Nutrition: A Purity Pissing Contest
Plant-based, paleo, vegan, raw-vegan, fruitarian, locavore, high-carb, alkaline, high-fat…when it comes to discourse around healthy/conscientious food choices, it has become a purity pissing contest for health-minded elitists. The point that everyone seems to be missing (I’m looking at you paleo-vegan bomb throwers) is that one size does not fit all.
We’ve all heard the idiom, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” – which speaks to the reality that all bodies have different needs and don’t necessarily thrive on the same fuel. For example, I am a high-carb, high-fat vegan and perform wonderfully eating that way. My sister, on the other hand, looks at a carb and gains ten pounds – and we share the same freaking genetics. Just because a particular way of eating works for someone does not mean that it is going to work for everyone.
Beyond differences in physiognomy, there are sweeping differences in moral, religious, and spiritual beliefs that affect what people put and do not put in their own bodies.
Want to eat eight steaks a day because that’s what your body wants and needs? Great. Lead a plant-based life for compassion and environmental reasons? Awesome. You want to eat thirty bananas a day because you love bananas and feel absolutely amazing eating that way? Well, you might be a gorilla (and you may be having an existential crisis if you are reading this).
Humans are tribalists. We desperately seek belonging and can’t help ourselves from labelling and compartmentalizing – but that only breeds a culture of exclusion. Especially when it comes to the health and wellness of our selves and our environment. Whether choosing to incorporate more plant-based meals, upping your local food game, or switching to meats that are allowed to pasture – those are all positive, incremental changes that should be applauded, not flogged in a procession of internet shame.
I call myself vegan, but I eat local, raw honey and I eat my eighty-four-year-old grandmother’s egg and dairy filled Easter bread every year. There are plenty of level-ten vegans that will shun me for daring to dub myself vegan, even though 98% of my diet is just that.
Why not, instead of coming down with fire and brimstone, applaud someone for making positive change that’s within their means?
Food should nourish mind, body, and soul. Do what feels good for your body and sits well in your heart. Get over yourself, food is not a purity pissing contest – it’s life.
*Originally posted February, 2016
