people to feel as good about themselves. (Maybe this would never happen? Maybe I am blinded by my rich skinny man privilege?) Maybe it’s impossible to separate issues of health from issues of body image and self-esteem, but I think that framing the conversation around not just personal but systemic change and real actionable solutions is a step in the right direction, even if “You need to be healthy” can undeniably be used as a tool to make fat women feel bad about themselves.
Loving Your Body should go hand in hand with Taking Care Of Your Body, but all too often people on both sides try to frame them as opposites.
(via amaliadahlia)
“Board of Unnecessary,” commercial for milk.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding it (I’m definitely not), but the premise of this ad seems to be “We don’t get why there are all these other kinds of milk, like soy milk and almond milk — what’s the point?”
Uhhhhh, well, milk industry, the point to all these “unnecessary” substitutions is that there are people who don’t want to buy milk. Obviously, there are health issues for some, but for others (for example, me), alternatives are necessary because of you, the milk industry, and what you do.
You pump your cows full of hormones and cram them in tiny sheds or barren lots. They live short lives of supreme discomfort, separated from their calves and hooked into machines. They are the lifeblood of your industry, and you treat them with unconscionable disregard.
(We could also take into account all the pollution your practices cause, but I’m trying to stay focused here.)
That is why people buy alternatives to milk, just in case you really didn’t know, but I kind of think you secretly did.
(Side note, while we’re talking: can we just agree that it’s really gross how aggressively you advertise to children? It’s one thing to ask an adult to be complicit in cruelty — they can make their own decisions — but kids don’t know what a factory farm is. Is “Joe-Camel-ing” a verb? Because it should be.)
I would love it — LOVE it — if dairy-free alternatives to milk were unnecessary, and you, the milk industry, have the power to make them so, but it wouldn’t be by just saying so in a commercial, it would be by majorly reforming your practices. It would mean taking a real critical look at the compromises and rationalizations you’ve made in the name of higher profits, acknowledging your mistakes and making a good faith effort to be better citizens of this earth. I’m not saying you can’t do it, but it is going to require more than just strong bones.
I’m standing in the parking lot outside M Cafe on Melrose where I just had a delicious vegan meal (hummus and falafel wrap, table for one). I can’t get out of my parking space because someone else is blocking me in. What do I do? OPTION A: I go into the restaurant and I shout, as casually as I can, “Hey, does anyone have a black Honda Civic parked outside?” Then everyone in the restaurant looks at me, with their eyes. The problem with this option is that it’s IMPOSSIBLE, so it’s clearly off the table. I already tried it twice. I went back into the restaurant and stood at the front and opened my mouth like I was about to say something, but then when I got to the part where I actually had to say something, instead what happened was I blinked and when I opened my eyes again I was back in the parking lot. OPTION B: I wait out here next to my car until the owner of the black Honda Civic finishes his or her or gender-neutral pronoun’s meal and comes out and moves his or her or gender-neutral pronoun’s car. There are two problems with this option. One is the English language’s lack of a satisfactory third person possessive gender-neutral pronoun. I know some people use “hir” but I don’t like that, because to my ear a combination of two different historically loaded pronouns does not make one neutral. Some people use “their” even when describing a singular person in the interest of gender neutrality, but I just can’t bring myself to do that because God damn it, we’re trying to have a society here and societies need rules. MORE RELEVANT: the problem with Option B is that when the owner of the black Honda Civic comes out of the restaurant and sees me waiting there, I’ll feel like a real passive aggressive asshole. We’ll both feel bad, and there’s no reason I should ruin two nights. I’ll feel guilty for making the other person feel guilty and I’ll feel like a real loser that I couldn’t just do Option A. OPTION C: I go for a long walk and come back for my car after the restaurant closes. This seems to be the only viable option. Thoughts?
HAVING AN AWESOME FRIDAY NIGHT!!!!!
My two biggest fears, as of Tuesday, May 10, 2011:
1) One day I’m going to be arrested on charges of a horrific crime I’m sure I didn’t commit. As much as I try to defend myself, my pleas will fall on deaf ears as the evidence stacks up increasingly against me, and gradually even those closest to me will lose their faith in my innocence. Eventually, I’ll realize with dawning horror that I did in fact commit the crime, that I am capable of doing horrible awful things and equally capable of forgetting them.
2) I’m going to go to a party and be stuck talking to any one of the characters in the above commercial for like five minutes.
“KFC insists it is ‘committed to the well-being and humane treatment of chickens.’ How trustworthy are these words? At a slaughterhouse in West Virginia that supplies KFC, workers were documented tearing the heads off live birds, spitting tobacco into their eyes, spray-painting their faces, and violently stomping on them. These acts were witnessed dozens of times. This slaughterhouse was not a ‘bad apple,’ but a ‘Supplier of the Year.’
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
I’m reading this book right now and almost every page has a paragraph I want to excerpt in my tumblr. I chose the above quote because I thought it served as a nice metaphor for the entire book. Rather than being an outlier, the way KFC treats its chickens actually represents how the vast vast vast majority of farmed animals are treated in this country.
I want everybody to read this brilliant, compassionate, incredibly readable book. I think it should be taught in high school health classes. I think it should be excerpted on the backs of egg cartons like surgeon general warnings on cigarette packs.
If you are a person who eats food, I implore you to read this book.
You don’t have to be a vegetarian to care about where your food comes from. I believe that literally every meat-eater I know, if given the choice between eating an animal that was tortured and mistreated and one that was treated with dignity and slaughtered humanely, would pick the latter every time. And yet we as a country are moving in the opposite direction, consuming more and more factory farm animals and animal products, animals that have been mangled and abused and pumped full of hormones and diseases, and paying huge corporations for the privilege of doing so.
I think most of us have a vague sense that animals are being mistreated, but I found Eating Animals to be an eye-opening account of the duplicity of factory farms (Picture a free-range chicken; you imagining it? Okay, surprise, that’s not actually what “free-range” means) and the power the food industry has on national nutrition policy (FUN FACT: Did you know that the highest rates of osteoporosis occur in the countries that consume the most dairy? BECAUSE I DIDN’T — I literally used to think milk commercials were P.S.A.s).
I know there’s a hesitancy in many people to learn more about this stuff, because, in truth, we’d rather not feel guilty. I get that, honestly I do, but the fact is the world gains nothing from you pleading ignorance.
Please read this book.
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