Summer Vacay = Reading Frenzy!

Well, summer vacation has officially begun. As a teacher, that means the house will finally get cleaned, I am going to run/hike/boat my butt off, and I plan to vegetate vegetarian-style - laying on the beach with various cookbooks and other reading material.

My first adventure into the vegetarian literary world was "Skinny Bi$%h". Now, I had a hard time with this one. Written as if your girlfriend was giving it to you straight, every other sentence ends with some expletive name-calling. I don't know about you, but my girlfriends don't call me those names, and I don't really use that language myself. However, as soon as you get past the style you begin to learn some valuable information.

The book is packed with environmental, physiological, nutritional, and ethical reasons to cut meat, and other animal products like dairy and eggs, completely out of your diet. The graphic abuse of animals was very difficult to read about, but drove home the point that your steak is not coming from a cow out grazing in a beautiful field somewhere, and who knows exactly what was done to the chicken/cow/pig/etc. before it ended up on the grocery shelf? If you cannot stomach the stories of what is done in the slaughterhouse, maybe you shouldn't stomach the slaughtered product.

The health reasons were even more convincing. From the lax regulations of government agencies, to the independent scientific testing finding such things as rocket fuel in milk products, anyone who cares about their health would be convinced to end their meat and animal product consumption. I really enjoyed how the authors shot down every non-vegetarian nutritional and even evolutionary argument. From the age-old "how will you get protein or calcium?" to the "Aren't we designed to be carnivores?" the authors use scientific reasoning to defray much of the argument around going vege - or vegan!

All in all, the book was a good read. I wish it hadn't included the detracting language, because I will have a difficult time recommending it to some people (like my mom!) but it was informative, interesting, and added more fuel to my vegetarian (dare I say it... vegan?) fire.