Pajiba

I loathe people like this. Being a somewhat vegan myself (I say somewhat because due to health reasons I have to take probiotics) people like Mr. and Mrs. Torres make life difficult for the rest of us who have absolutely no interest in other people’s dietary choices. I’m constantly saying “I’m vegan but I’m not one of those. I promise!” It’s exhausting to apologize for the other asshole vegans out there.

I believe that being a vegan [or anything really] is about doing the best you can and not about being absolutely perfect. Am I supposed to stop riding my bike because sometimes a bug flies into my mouth? It’s preposterous. That kind of thinking will drive a person crazy. I’ve tried listening to the Vegan Freak Podcast and, same thing, they got to be a bit much after a couple of episodes. So I’m not surprised to hear about the book being similar.

If you’re still looking for more material I highly recommend Vegetarian Food for Thought Podcast.

I ate a vegan diet for a few years.
I only dated women in college.
As a former vegan and a hasbian, there's a special kind of ire reserved for me.

And the truth of it is, it's all bullshit. Just blahdeblah that makes labels more important than the people who use them. I enjoyed How It All Vegan. It was informative without being superior or encouraging the adoption of a superior attitude.

Unfortunately that attitude does seem to reflect the attitude of the average vegan. I know a few lovely humor-filled people who are exceptions to the rule but so many vegans seem to live to judge and condemn other people's choices. Your approach seems pretty healthy (although I am also curious about the bicoastal difference).

Yaaaay Bweaves and Scully! Here's to being a fellow non-judgmental person about food choices! We do exist. Swear.

And yeah, I sometimes feel like I'd rather keep my food preferences quiet than be very open about them, largely to avoid being labeled as one of those god-awful judgey people.

Bweaves and Agogagogo (great name btw), I also really like Veganomicon. Because unlike 99% of the other vegan cookbooks out there, it doesn't have an entire section devoted to why being vegan is obviously OMG the ONLY THING EVER TO DO and if you don't you are AWFUL AND GROSS, and it just provides a bunch of easy, yummy, healthy recipes. Worth it for anyone who wants great ways to prepare tasty veggies, and they also have great gluten-free stuff in there too. It really runs the gamut. I just picked it up, and I'm so excited!

As an "unrepentant ex-vegan" myself, thanks for this review. Now I know to avoid this book unless I want Vietnam flashbacks to a time when I was the same kind of judgy, ill-informed asshole as the authors appear to be.

Word to Sbrown. Food is an important issue and yet it's nearly impossible to have a valuable conversation about it with anyone these days.

Is there a special ring in hell for me, a former vegan who while being vegan worked for a marine-mammal theme park? I think that officially makes me an asshole. Kinda.

I wanted to bring up something else that blows my mind re: food -isms. I bake and sell vegan chocolate cake, pumpkin cake, carrot cake and banana cake. They get raves and I do pretty well. Most of my clients are very cool about their vegan choice, and some are just interested in the no cholesterol aspect.

When I sell at farmers markets and food fairs I get people standing there, shoving sample after generous sample into their cake holes (tee hee) while literally sneering and asking me if these are gluten free (They are not; I am a gluten fan!) Every other person (literally...half the people I encounter at these events) is "allergic" to wheat or cannot have gluten. I realize I have tacked over irrevocably from the topic, but I am completely flummoxed by the seeming "fashion" of food "allergies, sensitivities, etc" It used to be fat. Then it was sat fat. At one point it was cholesterol. Then organic mania. Food and eating is an intensely personal choice. So getting all judgy is lame.

Bottom line: Lady whose making a bad-smell face while consuming half a loaf's worth of samples of my vegan chocolate cake and insisting she only buys gluten free because she has a serious allergy to gluten: I call bullshit. All these people who look down their collective nose at another's food choices...Really?

Look at me...gettin all judgy.

Paddydog:

I'm one of those recent gluten free bandwagon jumpers and it's not because my childhood was riddled with celiac disease complications or anything of the sort. It's just that after jumping on the bandwagon, I feel significantly better without the gluten. I don't get as many colds, I have more energy, and in general I feel healthier (maybe because going gluten-free forced me to eat healthier in other ways, and also knocked out a lot of the preservatives I was eating). Or it could be entirely a placebo effect. But my hunch is that a bigger portion of Americans than anyone would have previously suspected actually do have, like me, a mild but otherwise tolerable gluten allergy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't have to be curled up on the floor all farty and bloated every time you eat gluten for it to be messing with you.

Anyway, it worked for me. But still I do my utmost to avoid preaching (except, um, here) and judging. Because I could truly care less what anybody else eats. In fact, if you really feel the need to convert/harangue everybody into following your crackpot dietary theory, it rather denotes a lack of confidence in it in the first place.

Annie:

I appreciate the perspective you're coming from and yes, there is the possibility of having a very mild allergy. If you feel better, great, it works for you: keep doing it.
What I get annoyed about are the people who start demanding gluten free everything everywhere they go on health grounds because that simply doesn't bear up. Because what you "get" and they don't is that having a very mild allergy is not a life-threatening condition that should force everyone else to change how they cook.
Perhaps I'm a little touchy about this today since we had our block party this weekend and one of the moms tried to insist that the party be completely gluten-lactose free, oh and that no-one could barbeque because of the carcinogens. To recap: she wanted a block party with no grills, no hot dog buns, no cake and no ice-cream. And no, she does not have a kid with a bad allergy to anything.

Paddydog:

I couldn't agree with you more. My dietary choice is my own business and if I can't eat my heart out at a neighborhood barbeque then that's my own damn problem. I lived with two vegans in college, one who demanded the world change for her, and the other who did her very best not to be one of the awful pushy vegans we've been talking about. I try to follow the example of the latter when it comes to my newfound alleged gluten allergy. I think that nutrition is such a wild west frontier of crazy right now. When it comes to food, I think presuming that you know what is absolutely right at the expense of having fun with your friends is always such a waste of time. If anybody cares that much, then righteous self-sacrifice should not be such a hardship.

I do my best to eat well by my own devices, but I would never ask other people to change the way they cook. In your twenties, it is a blessing to have friends that cook and share their beloved family recipes, lard and gluten and meat and all (Lord that shit tastes amazing). Could more people be more healthy if they took more time to think about what they ate and how it affected them? Sure. I think we all know the whole country needs to do that. But it's also not my business, and I'd rather be a friend than a prophet.

Annie, many of the health claims of going gluten free are, frankly, nebulous and unsubstantiated at best, and bullshit at the worst. Oddly enough, you've nailed it on the head when you said the placebo effect: feelings of well being are most likely due to people exerting an element of control over their lives. The body of medical literature shows no evidence of an inflammatory process, immune mediated or otherwise, from the consumption of gluten. Unless, of course, you develop celiac disease, and Paddydog has it right: it's an extremely obvious disease.

Sigh, I used to be fairly alarmed at some of the stuff being said about high fructose corn syrup, even though I was absolutely appalled by corn industry's terrible condescending PR about how it wasn't that bad for you. Eventually, though, well designed controlled studies came out and found corn syrup was just as bad as sugar. Imagine that, I somehow forgot that sugar was bad for you because high fructose corn syrup seemed like a bigger 'evil,' and in my mind I somehow thought refined pure sugar was somehow better for me. They're both bad for you, but your body utilizes them about the same, so now I no longer look at ingredients to identify high fructose vs cane sugar.

I think I'd make the Torres explode: I'm a lacto-ova vegetarian who experiments on animals.

In terms of gluten-free, both my mother and my best friend have been diagnosed with Caeliac disease, and although they appreciate the explosion in gluten-free varieties over the last year or so, when they're in restaurants, they tend to say things like 'I'm allergic, really!'

Well, in fairness, it does say "Freak" right there in the title. And freaks about anything tend to be assholish about it.

I'm certainly not vegan, but I like it when things are labeled vegan because I AM lactose intolerant, so that just saves me the hassle of reading the ingredients. I don't get to eat a lot of baked goods that I don't make myself, so I'm all right with the vegan version so as long as its vegan baker isn't going to throw holy water on me for eating a hamburger later.

I also don't eat pork, which mostly leads to Homer Simpson-esque conversations like "No bacon? What about ham? Pork chops? Really NO BACON?"

Really, no bacon. Not even turkey bacon. Too... bacony.

The whole vegan fundamentalist shtick is, at least in my experience, mostly an american thing. I have never seen any of the vegetarian or vegan people I know trying to push their beliefs on others in such an obnoxious way.
It´s rather stupid too, isn´t it? Who seriously believes this is the way to win someone over to your side? It´s more like a form of IRL trolling than anything.

Awww! Did the big mean book make you feel bad for victimizing other sentient beings capable of feeling fear and suffering?
I'm sorry. You Whole Foods divas need to suck it up and realize that this isn't actually about you (shocker, right?!) it's about the animals you victimize.
So quit crying all over eachother on the internet and actually make the change in your own life so you won't feel attacked when a book pokes fun at those who still choose to exploit and kill animals.