From Animal To Meat

Book review: Skinny Bitch September 13, 2009

How far a good title will take you. Even when you disavow it in the last chapter, as Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin do in Skinny Bitch, their New York Times best-selling tirade against unhealthy food, animal cruelty, and the irresponsible government that lets it all happen. As Freedman and Barnouin state, despite repeated admonishments throughout the book to “Get Skinny” they only use the skinny thing as a ploy to get people to buy the book. They really want you to Get Vegan.

So if, as a reader, you can get over being suckered into buying a book you didn’t want to read, is it worth reading? Yes and no. If you like cardio classes taught by drill sergeant cut-the-crap types, you’ll probably like the tough-love writing style. Just be prepared that the content is entirely one-sided. The “facts” are not always facts. (For example, SB claims, “Half of all antibiotics made in the United States each year are administered to farm animals, causing antibiotic resistance in the humans who eat them.” But the link between animal antibiotic use and human resistance, though plausible, has never been proven.) The sources are too often secondary and have their own predictably extreme orientation (e.g., “Milk Sucks” from PETA.org).

Having said that, SB does effectively expose the machinations of the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA to keep the meat industry running at all costs. And the many quotes from the book Slaughterhouse are a grimly hard-hitting reminder of why this all matters in the first place. So SB may be worth a skim, with your BS radar on.