As a Person of Size (size 3X, in t-shirts), I always take an interest in Jezebel’s food posts, but I just have to share Anna North‘s latest LOL:
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I wish organic food were affordable for everyone, and that our food system relied less on insecticides and antibiotics and other substances of questionable safety. But I also wish we could have this discussion without alarmism, and without treating people who enjoy a doughnut now and then like self-destructive crackheads…
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Comments about how healthfully one’s own family eats are a staple of Internet food threads — a significant sector of the online population seems to believe that simply sharing their own righteousness will eradicate diabetes.
There will be those who declare that I am incapable of having a correct opinion on this topic, because as a walking example of America’s Obesity Crisis, I am helplessly enthralled by Our New Worst Enemy, a substance “ten times more addictive than heroin” that “wreaks havoc on the immune system”. (They would be wrong, because it’s fat-laden potato chips, not sweets, that are my greatest weakness.) But I do think that the tendency to “demonize” particular foods or food groups springs from some of the same roots as the tendency to reject any information that conflicts with one’s personal political beliefs. People want to have a Unifying Narrative to help them understand what can seem like a cold and hostile universe. Whether that means believing that Big Agro has deliberately addicted us to Demon Sugar, that Big Gubmint has deliberately addicted us to Welfare Dependency, or that Big Oil deliberately brought down the WTC towers with the connivance of its puppets in the Cheney Regency — or some combination of all these theories — is less important than Knowing the Truth. Who was it said “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you crazy”?
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On the other hand… nobody doesn’t love puppies! John O “still hasn’t decided” how much he wants to “share” of his pet-rescue story, but here is a new picture of Dweezil:
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Early Morning Open Thread: White Lady RedefinedPost + Comments (132)