By Rory Freedman, author of Skinny BitchMy whole life, my big mouth has gotten me into trouble. Whether it was talking back to my teachers, dropping F-bombs on my older sister, or just "being fresh" to my parents—I always had a problem with authority. Looking back, I can see that most of the time, I was just being a wiseass. But I can also recognize that questioning authority made me who I am today. And I can't help but laugh that I've managed to turn my penchant for swearing into something positive.
Fourteen years ago, I developed an interest in nutrition. I started reading everything I could on the subject, and some of the things I learned just blew my mind. Basically, I discovered that we were all being fed a pile of bull$hit on a regular basis. My favorite example: Our whole lives, we've been told by every adult on the planet, "Drink your milk; you need it for strong bones!" Well, guess what? Studies at Harvard, Yale, Penn State, and the National Institutes of Health found that dairy did not have a positive impact on bones. Wait, it gets worse: After looking at thirty-four different studies from sixteen different countries, researchers at Yale found that the countries with the highest intakes of meat and dairy had the highest rates of osteoporosis!
What the @$%?! Why don't doctors know this? Well, one Senate study revealed that doctors receive less than three hours of nutritional training during their entire time in medical school. Not only that, the dairy industry has done such a brilliant job infiltrating mainstream medicine; the majority of people working in the health industry have no idea that dairy isn't all it's cracked up to be. Also, the dairy industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on advertising. And doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and dietitians are humans. Like the rest of us, they're susceptible to advertising. Ugh. Every time I see an ad with some athlete or celebrity sporting a milk mustache, I want to puke.
Even if we never heard about these scientific studies, we're such idiots for buying into the whole dairy hype. We're the only species on the planet that drinks the milk of another species. We're also the only species on the planet that drinks milk as adults. Think about it: Would you suck your mom's boobs now? No! If you don't need her milk, why on earth would you need a cow's? If the dairy industry had told us that zebra milk was important for our bones, we'd all be running around drinking zebra milk right now. The claim that dairy strengthens bones has been around for so long, no one thinks to question it. But the truth is, we can get calcium easily, and our bodies can absorb it better, from other sources, like broccoli, leafy greens, legumes, raw nuts, and raw seeds.
Learning the truth about dairy was just one of the things that made Kim and me want to write a book. There were so many other things that infuriated us—things we felt like, "Oh my God! Why doesn't everyone know this?" But we didn't want to write some boring, dry-ass diet/nutrition book. So we wrote
Skinny Bitch, the ultimate "f*ck you" to authority. We go after the FDA; the EPA; the USDA; the meat, dairy, sugar, and soda industries; everyone! And we swear like sailors the whole time. Partly because we're pissed. And partly just because we can.
We'd love to know what you think after you read
Skinny Bitch. And if you think something we say in the book is bull$hit, by all means let us know. Question authority—even us!