I’m turning into a radical over here but can’t help it. I say this as a writer: the vast majority of the news articles on the Plant Paradox are inaccurate, poorly researched, and full of prejudice and disdain for the diet simply because it differs from our long held, and misguided assumptions about food.
I am only on day four of this plan and already I am eating three delicious, fully balanced meals and feeling better. Protein. Veggies. And healthy (resistant) starches. Good fats. Sound good?
This kind of alarmism and protecting-the-status-quo is what keeps us stuck as a society. We are stuck in assumptions that lead to gluttony of every kind, over consumption, and planetary crisis. We are at a moment in human history when we must learn to tell the difference between deprivation and inconvenience. I am going to put that in bold and say it again. We are at a moment in human history when we must learn to tell the difference between deprivation and inconvenience.
It is not the end of the world, (nor is it dangerous), that I can “only” eat about 200 kinds of food instead of eating whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want it. But to read these articles, you’d think I was living in a cave eating one grain of rice a day. Reading them, I get a glimmer of the Red Scare, the Witch Hunts of old, the knee jerk reactions that keep us from exploring new things. You’d think I was doing something downright un-American!
A word more about the editorial content of these articles. I write about music and opera, and have for about fifteen years now. I have learned a time-saving trick. When I am first assigned a story, I will do a little bit of cursory research, and get some idea of an “angle” or inspiration for the story, and in that wildly creative but unsubstantiated space, I will write a very rough draft, almost a sketch, really. Then, I will interview people, triple check facts, and write the actual story, but that rough, creative draft often becomes the spine of the story. Unfortunately, that is what I am seeing in these stories, except that the spine is not surrounded by a body. Personal snark and societal assumptions have filled out these stories instead of facts. I suppose it might be OK if it were “just” opera they were writing about, but we are talking about people’s lives here. People’s health. The Washington Post and other major outlets owe it to their readership to offer a science-based reportage without sarcasm.
Meanwhile, I’m incredibly happy to be on this path.
I feel it is healing much more than my gut.
I am only on day four of this plan and already I am eating three delicious, fully balanced meals and feeling better. Protein. Veggies. And healthy (resistant) starches. Good fats. Sound good?
This kind of alarmism and protecting-the-status-quo is what keeps us stuck as a society. We are stuck in assumptions that lead to gluttony of every kind, over consumption, and planetary crisis. We are at a moment in human history when we must learn to tell the difference between deprivation and inconvenience. I am going to put that in bold and say it again. We are at a moment in human history when we must learn to tell the difference between deprivation and inconvenience.
It is not the end of the world, (nor is it dangerous), that I can “only” eat about 200 kinds of food instead of eating whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want it. But to read these articles, you’d think I was living in a cave eating one grain of rice a day. Reading them, I get a glimmer of the Red Scare, the Witch Hunts of old, the knee jerk reactions that keep us from exploring new things. You’d think I was doing something downright un-American!
A word more about the editorial content of these articles. I write about music and opera, and have for about fifteen years now. I have learned a time-saving trick. When I am first assigned a story, I will do a little bit of cursory research, and get some idea of an “angle” or inspiration for the story, and in that wildly creative but unsubstantiated space, I will write a very rough draft, almost a sketch, really. Then, I will interview people, triple check facts, and write the actual story, but that rough, creative draft often becomes the spine of the story. Unfortunately, that is what I am seeing in these stories, except that the spine is not surrounded by a body. Personal snark and societal assumptions have filled out these stories instead of facts. I suppose it might be OK if it were “just” opera they were writing about, but we are talking about people’s lives here. People’s health. The Washington Post and other major outlets owe it to their readership to offer a science-based reportage without sarcasm.
Meanwhile, I’m incredibly happy to be on this path.
I feel it is healing much more than my gut.
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