If you invented a pill that offers long life, good
health, and a body to be proud of, you'd make a fortune. Bottles would fly off
the shelves.
Suggest a change in behavior that achieved the same
result, however, and what do you get? Catcalls, derisive comments, and rude
e-mails.
Such was Michelle Obama's reward when she launched
her "Let's Move" campaign more than two years ago. All she did was
recommend feeding our kids better meals — fewer sweets, more vegetables, less
calories — combined with more exercise.
You would have thought she'd advocated giving the
little dears rat poison for lunch. Sarah Palin was characteristically obnoxious
in her response, flaunting her passion for s'mores (that chocolate bar-toasted
marshmallow-graham cracker horror) while she mocked the First Lady for
attempting to substitute the judgment of the "Nanny State
After all, Let's Move addresses a real issue: the
super-sizing of our children. Studies have estimated that nearly one in five of our young people are obese and more than a third of them
are overweight. Apparently we're raising a generation of youngsters who think
the basic food groups are fat, salt, and sugar, and that changing the battery
in your Gameboy is exercise.
This isn't merely a recipe for being fat; it's an
invitation to diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, asthma, and even cancer.
Actually, the main problem with Ms. Obama's efforts
is that they're too timid. If you really want to make the nation healthier, you
have to declare war on American agriculture in general and meat in particular.
There are mountains of persuasive research that indicate a plant-based diet is
far, far healthier than the meat-based model.
Studies have found that a little meat is better for
you than a lot, no meat is better than a little, and a vegan diet — no meat,
fish, eggs, or dairy products (in others words, 90 percent of the farm economy)
— is best of all.
Good luck trying to sell that one. The Bad Food
lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington ,
up there with guns and oil. Any suggestion that our toxic agricultural industry
is less than noble will bring instant political extinction. (Can you imagine a
politician trying to win Iowa
on a vegan platform? A gay atheist would have a better chance.)
I myself am a vegan of sorts and I'm here to tell
you that it's not an easy life. You're OK when you can cook your own food
(really), but going out is hard. Most restaurants offer very limited,
unappetizing fare for people who don't eat meat or dairy. Grocery stores, while
better than they used to be, still aren't great.
And you have to get used to that sickening silence
on the other end of the line when you tell the person who's inviting you to
dinner that you don't eat meat, cheese, fish, soup made from beef stock, or
anything else he or she was planning to cook.
The way I handle that is…I cheat. I'll order fish
in a restaurant and eat what I'm served in someone else's home. And when I go
to a ballgame, I declare hotdogs a vegetable for the day. Mostly, though, I'm a
vegan.
Why not? Catholics, for example, profess a high
moral standard but still sin from time to time. That doesn't mean they're not
Catholics; it simply means they're human.
As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of
starting a Church of the Holy Vegetable and offering online confession booths
to vegans who fall off the wagon from time to time. They could confess, be
assigned a small penance, and receive absolution.
The life of a vegan is hard enough without
walking around feeling guilty all of the time.