A Review: Skinny B~tch (Rated R)

Authors Note: Profanity is used in this review, but only when quoting word for word from this book. I would have used niceties like “The F word or the S word, but I think we are all adults here and I wanted to give you the facts instead of putting perfume on a turd.

I listen to 106.1 Kiss FM in the morning and I heard Big Al Mac, one of the morning personalities, confess, “Yes, I am currently reading Skinny Bitch.”

I sort of chuckled and put it out of my mind. Then last night I went to Borders and saw the book prominently displayed on one of their stands. I scooped it up and made my way to their coffee bar, purchased a caramel latte and proceeded to read.

From the first chapter the authors of Skinny Bitch are telling you that you to “Give it Up”. You need to give up beer, cigarettes, caffeine, coffee and sugar. The Skinny Bitches go on a diatribe of not only why you should stop these bad habits: bad breath, extra pounds, makes you ugly, they also give you the reasons why they make you fat and ugly and immediately start dropping chemical names like butylated hydroxyamisole and butylated hydroxytoluene. Then they say things like “Coffee is for pussies” and “you need to exercise, you lazy sh~t”.

Wow Rory and Kim, I know you used to be models but are the vulgarities necessary to sell your books?  Maybe so.

The two women continue to discuss everything from animal cruelty to pooping in the remaining chapters: Carbs: The Truth, Sugar is the Devil, The Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh Diet (Atkins), The Dairy Disaster, You Are What you Eat, The Myths and Lies About Protein, Pooping, Have No Faith: Governmental Agencies Don’t Give A Shit About Your Health, Don’t Be A Pussy, Let’s Eat, and the final chapter is called Use Your Head.

This book is actually only about 140 pages of actual reading, the rest is recipes, food, a month’s worth of menus, websites and other helpful information to start your vegan lifestyle.

Here are the things you need to give up to be a Skinny Bitch:

• All Meat Products
• All Dairy – no cheese, eggs, milk, yogurt, nada, zero, zilche
• Caffeine
• Processed Foods like white flour, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white rice, white bread, etc.

What can you eat?

Vegetables, preferably organic because if they aren’t certified organic then they are probably genetically modified or full of pesticides.

• Tofu
• Soy
• Whole Grains
• Nuts
• Organic Fruit
• Fresh Squeezed Juices
• Water
• Beans

After reading the book I am actually surprised that I am on board with some of their suggestions. They mentioned chicken pens full of cockroaches and chickens that have their beaks seared off and their feet that have grown around their wire mesh cages. If that wasn’t enough to keep me from wanting to eat chicken and eggs, they talked about hormones pumped into these poor birds as well as the inhumane butchering processes – and that was just the chicken!

Pigs are butchered by boiling them after their throats have been slit, but sometimes they are still alive when they are dropped into hot water to remove their hair. They are then drowned by a revolving arm. Not to mention that pigs are pretty much fed whatever is rotten. Even Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream vendor, feeds some of its waste to pigs because it is too toxic to put into the dump. Then these pigs are butchered and fed to us. I’m not ignorant when I’m eating my bacon, but after hearing about some of the cruelty that goes on at these slaughtering houses I must say that I will pause before getting bacon and eggs at IHOP.

The Skinny Bitches continue to list the horrors that happen to our food on every level. Cows get milked by machines and sores and puss develop on their udders and of course that puss goes into the milk along with all the hormones they injected into the cows so that it will produce 100 pounds of milk per day. The milk is pasteurized to rid it of all these impurities, but it still contains lots of chemicals that the FDA deems perfectly fit for human consumption.

The authors of this book did their homework. The data, even if you only believed 25% of what they say is compelling. I have a gallon of milk in the fridge and I couldn’t bring myself to eat my Fiber One with it this morning. Instead I had oatmeal with a banana and cinnamon sweetened with honey.

Other tips for becoming skinny:

• Don’t drink any diet drinks or artificial sweeteners (including Splenda/Sucralose)
• Exercise
• Drink water, but don’t over do it or else the water will leech your body of necessary nutrients
• Fast – do a juice fast or raw food fast and then eventually do a no-food fast

There are no new ideas presented in this book for losing weight other than the becoming a vegetarian part. I’ve heard most of this information before, but I’ve never been slapped across the face with it boot camp style. Apparently riddling your book with phrases like, “Yeah, eating onions and garlic makes your breath smell like someone took a sh~t down your throat” will sell diet books because we’ve heard the information presented every which way possible and so yeah, these girls did give us something new in the way of profanity.

Lastly, the book does provide the reader with countless resources for finding Vegan foods.

Some of the website provided:

veggieworld.com

goodbaker.com

eatraw.com

treehuggintreats.com

rosecitychocolates.com

playfood.org

vegandreams.com

goveg.com

veganoutreach.org

Truthfully, I can’t imagine my life filled with organic cereals and soy milk, but I think I can at least limit my intake by 75% of these foods and better my health. I think what is important is making healthy decisions that not only impact your health, but the world we live in. I think this is a message you can convey in a smart and fun way without telling people they are lazy-shi~ts, but hey, it creates a buzz and gets people talking and so I can’t say that I don’t admire Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin for their achievements.