Hello, Beauties!

I hope that our women’s week is going nicely so far. Huge thanks to everyone who read and commented on my interview over at The Health and Happiness Club. I’m so happy you liked it!

In the midst this week long celebration of women, women’s health, feminism, etc., I want to pause for a moment, switch gears, and extend appreciation to the special men who inhabit our lives–especially the men who support us through ups and downs in health and wellness.

You see, I’m constantly surprised (in a very nice way) by the number of female clients who tell me about the supportive husbands, boyfriends, friends, brothers, and fathers in their lives. As much as we may identify misogyny as one of the many factors that enable a culture of disordered eating among women (and men, of course–one estimate states that 25% of eating disorder sufferers are man), it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a set of diffused cultural attitudes, and not the individual attitudes of all, or most, men we know. So many female clients, friends, and fellow bloggers have told me about the remarkable men who have stood by them through eating disorder recovery, or who have reassured them through weight gains and losses, or who have cheered them on as they take strides towards healthier lifestyle habits. Others have told me about the men who saw them through serious health crises: who stood by them as they waited for frightening test results, maintained a sense of calm when something was amiss, and participated in the path to healing or recovery.

These stories never cease to warm my heart. I am so, so glad that so many of you have healthy support systems, not only from female friends, but also from the men in your lives! Statistically, many women who are susceptible to disordered eating have estranged or tenuous relationships with father figures. Still more are victims of abuse, sexual or physical, or childhood trauma. Many women who have experienced body dysmorphia (either as a part of an eating disorder or just in general) report difficulty with sexual intimacy, or intimacy in general. To say that male support can “fix” these issues is ridiculously simplistic. But it does seem as though the presence of a supportive husband, lover, friend, or brother–along with an otherwise sturdy support system of friends and family, of course–can help a woman to re-think some of the insecurities that block self-love.

Today, let’s take a moment to consider whether any special fellows have helped us to move closer to a healthy relationship with our physical or emotional selves. And if they have, let’s give them a little thank you — private or in person. It might be a boyfriend, current or former, who helped you to connect with your body. It might be a husband who’s willing to trek out for an early morning run, just so that you’ll have some company, or who just agreed to try tempeh for the first time. Or it might be the amazing guy friend who will never fail to mention when you’re looking foxy in a new dress. I’ll go first:

K, thank you for asking me to always see in myself what you see in me: beauty.

G, thanks for eating health food with me, even when your dairy-free pumpkin pie tasted like cardboard.

M, thanks for giving me music to dance to when no one is looking.

As we celebrate ladies this week, and chat about issues that relate to ladies’ health, let’s also give props to the gentlemen who help us in one way or another to be more healthy. Thanks, guys!

xo

Hello, all,

Glad we’ve got some interest in the wheatgrass juicer! I’m sure it’ll end up in good hands. I forgot to put an end date on that contest, so let’s just say that I’ll announce the winner one week from today, on March 15th.

For those of you who didn’t know, today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day. In honor of the occasion, I’ve decided to devote this entire week to posts that celebrate feminism. These will range from the ideological (today’s post) to the practical (a post on my top tips for women’s health).

Choosing Raw is, naturally, a blog about food and nutrition, and for the most part I like to keep it that way. But it is also a blog that’s born of my own passions. Feminism is a passion of mine, and, as we’ll see in a moment, it’s closely intertwined with my veganism. It’s impossible to write about one without at least touching upon the other.

Many other bloggers have touched upon the link between animal rights and women’s rights, but few with the same passion as my friend Tasha, over at the Voracious Vegan. Tasha will be posting a number of women’s themed posts this week, but it’ll hardly be a departure for her, since Tasha’s posts are always mindful of the struggles that women endure around the world, and the grievances that befall animals in captivity. Tasha often links to articles of special interest to women, for which I’m grateful: just last week, she sent me over to Jessica Valenti’s latest reminder that feminism is ongoing.

A few weeks ago, as I emailed Tasha to tell her that I was planning on reading The Sexual Politics of Meat, and she responded with enthusiasm. It occured to me that she might be just the person to say a few words to my readers about the link between feminism and veganism–a link that’s obvious once you’ve considered it, but may be a little elusive until you do. In many ways, this link is metaphorical, but I believe that metaphors, images, and language have real social and psychological consequences. To point out, then, that women and animals are both commodified in advertising, or to point out that many deragatory names for women are often animal names, is no abstract observation: these comparisons have a very real impact on human attitudes, and it’s from those attitudes that action, policy, and law are formed.

Changes in attitude mean changes in the treatment of all sentient beings. Let’s start changing our attitudes now. On that note, I’ll turn it over to Tasha.

None of Us are Free, Until We are All Free

Thank you, Gena, for asking me to do a guest post about one of my favorite topics: the connection between veganism and feminism. This subject is very close to my heart: if I were asked to describe myself, two of the first terms I would use are feminist and vegan. These two words describe so much of who I am, from the way I view the world to the career path that I have taken. Unfortunately, these days feminism is seen as either irrelevant, or as the exclusive provenance of hairy legged man haters. But this stereotype is just as ridiculous as thinking that all vegans are pale weaklings who exist on nothing more than wilted lettuce. The fact that feminism can be seen as irrelevant in a world where 1 out of 3 women will be raped in her lifetime, where we earn 25% less than men do for performing the same job, where we grow 70% of all the world’s food but own less than 2% of its land, and where we are still nowhere near adequately represented in any of the world’s governments, is truly shocking to me.

I have been a feminist since the day I was born, but I have only been a vegan for about 3 years now. My husband and I took the vegan plunge immediately after watching the film Meet Your Meat, and we haven’t looked back since. As I became more involved in animal rights activism and being a vegan advocate, I found that the philosophy of my new beliefs sprung easily and directly from my much loved feminist principles. I quickly realized that the current economic and socio-political system that benefits from the oppression of women, also benefits from the oppression of animals. The connection between the two philosophies is staggering to me now in its clarity, but it wasn’t always, and it isn’t always to most people, so today I’d like to share it with you all as I now understand it.

As I see things, the same mindset that allows men to objectify, abuse, and exploit women is the same mindset that allows human beings to objectify, abuse, and exploit animals. Both are founded on a capacity to objectify and dehumanize a sentient being. Both serve human–specifically male–consumption, either literal or figurative. Beyond that, there are some very actual similarities in visuals and marketing aids that depict women and slaughterhouse animals to the world at large. Thing about magazine adds for lingerie, male cologne, or even certain foods; now think about food ads. Women’s bodies are constantly broken down into their various parts–breasts, flat stomach, legs–to be admired or used or “consumed” (figuratively); animal parts are likewise often pictured as things to be broken down and consumed (literally this time). Given nicknames like chicks, bitches, cougars, cows, or bunnies, women are frequently compared to animals in a way that is meant to be dehumanizing. Just like animals, women have historically been seen as property. And just like animals, we are often seen as not being smart enough to take care of ourselves, and in need of constant guidance and protection. This, in turn, leads to us being used without our consent, and to be treated as creatures unworthy of a voice, an opinion, or control of our own lives.

Women and female animals of any species are often valued only for their reproductive capabilities, and thus they’re often discarded or marginalized as soon as their productivity declines. While all animals, male and female, suffer in animal agriculture, the females of the species usually suffer the most severe and protracted abuse because they can reproduce. Dairy cows are forcibly impregnated (with a piece of farm equipment known as a ‘rape-rack’) at a sickening rate to keep them perpetually pregnant so they can produce milk. They are never allowed to nurture or love their newborn babies, because the calves are typically sent to veal farms within hours of birth. When the dairy cow’s bodies inevitably give out, exhausted by the constant cycle of birth and grief, they are sent to the slaughterhouse to be killed. Laying hens (even those labeled with the marketing myth ‘free-range’ or ‘cage-free’) spend their entire lives in cages less than 2 feet wide. They are put through a torturous cycle of starvation and perpetual darkness to artificially augment their egg-laying cycles. After one short year, their bodies are so broken down that they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Female pigs are confined to gestation crates immediately after giving birth, where they are permanently separated from their children by metal bars and only allowed to nurse for a few weeks. While their babies are then taken away to be slaughtered, the mothers are impregnated again, to start the cycle of pain and loss once more. All of these animals are treated so cruelly because of their capacity to give birth and sustain life. As a woman and a feminist, I demand the right to protect my body from reproductive exploitation, and I want the same for all the females on earth, no matter what the species.

Another core part of my feminist beliefs–but also a part of my general humanity and compassion–is that I advocate for food justice for everyone. I see a healthy, adequate diet as an inalienable right for every human being. This egalitarian distribution of food will never be possible until we move away from eating meat and shift our focus to a plant based diet. Converting farmed animals into food for humans to eat is an extremely inefficient use of our planet’s resources. When millions around the world struggle to find enough food just to survive, this seems almost criminal. 70% of those living in absolute poverty are women, and when we are using 70% of our planet’s agricultural land to grow food to feed to livestock, it is a ghastly misuse of our resources. While food for a vegan can be produced on only 1/6 of an acre of land, it takes 3 and 1/4 acres of land to produce enough food for a meat-eater. If you add up all the arable land on the planet and divided it equally, every human would get 2/3 of an acre—more than enough to sustain a vegan diet, but not nearly enough to sustain a meat based one. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of edible animal flesh. Imagine how many people could be fed if we would eat the grain directly instead of funneling it through animals first.

And of course, I can’t overlook the fact that eating animals also contributes to some early deaths of both men and women. A diet high in animal products has been conclusively linked to heart disease, many types of cancer, and stroke, which are the top 3 killers in the developed world. A high rate of dairy consumption has been linked to osteoporosis and breast cancer, diseases that rob many women of years of their lives. These illnesses have also been shown to be in great part preventable, and in many cases, reversible, with the adoption of a plant based diet. I view my health as a valuable resource in the exhausting struggle towards female equality, and I need all the strength I can get to fight the good fight. If most of us women are dying from easily preventable illnesses, where is the liberation in that?

Whenever we see another animal, human or not, as unworthy of our compassion and respect, we can then begin to use them and abuse them without a second thought. This lack of connection to other living creatures, the denial of their basic right to live a life of their own choosing, creates a vicious cycle of anger and violence. When we sit down to meals based on the exploitation and abuse of other living creatures, it deadens the compassionate part of our nature, and allows us to more easily overlook violence, degradation and oppression among our own species. For women worldwide, these abuses still include rape culture, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation, the feminization of poverty, gender apartheid, and the denial of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy.

Each of our actions represents a choice made, and I want all of my choices to be consistent. I would never want someone to have control over my life or my body, or that of any of my fellow sisters (or brothers). I fight the notion that I am not as smart or as capable as a man, or that I am less deserving of pay, respect, or justice. The fact that I am a woman should not lower my inherent human value, or cause me to be used as a piece of property. That’s why I call myself a feminist.

And if I desire this freedom and respect for myself, then isn’t it natural to feel that, on some level, every living creature desires the same thing? Isn’t the will to live what drives all of us on this planet, human and animal alike? And shouldn’t the encouragement of life be our goal? That is why I call myself a vegan.  Feminism and veganism are two interconnected pieces of one unifying belief: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” (Emma Lazarus)

Natasha Burge is a lifelong expat and globe-trotting political scientist currently living in Saudi Arabia with her 4 dogs, 2 cats, 1 horse, and 1 husband . She is passionate about animals, veganism, politics, feminism, and chocolate. Natasha works as a women’s rights educator, writer, and renegade vegan baker.

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Thank you so much, Tasha, for that inspiring and very passionate post. I hope that, regardless of how you choose to eat and how you choose to relate to feminism, this post gives you some interesting food for thought.  If you’re keen on reading more of Tasha’s work, please check out her blog; today, she happens to have posted a short film called Why Feminism? that helps cover the basics of why feminism and women’s rights are still so necessary to her (and to me).

Expect more celebration of women’s rights for the week to come, along with some food, of course. For now, I wish you all a fabulous start to your Mondays!

xo

Hey guys!

Happy weekend. Anyone have fun plans? It’s an editing weekend for me, which is a good thing for you: it means I’ll be largely homebound, and being homebound means cooking and uncooking new grub. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I come to you all on this bright Saturday with a confession: I hate wheatgrass.

Yes, my friends. Your ears don’t deceive you. I hate the stuff so much that I can’t even bear to take it (unless it’s diluted by 16 oz of pear juice and ginger, a la Liquiteria’s “Grasshopper” drink, or I’m taking it Hippocrates style, if you raw foodies catch my drift). I literally get sick and gag when I even try. And boy, do I ever try: I’ve been attempting–unsuccessfully–to love wheatgrass for almost four years now.

Let’s just say that it’s not working. My ex boyfriend could down an order of waffles and bacon at Jackson Hole and hop across the street to the health food store with me for a double shot of wheatgrass. He sucked it back like a champ, and while he didn’t feel great afterwards (always take wheatgrass on an empty stomach, guys: it’s highly medicinal and cleansing, which means it’ll make you feel like hell if you’ve just eaten something shady), guess what? He looked and felt better than I do when I try to take the stuff on an empty stomach–I, who eat raw foods all the time, juice on the reg, and love the taste of raw kale.

No fair.

At this point, I’ve accepted the fact that wheatgrass and I are not going to be warm and snuggly. And I have told myself–with some legitimacy, I think–that the fact that I juice as much other healthy stuff as I do (kale, chard, green veggies, and herbs like parsley and cilantro) kinda makes up for the fact that I visit Stewart the Wheatgrass Man’s stand at the farmer’s market just to gab (and to buy sunflower sprouts). My wheatgrass aversion does make me feel, though, as though I’m missing out on the rawcurious eater’s holy grail.

Let’s take a moment, shall we, to talk about the beauty of the grass? I will quote liberally from the Hippocrates Health Institute website (consider the Hippocrates folks the foremost keepers and purveyors of sprout and wheatgrass wisdom):

Wheatgrass is a blood purifier, cleanser, and detoxifier. It contains chlorophyll, which helps carry oxygen to every cell in your body. Oxygen in the body’s cells helps fight off disease, harmful bacteria, and cancer (see books written by Brian Clement or Ann Wigmore for more information). Wheatgrass must be “squeezed” or juiced in order for the body to assimilate its nutrients; so, unlike sunflower and pea green sprouts, it is not appropriate to add it to a salad.

Hippocrates suggests drinking wheatgrass juice in small amounts throughout the course of the day, always on an empty or nearly empty stomach. In general, two to four ounces every day or every other day is sufficient. Slowly sipping small quantities of the juice gives your body an opportunity to get used to its taste and effects. Taking one-ounce- to two-ounce drinks straight or mixed with other juices (Greens only) and sipping slowly will help prevent nausea or stomach upset. On a healing regime, we suggest you drink one or two ounces up to three or four times a day with one day of rest periodically. As a general rule, more is not better.  Two ounces at any one given time is all any one person will need.

Wheatgrass is also high in vitamins A, E and B, and numerous trace minerals and elements, including calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron and zinc. Wheatgrass also contains twelve amino acids, including the eight “essential” amino acids (that is, the ones our bodies don’t produce on their own): phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, isoleucine, methionine, leucine, and lysine.

So in other words, wheatgrass is awesome.

Now I have an embarrassing confession to make: some time ago, I won a Lexen healthy wheatgrass juicer in an online giveaway. This little contraption juices wheatgrass easily and efficiently at home–all you need is to purchase the wheatgrass itself (which you can do online or at many farmers’ markets). Since then, guess how many times I’ve used my juicer? Sadly, a big fat zero. I should have predicted this, of course: if I can’t bear the stuff when I get it at juice bars, how on earth could I ever be compelled to juice it at home? I suppose I must have been swept up in a tidal wave of optimism.

Now, it makes me feel dreadful that I’ve got a juicer perisihing in the corner of my kitchen. So today, my ridiculous waste is your gain. I’m offering the incredible Lexen juicer to one Choosing Raw reader–may you feed your bod with the gift of chloryphll more steadily and happily than I have!

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post PROMISING me that you’ll put this awesome little contraption to good use! For two entries, tweet it, too.

Before I head out, I want to share a little video with you guys. On Monday, I was in a bit of a funk. A coworker of mine sent me an email with the subject line “Will this cheer you up?” and the following video.

J, you’re the best. New age-y montages of salad always cheer me up.

So does sunshine, so I’m going to take a study break. Have a great weekend, all, and enter to win your juicer now!

xo

Hi guys!

Happy hump day — or Raw Wednesday, as it’s known here on Choosing Raw.

The other day, I was speaking with a client who has struggled—as so many women do—with cycles of dieting, guilt about food choices, and body hatred. Over the course of our session, she had a revelation. “I love to eat,” she said. No sooner had she said it, than she recognized the enormity of those words. “I guess that’s a really big deal for me to say,” she chuckled, “because I’ve spent so much time trying to pretend it’s not true. And it’s something I’ve always felt so ashamed of.”

She’s not alone. For many, many women, nothing is more difficult than to admit to having an appetite. It may be OK to say we’re hungry after a workout, or because we haven’t eaten all day, or because we were super busy doing this or that, but rarely will a woman feel 100% comfortable admitting that she’s hungry for no other reason than that she desires food.

In case you haven’t seen it mentioned on other blogs, it’s National Eating Disorders Awareness (NEDA) week. What does this mean? Well, according to the National Eating Disorders website , it means this:

Our aim of NEDAwareness Week is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment. Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening illnesses — not choices — and it’s important to recognize the pressures, attitudes and behaviors that shape the disorder.

According to me, it means this: it’s a great time for us all to pay a little extra attention to the very real and painful consequences of eating disorders, and for us to show extra compassion to those we know who are suffering. It’s also a great time for us to do our part in battling these all too common and constantly multiplying afflictions. How? Well, we can show sympathy or understanding to someone who’s battling the condition. We can bravely and boldly share our own stories. We can set a good example by trying to live healthy lives, in which we seek out and maintain a positive and reasonable relationship with food. We can inspire others to enjoy meals by coming up with innovative, nourishing, beautiful, and balanced meals. Perhaps we can inspire others by taking a fun and joyous, rather than competitive, approach to physical fitness. Whatever your strengths are, whatever you have to give, you can find a small way to give it.

Back to desire. In Hilde Bruch’s The Golden Cage–which is, in my opinion, one of the finest books on eating disorders–the author posits that eating disorders have a great deal to do with the willed suppression of desire. They involve the negation, the defiance of appetites: appetites for food, for sex, for physicality.  Women are particularly susceptible to this tendency, she argues, because we’ve been socialized to attach shame to our appetites, especially for sex and for food. Historically, and even now, we’re encouraged to be chaste, restrained, clean, and austere: to express carnal desire or a voracious appetite for food is distinctly un-feminine, at least in so far as femininity has long been dictated by a misogynistic culture. And sadly, we women (and some men) have become all too adept at denying our appetites, our hungers, our yearnings.

While I battled disordered eating, this urge was an enormous part of my illness. I’m often asked if what I wanted from the disorder was to be thin. The answer, naturally, is yes: of course thinness is what I wanted. But it was, in retrospect, only a surprisingly small part of what I wanted. When I look back on those years, I see that a lot of what I wanted was to quash my own needs. Overcoming this–connecting with my hunger for food, for sex, for vitality, for physicality–took a long time. Being able to declare to myself and to others that I not only needed to eat, but wanted to eat–and all that eating implied–demanded that I overcome a great deal of unconscious shame.

Of course, it’s not just women with eating disorders who feel this shame. It’s most women. Sure, we might open the pages of Maxim and read about how much men like a girl who can devour a plate of chicken wings and wash it down with a pint of beer, but this is a rather typecast exceptions to the rule, which is that women are and always have been encouraged to want, but not to want too much. We should to eat, but only in moderation; to desire, but never so much that we behave unseemly, or–God forbid!–slutty; to be assertive, but never so much that we’re bitchy or aggressive. Not that. To utter the words “I love to eat” feels like a shocking confession, a guilty secret.

In my travels through the raw community, I’ve encountered what I think are both the best and the worst kinds of attitudes towards this issue. On the one hand many raw foodists promote what I believe is a truly exuberant and healthy attitude towards eating. On the other, there are some who approach raw foods and fasting with what I believe is too much asceticism. Me? Well, being a vegan and eating more raw food have certainly helped me to realize that there are many things I thought I needed that I really don’t: an endless rotation of cute new clothing, carefully applied makeup, painted nails, and various other accoutrements of beauty. When you live healthily, beauty and vibrance radiates from within. But veganism and raw foods have also helped me, more than ever before, to embrace my appetites: for life, for experience, and, lord knows, for food. I’ve always liked to eat. And when I’m eating foods that I believe are not only optimal for my body, but optimal for the environment and for mother nature, too, I like itmore than ever.

Of course, we should always guard ourselves against excess. Appetites have limits, and food is just food. But let’s also try to embrace the very real hunger that nature has given us, even if it’s sometimes a little unruly. Desire is a part of life–and a pretty great part of it, if you ask me.

So today, in honor of NEDAwareness week, I think we should celebrate our hunger. In good ole AA fashion, I’ll go first:

I’m Gena. I love to eat.

Do you?

If this post speaks to you at all, I encourage you to echo this statement. Say it on your blogs, to a friend, in writing, or out loud–I like to eat. I enjoy food. Say it in your head, if you want to. Say it in private, or in public. But if it’s true–and I hope very much that it is–say it. Say it with pride. Our hunger makes us human.

Before I bid you goodnight, I’d like to announce the winner of my Tribest giveaway. The winner #397, Lisa Amendola, who told me,

I know exactly what I would use it for!!! I am taking my girls to Disney World in a few months and I am freaking out about how to feed them during the trip. I would use it to make them green smoothies for breakfast everyday and for quick late night snacks of blueberry- pomegranate smoothies. That blender would help me so much!!

Congratulations, Lisa! Now you can make those smoothies for your girls!!

Have a greatnight, everyone.

xo