Diets, the weight loss industry and all that.

[GothAnneGeddes]

My Facebook is currently awash with the South Beach diet. Were my life to flash before my eyes, I'm sure there would be a surprisingly high amount spent listening to other people talk about diets.

It's shit. Self denial, foods being "naughty", eating being "bad", encouraging women to hate their bodies, crap science and it all seems to be more popular then ever and it fuels a billion pound industry.

And I think it's a massive example of the patriarchy at work and generally encouraging women to feel like lesser beings.

The nasty comments about weight (and how its all the fault of people on a low income ) are on pages 14 to 16 of the thread ive linked to.
The ignorance is astounding.

I hate all the "naughty biscuit" culture, what a load of crap - good foods and bad foods and treats. It just seems infantile.

I HATE that stupid ice cream range called "Skinny Cow" - every time I see it I want to throw up in feminist ire. It's just awful. I get that it's a joke, ha ha ha, but it just perpetuates the circle of disparaging women. Too fat - you're fat and everyone thinks you're a minger, you're skinny and you're a cow.

I HATE the advert I see every day for a gym - the words beside the man are things like "muscular" and beside the woman is "slim". So men should be bigger and take up space and women should be small and not take up space at all.

One way to get away from the 'what we eat is all about how we look' and therefore sucked into the exploitative diet industry, is to look at the deeper effects of our consumption. We are powerful agents in creating a better world if we have a choice not to abuse those below us.

It seems odd to me that so many thoughtful people (ie feminists) do not consider the wider consequences of eating meat and dairy. Very exploitative too.

I say this as a rad/eco feminist, just so we're all clear!

what are the wider consequences of eating meat and dairy?

Farming methods for production of beef and dairy products are environmentally damaging.

Anyone been watching The Men Who Made Us Fat?

aren't quite a lot of things though? Not picking a fight, just wondering why meat and dairy are particularly damaging

"The nasty comments about weight (and how its all the fault of people on a low income )" make me think of what George Orwell said in The Road to Wigan Pier. He has a lovely balance between affection for the mining families in Lancashire in the 1930s, and frustration that they weren't making better use of the small amount of money they had. At least now very few people are on the edge of malnutrition, but there's still the issue of choice versus what's good for us.

And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the Englishman's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

We need a lot of land to rear animals for meat. This land can be used to harvest crops that are fed directly to humans.

The animals are bred purely for human profit and pleasure; we do not need to breed them to this exent. We do not need to eat them or exploit the females' reproductive systoms. They suffer greatly.

I'm not trying to deflect the concerns of women and the diet industry, just submitting an idea that our food choices can be based on positive things for ourselves and the planet.

As opposed to our choices being influenced by patriarchy's idea of how slim we should be. Capitalism loves the meat/dairy industry and patriarchy loves capitalism. Actually, they all love each other.

Where there is suffering - even if it's only cows and chickens - and a profit is being made from it, I believe we should take a closer look.

I don't know the specifics but I think the yield per acre for beef is much lower in terms of how much food it produces. It is however much more profitable.

thanks, just wondering as some years made conscious effort to give up veganism and eat meat and dairy - although actually not meat for a long time - once I'd concluded that it would be healthier for me

on plus side I don't have IBS anymore, on not plus side am contributing to different set of problems!

Sorry for typos. On wine.

The dairy industry I find particularly horrific as the cows are artificially inseminated in order to produce milk, and their calves taken from them immediately (usually for veal) so that we can take all the milk we can (for profit). Then, they are artificially inseminated again, their calves taken again, and so on, until they're spent and slaughtered for 'cheap meat'.

They don't much enjoy this process I wouldn't have thought. After birth, they expect to nurture their young, and are distraught when they cannot find them.

hope this is not the case for organic dairy and meat, I try to avoid the factory farmed alternatives to organic/free range

Modern agriculture is also incredibly environmentally damaging. The radical feminist Lierre Keith writes about this in her book The Vegeterian Myth.

I don't like it when people want to guilt-trip women into abstaining from food, especially nutrious important foods like animal protein.

Not that I don't understand your concern for animals, LostinaPaperCup. I do. But you can care about animals and the planet and also choose not to be a vegan, for health reasons. Women often have a problematic relationship with food already as it is.

I agree with cardgames. We are basically parasites and it's a case of doing the least harm we can.

well my vegan years, under animal welfare banner, were really an excuse to abstain from food in general and maintain an artificially low weight

not that my chicken and rice and weight lifting regime is really much different, is still obsessive and a bit punitive. What must it be like to know what you actually want to eat and to feel that you just can, even if you haven't earned it or burned it off in advance?

Let's not go on too much about "capitalism" as a driver of meat-based agriculture. You, me and the people next door (unless we're vegetarians, or better still vegans) are all contributing to the setup. Capitalism needs sellers and buyers too, and most of us willingly play our part. We need to walk past the meat and get to the vegetables--how many of us will unless we're forced to?

I think it is the same in many 'organic' farms, as often the label is used to simply state that the animals are being fed naturally (as opposed to growth hormones etc.).

I do however feel I might be derailing the thread, so should probably start a different one on feminism/animal welfare/environment.

Don't be hard on yourself Alameda: if the vegan diet doesn't work for you on health grounds then you take priority. I do however think it's a healthy diet/lifestyle choice for many, but they haven't even considered it which I believe is problematic.

yeah, do start that thread - would be interesting

I think we are lucky as humans that we can thrive on such a range of diets though!

I don't think veganism is abstaining from foods - far from it. My diet is more varied than when I consumed animal products (meat & two veg, with a cheese and cracker afters).

If veganism is used in order to maintain a low weight it probably won't last as a personal ideology. It's same old patriarchal control of women under a different guise. (Although you know those in power would rather you ate lean chicken and boiled rice, right?)

I do not maintain a low weight on a vegan diet. I fluctuate depending on how often I move around :)

Essentially, I was trying to get at diet as being something far larger than how we (women) look. Not a guilt trip at all; I am trying to look at the powerful consequences of our dietry choices, rather than the arbitrary ones.

Alameda, I would say that I pretty much just eat what I like. I never worry about what I'm putting in my mouth, beyond wanting to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables because otherwise I have no energy.

I don't know why this is, beyond just never having felt pressure to look a certain way or be super skinny. I am so low in confidence in other areas but not how I look.

I can only guess at why I don't feel this pressure. Maybe because my mum and gran didn't and so didn't pass it on to me (looks/diets were never mentioned in our house AT ALL). Not out of any sort of principle, they just weren't bothered about how they looked. Maybe because I grew up in a really isolated community that fashion didn't really exist in - there certainly weren't hordes of skinny, glamourous mums about. Maybe because I'm naturally quite thin anyway.

Who knows? I am very glad that my mother didn't put pressure on me to look a certain way and I think that was a major factor and something to think about.

Ok, will start thread tomorrow unless someone beats me to it! Off out now, and don't have a new-fangled phone.

"I don't think veganism is abstaining from foods"
Veganism means cutting out all foods from your diet that comes from animals. That's A LOT of nutrious, protein rich foods that you no longer are allowed to eat.

Alameda, I'm sorry to hear that. I've seen many young women go from eating very little to becoming vegeterians and finally vegans so they can cut even more food from their diet. It's heart breaking.

It was just easier to say 'oh I can't eat that, I'm vegan' than to say 'I have a morbid fear of ballooning to 7 stone and am not entirely mentally normal around food' - not that the vegan diet itself made me slim, if that makes sense! Am pretty sure I ate pasta sometimes which had egg in so was obviously a bit shit at it anyway

In the ED unit my daughter was in it was very difficult to get them to not make her eat meat, and nobody was allowed to be vegan. ALL the girls (they were all girls, it was a children's unit) claimed to be vegetarian and it was hard for everyone to separate what is a legitimate choice from what is the anorexia.