Last month my mother began telling me about the book, Skinny Bitch. She actually didn't tell me that much about its contents, but she insisted that I read the book. She lent me her copy which I began reading on my plane ride home from Vegas. I just assumed it was another diet book. My mother likes to read all these things and then pronounce that "this diet" is her "new thing!"
So, I started reading the book, and it was okay. It talks about "healthy eating," which is always something I'm into reading about. Then I started reading the chapter on artificial sweeteners. As soon as I began to read it I realized why my mom wanted me to read this book. She is so anti-artificial sweeteners, it's ridiculous! She comments all the time about diet pop (I've been known to drink quite a few on a daily basis) and how I should just drink regular pop. She also likes to refer to sugar-free gum as "poison gum." She could talk 'til she's blue in the face about artificial sweeteners being bad for me, causing cancer, etc., but I never paid attention. However, when I started reading about it in Skinny Bitch, I couldn't believe it. Aspartame really is the devil and Splenda isn't much better. I'm not going to go into details, 'cause it would take a long while, but I recommend reading up on it. So, I woke up the next day and stopped eating artificial sweeteners. No more Splenda in my coffee (no coffee at all actually, I've moved on to herbal tea). No more diet Pepsi, diet Coke, Coke Zero, Propel, Sugar-free Red Bull, etc. No more Weight Watchers treats (all made with sucralose) or even Weight Watchers yogurt. I stopped it all. Crazy. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be!
The book also taught me a bit about the meat industry, organic stuff, going vegan, etc. Now, I never will be, and don't desire to ever be vegan, but the book definitely raised many interesting points. It's kind of a one sided book, so I don't recommend it to anyone who wants a really educated point of view. I think it was a pretty good jumping off point for me though. Next on my lost is The Omnivores Dilemma. Like I said, I really don't intend on ever being a vegetarian, but I'm willing to have some substitutes and am looking for alternatives. Peter and I even made some tofu tacos last week! They were actually good! Surprise, surprise!
1 comment:
I have come to some of the same conclusions over the last couple of years after doing a lot of reading. We try not to eat anything fake anymore (ie, don't eat anything where you don't recognize/can't pronounce any of the ingredients on the label) and we have drastically reduced meat, which we miss less than we expected to. It can be more expensive sometimes but feels healthier and more ethical. We should swap some vegetarian recipes sometime!
Post a Comment