Ripping off other publications (with credit, so its not plagerism, right?) July 10, 2008

I read this today on the Yes Magazine website.  I think it is worth reposting and spreading around.

Has the cash economy swallowed up your life? Here are some ways to extract some of your time and “life energy” from the cash economy.

Reduce debt. If you can’t pay cash, don’t buy it. Practice being mindful about what you buy and why.

Do it yourself. Grow food, pick berries, can and preserve food, make wine, bake bread. Make or repair clothes, furniture, and gifts. Create your own entertainment. Walk, bike, run, or play basketball instead of joining a fitness club.

Share & Exchange. Take care of neighbor kids and elders. Play music, sing, act in local theater, write poems, hold art shows. Exchange haircuts for applesauce, bike repair for massage, language tutoring for babysitting.

Reduce waste & pollution. Weatherize your home or apartment. Reduce your car usage, or get rid of a car.

Buy local. Run buy-local campaigns, print stickers, publish or post a directory of local businesses. Acknowledge business owners who foster the well-being of the environment, employees, and the whole community. Convert public funds from luring outside corporations to supporting local businesses.

Start a new local business. Start a food market, credit union, wifi network, or even an electricity co-op. Explore ownership options like cooperatives, nonprofits, for-profits, or single proprietorships.

Buy Fair Traded when you buy imports. Vote with your dollar for a better world for all.

Finding more time now that I’m a mom July 2, 2008

I spend a lot of the day reading blogs and articles and books to keep myself informed about what I can do to protect my family from dangers and to do something to stem the onslaught of global warming (and to protect the environment in other ways).  I am a member of nearly a dozen forums to discuss just these issues (how to do it the greenest, the cheapest, the biggest impact-est), and a member of several community groups which address some of these same issues.  I spend a lot of time on these matters, more than twice the amount of time I spent on them a year or two ago, despite the fact that I have less time to spend on anything now, because I am a mother.

I want the best for Elijah, and I am certain that he will want the same for his kids, and his kids will want the same for their kids.  Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want to give their children not only the best, but the opportunity to one day give their children the best?  If there is, they need to have their children taken away from them, because they are not fit parents.

I want to share everything I’ve learned with the world, its been a lot.  I’m learning still more every day.  Heres a quick run down of what I’ve learned today, for example.

Pesticides likely kill Y sperm, and exposure to vinyl (and other dioxin containing products) causes baby boys to have lower sperm counts for the rest of their lives

Sign a petition to eliminate BPA from baby bottles BPA leeches out of plastics and gets into our food (or is absorbed by our skin) and mimics estrogen in our bodies, leading to all sorts of nasty side effects, from uncontrolled weight gain and inability to lose weight, to cancer, infertility and genital deformation in your children.  It can also cause boys to grow breasts.  Yikes!

A kick ass, all electric car that can go over 100 miles on a single charge and 65 mph, is going to be sold in America as early as next year for under 25k.

Smog (the shit that comes out of the back of your car and the powerplant where you get your electricity from) will kill you.  Just like second hand smoke will.

 

Note:  I actually started writing this weeks ago!  I never found time to finish and publish.  So I’m publishing now.  I hope the links still work.  Enjoy!

Book Review: Natural Family Living, The Mothering Magazine Guide to Parenting June 30, 2008

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to.  As we get closer and closer to the Democratic National Convention, my office is getting busier and busier, and I have less free time.  Hopefully the business won’t be lasting too much longer, though.

Today I’d like to tell you all about the book Natural Family Living by Peggy O’Mara, the publisher, editor and owner of Mothering Magazine, and Jane McConnell, former editor in chief and publisher of Women’s Sports and Fitness magazine and associate editor of Mothering Magazine.  I love Mothering Magazine, so I was pretty eager to get this book.  I started reading it when Elijah was about 12 weeks old.  He’s 7 months old now, and I skipped chapters that didn’t apply to me.

Obviously, this book is a monster.  Its the size of a college text book, and is organized like one too.  Also, like a college text book, it is a wealth of strait forward, clearly explained information on Attachment Parenting.  It covers everything from preconception to adolescence, with a forward by Dr. William Sears, the practically worshiped guru of all things Attachment Parenting (in fact, he’s the one who coined the term, Attachment Parenting, in a way he invented it - at least he invented it for industrialized nations, since its the only parenting choice available for indigenous peoples).

First, my complaints with the book.  This book was obviously written for married people who planned their pregnancies.  Yes, I recognize that this is the ideal that we all (allegedly) strive for, but it doesn’t happen to be the common reality.  I don’t think anyone in my entire family planned any of their pregnancies (at least not that they would admit to) and half of them were not married at the time of conception.  I don’t know many people who have.  In fact, when I first announced I was pregnant at work, someone from another office asked me “How long were you trying?” and I replied without thinking “Pssh, who tries to have a baby?” (ooops, apparently she and her husband tried for many years before they got pregnant, awkward).  Maybe its just my world view, but it seems like you’re pretty lucky if you get to plan your pregnancy.  Even married people have oops.  But we are not married.  We are single moms.  Many of us were never married.  This book doesn’t even acknowledge us.

The only thing this book said that seemed to apply to me as a single, never wed mother, was insulting.  On page 6 it says “One study indicates that women involved in stormy relationships run a 237 percent greater risk of bearing a psychologically or physically damaged child.  A pregnant woman needs emotional support, and the baby’s father is often the most important source of that support.”  Gee, thanks.  I guess I was pretty stupid to pay more attention to those dozens of studies that indicate having an abusive, addict father would screw you up, instead of listening to your one study saying fathers were the most important source of emotional support.  Yes, I know they weren’t actually saying that I should have stayed with the drunk bum who knocked me up.  What upsets me is that they don’t say anything about women in my situation.  As if women who inadvertently get involved in “stormy” relationships (because no one does it on purpose) should be ignored, forgotten about, brushed aside to make way for those women who happen to be able to plan their pregnancies with their perfect husbands.  As if its women’s responsibility to fix “stormy” relationships so that she can have a healthy baby.

They could have fixed that problem, that awful impression they gave me, with a very simple mention somewhere in the book that it is better for mother and child to be alone than to be in a destructive relationship.  In fact, the book would do well to recognize those mothers who have never been married, because while the book has whole chapters on divorce and the death of a family member, it has not one mention (unless its in one of those two chapters, because I didn’t read them) of women who either had to leave their partners because they were somehow unfit, women who’s partners abandoned them because they didn’t want the responsibility of a child or women who choose to get pregnant on their own because a descent man hasn’t presented himself to them yet.  The book could do well with an update chapter for women like us, instead of willfully ignoring us and furthering society’s perception that we are somehow unworthy, hopeless and shameful.

Other than that (really, its easy to get past all that scathing stuff I said up there, I promise), the book was great.  I like that it covered issues beyond infancy and toddlerhood, and I particularly appreciated the chapters on discipline, sexuality, public schooling and alternative schooling.  I have a lot of fear about what I’m going to do when Elijah gets bigger and I have to start being a “real mom”.  Of course I’m a real mom now, but with a baby its different.  Babies don’t need to be disciplined or taught, and they’re not really going to remember you.  The interaction is just different now, I don’t know how to explain it.  Anyhow, its not important.

I also enjoyed the chapters on Natural (Drug-Free) Childbirth, even though I had already done it and didn’t really need to read about it, circumcision, even though I already chose not to circumcise my son (and actually, I didn’t really enjoy reading the chapter on circumcision, it really grossed me out, and there were parts I had to skip because I was too squeemish to read them, but it made me feel even better about my choice to leave my son intact) the chapters on healthy eating and alternative medicine, and I really loved Chapter 14, What Makes a Healthy Family.

This book, I have a feeling, is going to be a constant reference for me.  Like I said, I didn’t read every chapter.  I didn’t read the chapters on Homeschooling (since that’s just not an option for me), Handling Divorce (since I’d have to be married first) and Handling Death (I’ll get to it when it happens, if it happens).  I also only skimmed through the chapter on adolescence, since I’m pretty far away from that.  This was a pretty hefty book and by the time I got that far I was just wanting to finish it because I wanted to write a review of it.

In short, despite the despicable neglect of single parent households in this book, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in natural parenting methods, or anyone who just isn’t sure about the stricter, Ferberization methods that are so popular today.  There are many alternatives to the “cry it out” methods.

For all of you crafty single moms out there June 13, 2008

Here is a site that gives you instructions for turning your old bras into nursing bras.  I am totally doing this.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Check this out June 3, 2008

This is good for any expectant mother, but it’s written by a single expectant mother.  I like to hear from single moms, especially single moms at Grist.  I’m trying to figure out how to write a thank you and some words of encouragement to Amy Linn, but I can’t find her name in the staff section on the Grist website.  Huh.

And this is a list of green pregnancy books, of which I’ve only read one.  Maybe I’ll write my own review of it tomorrow.  If I have time.  It sure is busy at work these days.  Pretty good stuff.

Breastfeeding May 28, 2008

I want to say upfront that I’m not writing this in order to pass judgement on those who chose not to breastfeed (and certainly not on those rare women who cannot breastfeed). I just want to talk about the greenest, healthiest, cheapest and easiest way to feed your baby, for those of you who are still working out what you want to do.

My mom claimed that she had no trouble breastfeeding her children, and had no need of a lactation consultant or any advice. For all of the real women out there, I urge you to discuss nursing with any women you know who have nursed, with your doctor/midwife, and when you have your baby, with a lactation consultant. Also, check out a La Leche League meeting, even if you are still pregnant. There is loads of information and support there.

For most women, especially most women in industrialized, first world countries, there is a learning curve to breastfeeding. Its hard to get the baby in the right position, you’re not sure how to get them to latch on properly, it can hurt (it hurts more for some women than it does for others, it didn’t hurt too bad with me, for example, but I have friends who described excrutiating pain). But everyone tells you to hang in there for three weeks before you decide to give up, and they’re totally right. Three weeks seems to be the magic number, everything seems to fall into place after that.

All of the sudden, it just becomes the easiest thing ever.  I’m always amazed to hear women say, “breastfeeding was just too hard”.  Whats hard about it?  If given the choice when my son starts crying for food, do I want to get up, walk into the kitchen, warm up water, measure out formula, mix the formula, make sure its not too hot, then feed him, or do I just want to pull my boob out and stick it in his mouth.  Hmmmm.  Choice number two seems a lot easier to me.  And when I’m going out with my baby somewhere, I’ve got enough things to cart around.  I don’t want to be bringing bottles and crap too.  Afterall, I have to carry around my boobs no matter what.

A lot of women are aprehensive about breastfeeding in public, and I can sympathize.  At first, I went into bathrooms or tried to hide under a blanket too.  But eventually, I figured out how to keep pretty well covered up just by selecting certain clothing and holding my son a certain way.  Do people know what I’m doing?  Probably.  But who cares?  They can’t see anything, and if they think there is something obscene about feeding a baby, they are a pervert who needs to seek mental help and not push their repressed or guilty negativity on me and my son.  Those perverts are the ones who need to hide themselves away from society, not us mothers who are simply feeding our babies the healthiest food available to them.

Ease of use is probably my favorite thing about breastfeeding, but there are lots of other benefits.  First and foremost, you would have to be blind, deaf and living under a rock to not know that breastmilk is the best food for your baby.  Just nutritionally speaking, there is nothing on this planet that is better for babies.  In fact, numerous studies have linked formula to adverse health conditions such as asthma.  Breastmilk, on the other hand, has been linked to nothing but improved health.  I’m sure you’ve been inudated with information about it.  If not, you can surely find information on it anywhere where you can find information about being pregnant or raising a child.  Its everywhere.  And with all the benefits of breastmilk I have read about, I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be drinking it.  Seriously.  The stuff is uber good for you.  Especially if you are a baby.

Not to mention, breastfeeding helps you to lose the baby weight.  It takes a lot of energy to make milk, which is why you have to eat more calories to maintain your milk production.  If you have a lot of baby weight to lose (like I do, 50 down, thirty more to go) you could, say, only add 400 extra calories to your daily diet, instead of the recommended 500, and watch the weight drop off.  The only time you will eat more than usual and still lose weight is during nursing.  Or if you have some sort of terminal disease.  I think we’d all rather nurse.

Furthermore, has anyone looked at the price of formula lately?  Its outrageously expensive.  Especially when you consider that there is a free alternative hanging off your chest.  Did I mention that alternative is better for the baby than formula is? 

Breastfeeding is awesome!  I love it!  Its a nice way to bond with and cuddle with my son, its the easiest and cleanest way to feed him, and at night, when he wakes up to eat, all I have to do is scoot him over, latch him on, and fall back asleep.  Easy as pie, doesn’t take more than a minute.  Thanks to breastfeeding and cosleeping (I’ll write about that later), I’ve been getting pretty much a full nights sleep every night since my son was two months old.

If nothing else, breastfeeding is super green, because theres no food thats more local than the milk strait from the tap.

Of course, going back to work can be challenging to breastfeeding.  Employers don’t always make it easy for you to pump, it can be difficult carting all the stuff for a pump around, and there’s no garunteeing that you will be able to pump as much as your baby needs (I can’t.  A pump is not as efficient at removing the milk from your breasts as a baby is, so you don’t get as much out with the pump.  Also, your milk production works on a supply and demand basis, and your body may adjust to making less during the work day, as mine has done.  We supplement with formula while he is in daycare during the day).  I encourage you to work through it.  I work through it because I know if I stop nursing, I’m going to have to cut a lot of calories out of my diet to lose the rest of this baby weight (and I love to eat).  Also, I like the time I spend with my son while nursing.

Here in Colorado, Gov. Ritter recently passed a law saying that employers have to provide a place other than a bathroom stall for nursing mothers to pump.  Check the laws in your state, there may be something similar.  If nothing else, continue nursing in the evenings.  Nursing is a special time between you and your baby, and it provides not only nutritional benefits, but also emotional benefits.

Well, it took me all day to write this post today, because I’ve been very busy at work.  Now its time for me to go and pick up my son from day care, so I can “feed him the boobie” as we like to say around my home.  If you have anything to add about breastfeeding, post it in the comments!

The rest of my responsible eating goals (because I can sum these up quickly) May 27, 2008

Organic vs. local.  What do you choose?  Personally, I don’t think it matters much, especially because around here its pretty easy to get food that is both organic and local.  But I chose to go for organic over local.  Why?  Well for one, I want to encourage as many people to adopt organic processes as possible, to preserve diversity, to keep toxins out of our soil, air and water, etc.  My other reasons are somewhat more selfish.  I just don’t want to be eating that crap.  Known and suspected carcinogens (that means they cause cancer), toxins, poisons, growth hormones, yuck!  These chemicals are blamed not only for massive amounts of environmental damage, but also for increased cancer rates, lowered fertility rates, increased risk of birth defects and miscarriage, increased weight gain, increased allergies, decreased immunity, the list goes on and on.  Its truly frightening.  I don’t want to be eating that crap, if I can avoid it, and I don’t want my son eating that crap.  I want grandchildren one day.

Plus, I know its awful, but I’m not giving up avocados until peak oil makes me.  I do try to avoid buying food, especially produce, that comes from outside the continental US.  Especially if its a food that’s in season here.  I remember last fall, before I had my son, going shopping for apples at the grocery store and being appalled at how many apples there were from South America.  Why?  Apples were in season.  Its not like they weren’t growing in the US at the time.  Anyway, buying local is about more than just the carbon footprint of the food we eat.  The further away food comes from, the greener it is when it is picked so that it gets ripe while it ships.  Fruit picked when its green just doesn’t taste as good, and there are less nutrients in it.  With the cost of food going up like it is, you might as well be focused on getting your money’s worth in taste and nutrition.

To ensure that I’m eating responsibly and healthily, I need to stop eating out so much too.  You really just don’t know what you’re getting when you eat out.  I don’t know if I mentioned eating out in my original responsible eating goals, but I’m mentioning it now because I’ve come to realize what a big deal it is.  It also costs a fortune.  Eating out should be reserved for special occasions, especially if you are a single mom.

Finally, packaging.  This should be a big duh.  It takes energy to make all that packaging, and energy to ship it off to the dump, where it will sit for hundreds of thousands of years.  Not to mention, remember all that crap that I said is in conventionally grown food that causes cancer and weight gain and lowered sperm counts?  Yeah, its in most of that packaging too, and it leaches out into your food.

Now, I’ve got to admit, I don’t buy everything organic.  I don’t buy everything local.  I can’t always afford organic, and I like fresh produce so local fresh produce in the winter is really hard to come by.  But I make an extra effort.  During the summer, it shouldn’t be much of a problem at all.  If you are looking to make some of these efforts yourself, I highly recommend looking into local farmers markets and CSAs.  Check out Local Harvest for a complete directory in your area.

Grow your own food May 23, 2008

I’ve written about victory gardens before, so I don’t feel like I need to write too much on my second goal for responsible eating again.  Plus, I’m trying to get a handle on the fact that No Impact Man linked to me in his blog today, and I’ve officially had more hits today than I had in the whole first three months I wrote this blog (for the record, its been almost 4 months I’ve been writing it now).  I mean, wow!  That’s a lot of hits for one day.  And I think it means No Impact Man reads my blog.  Eeeeee!  That’s a girlish squeal, for those of you who don’t know.  I usually only make those noises in emails with my friend Jeff, but I think today my blog needs one.

Okay, so lets go over the fine points of growing your own food, bullet point style (because I like bullet points).

• The price of food is going up because the price of fuel is going up, so its in our best financial interest to reduce the distance our food has to travel to get to us.  There’s nothing closer than your back yard/porch or local community plot.  The price of fuel is also going up because of ethanol (but I’ll blog about that later) and increased meat production doesn’t help (I blogged about that yesterday).
• In addition to hurting your wallet, food that’s traveled a long distance is bad for the environment, for obvious reasons.
• Conventionally grown food is also terrible for the environment, it pumps a ton of petrochemicals into our soil and water (and petrochemical use, because it uses up our dwindling oil supply, increases the cost of gas, which increases the cost of food, see my blog on Peak Oil).  What ends up in our soil and water eventually ends up in us.  Not to mention how those chemicals are directly on the food that we eat!  But organic is so expensive.  Its much cheaper to grow your own organic produce!
• Conventionally grown food is responsible in part for a lot of starvation in the world.  This is a really complicated issue, so for right now I’m only going to direct you to another resource where you can learn more.  Say No to GMOs  Promise to blog more on this later.
• Gardening is great exercise!
• Gardening is a great way to spend quality time with your kids and to teach them about community, health, science, and a variety of other amazing subjects!
• The food you grow is great for you!  And since you’ll have more of that healthy food just lying around, you’ll have less of a reason to snack on unhealthy, expensive, junk food.  Loose weight, keep grocery and health care costs down, and keep your kids strong and healthy, you can’t beat that with a stick.
• Gardening is a great way to connect with your local community, whether you’re gardening in a community plot or in your own yard.  Obviously, a community plot is very social, but a private garden in your own back yard (should you be lucky enough to have a back yard) can still be social because you’re probably going to have more fruits and veggies than you can eat and you can share them with friends and neighbors.
• If you’re involved in a community gardening project, there’s a good chance there’s going to be a man or two there who you know is into health, the environment and community.  And since he eats healthy and gardens, he’s probably going to have a good body.  I’m just saying.  If nothing else, they’ll at least be there for you to admire as they work, possibly without a shirt on.  What?  We’re single, we’re allowed to think these things.  Sheesh.

 I can’t think of anything else right now, but I think those reasons are awesome enough for us all to get started.

Eat less meat (and dairy) May 22, 2008

Americans eat too much meat.  This is a widely known fact.  Only a few nutbags from the high protein diet movement would dispute this fact.  I’m just talking food pyramid wise.  According to the food pyramid, we’re only supposed to be eating 3 servings of protein a day, but most Americans eat closer to ten servings.  This is thanks in part to the outrageously liberal idea most of us have of what constitutes a serving size, and part to the fact that most of us eat meat (or eggs) at every meal.

When I set out to limit the amount of meat I eat, I knew full well that I already ate less meat than the average American.  Of the meat I do eat, more of it is chicken and fish than the average American (not that their environmental impact is any less, but the health impact of those meats is certainly better).  But it wasn’t enough, so I decided to limit my meat consumption to one serving a day.  I did pretty well with this during the work week, but on the weekend (thanks to excessive eating out) all bets were off.  The goal was a work in progress.

The reasons I had for limiting meat were numerous.  First, conventional meat production is, by far, the largest contributor to green house gasses and therefore the biggest cause of global warming.  (On a side note, I hate when people say eating meat causes global warming.  No it does not.  Yes, conventional meat production causes global warming, but the act of eating meat does not.  When the cavemen killed a woolly mammoth and ate it, it did not release green house gasses into the atmosphere.  Sheesh!)  Animals, particularly cows, burp and fart large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, and since the American demand for meat is so ungodly high, there is an ungodly number of farm animals emitting ungodly amounts of methane into the air.  Not to mention the ungodly amount of space used up farming and slaughtering these animals (space that could have global warming reducing plants growing) and the ungodly amount of fuel used to power the ungodly huge facilities where meat is produced. 

Speaking of ungodly, it takes an ungodly amount of food to feed all these cows and chickens and pigs.  All of that food could be going to feed all the starving people in the world, or to bring down the rising costs of grains we are all suffering from now, but instead we are feeding it to cattle, then eating the cattle, and getting less net energy out of less net food.  Brilliant.  And all those crops that feed the meat also use petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, which pollute our soil and water, an require energy to grow, maintain and harvest.

The final reason I wanted to eat less meat is because I’d like to avoid all the growth hormones and antibiotics found in meat.  Really, do you want to ingest something that’s designed to make a cow get fatter?  Do you think that growth hormones aren’t going to make you fatter too?  And we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic in this country.

So basically, meat is responsible on some level for global warming, world starvation, and the obesity epidemic.  Yeah, that sounds like something I’d like to limit in my life.  Of course, all of these issues would be addressed simply by eating only organic meat, but who can afford that?  Have you ever looked at the cost of organic meat?  There’s another fact about meat that is UNGODLY!

Now, after reading Skinny Bitch, which I wrote a review of yesterday, I have been confronted with even more reasons to forgo meat as much as I can.  For starters, I was completely and willfully ignoring the fact that dairy has the same environmental impacts as meat (I buy about half of my dairy organic, but still …).  I got slapped in the face with more health benefits of limiting, or down right eliminating, meat and dairy.  For example, another thing that is designed to fatten up cows is milk.  Seriously.  Calfs drink nothing but cows milk to grow from 90 to 2000 lbs over the course of 2 years.  Do we really want to be consuming a lot of something that is designed by nature to make anything that drinks it grow to 20 times its original size?  And I was horrified to read some of the treatments animals have to suffer in conventional meat production facilities.  I mean, deep down, I always knew it was bad, but being confronted with it really forced me to acknowledge it.  And finally, the issue of how meat is handled in those places (not to mention how the employees are treated, anyone ever read Fast Food Nation?) just disgusted me beyond belief.  Let me just say I will not be feeding my son meat baby food, and I don’t recommend you do either.

So now my goal is to eliminate as much meat and dairy from my diet as I can possibly stand.  This means I’ll pretty much only be eating meat at family and work functions, and even then I’ll do it in very small servings.  Dairy I will probably eat a little more often (because I love it!) but I am experimenting with vegan alternatives to foods I am willing to replace (pretty much everything but cheese and chocolate).  I am now using soy milk on my cereal, a soy based butter spread, soy mayonnaise, and yesterday I snacked on some wheat-free, dairy-free Newman-O’s (organic Oreos knock offs - the texture will take some getting used to, but it helps me keep my portion sizes in mind).  I’m also going to work at incorporating more vegetarian meals into my recipe book.  If anyone has a good vegetarian/vegan recipe, please send it to me, or post it in the comments of this blog.  I’d love to have them.

I will keep everyone posted on my progress becoming an almost-vegan (that’s what I’ve decided to call it).  Maybe one day it will evolve beyond this, but for now I think this is the most anyone is going to get out of me.

Book Review: Skinny Bitch May 21, 2008

On Monday I bought the book Skinny Bitch, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.  I had heard it might help encourage me in my goal of eating less meat.  Actually, I heard it made many a woman decide to go vegetarian in the name of being thin.  Since I knew I’d never go vegetarian (again … there were a few years in high school there), I figured it would just give me more motivation to cut meat out of my diet as much as I can.

I have not eaten any meat since I bought it.  I’ve also eaten limited amounts of dairy (some cheese and sour cream on last nights dinner, and a minuscule bit of cheese in some veggie patties today).  I still don’t think I’m going to go entirely vegetarian - its damn near impossible to avoid meat in my family and my line of work - and I’m certainly not going to ever reach vegan status, but it has convinced me to cut the amount of meat and dairy I’m eating even more than I had already planned to. 

The authors state very clearly on the cover that this is a no-nonsense, tough-love guide, and its not kidding around.  It sounds like a drill sergeant wrote this at points, so if you don’t like to be yelled at, this book is not for you.  I can go 50/50 with the yelling thing.  Sometimes I respond really well to it.  Other times I don’t.  I don’t know what the difference is, but I responded well to this book.

The authors also obviously have an agenda that has nothing to do with helping you to get thin.  It doesn’t even have anything to do with living green (although both those issues are addressed by their agenda).  Their agenda is animal rights, and let me tell you, they’ve got me pretty damn convinced.  As convinced as I think I ever will be, that’s for sure.  I’m not the kind who thinks its wrong to eat meat, but I do think its wrong how we produce meat and the amount we eat, and the authors just made those feelings larger and louder inside of me.  But if you are really, super duper opposed to vegetarianism or veganism, this book isn’t for  you.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe you need the info in this book so you can at least understand where vegetarians and vegans are coming from.  I don’t know.

Despite the alternative agenda, the book makes a lot of sense.  It says to give up processed sugar and simple carbohydrates (well duh), smoking (done and done!), beer (not bloody likely), dairy (more likely than beer, but that’s not saying much) and meat (more likely than dairy, but that’s not saying much either).  Even though I personally would advocate limiting meat and dairy, rather than eliminating entirely, they do make a good case for elimination and all the more power to you if you do it!

I’m a little skeptical of the fasting information still.  I don’t think fasting without solid food for more than a day is in any way physically beneficial.  Consult a doctor before jumping on that band wagon.

The book is a little harsh until the last chapter, which makes it all even more worth while.  After all the yelling and horrifying info in the book, that warm fuzzy in the last chapter was really needed. 

This book has really had an impact on my life, I think.  I went into it highly skeptical and came out really won over.  I would recommend it to anyone interested in vegetarianism or veganism, or anyone interested in the production of and effects of our food on ourselves, our children and our environment.