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| Vegans, carnivores, whatever… feel free to just eat in peace | Vegans, carnivores, whatever… feel free to just eat in peace |
| (30 days later) | |
| Maybe it wasn’t ideal that the latest details about Donald Trump’s favourite food arrived at a time of year that is traditionally given over to revolutionary (if contradictory) diet plans, bodily renewal, and, increasingly, ecstatic confessions by self-regulators of one sort or another, on the miracle of their new regimes. As in: they wouldn’t have dreamed it possible, formerly so sluggish, surprisingly tasty, never before so clear-headed, 10 kilometres feels like nothing, great to be reducing methane emissions, really you should try it. | Maybe it wasn’t ideal that the latest details about Donald Trump’s favourite food arrived at a time of year that is traditionally given over to revolutionary (if contradictory) diet plans, bodily renewal, and, increasingly, ecstatic confessions by self-regulators of one sort or another, on the miracle of their new regimes. As in: they wouldn’t have dreamed it possible, formerly so sluggish, surprisingly tasty, never before so clear-headed, 10 kilometres feels like nothing, great to be reducing methane emissions, really you should try it. |
| That new journalistic genre – the born-again dieter/faster runner/meat-renouncer’s/non-drinker’s confession – would be nothing without its implicitly, or not so implicitly, admonitory edge: how can you lot live with yourselves? | That new journalistic genre – the born-again dieter/faster runner/meat-renouncer’s/non-drinker’s confession – would be nothing without its implicitly, or not so implicitly, admonitory edge: how can you lot live with yourselves? |
| January is now also Veganuary, in which the soaring number of vegan converts urge us to “take the pledge”, the temperance movement having, you gather, no monopoly on quasi-religious oaths of renunciation. We will, its organisers promise, “feel fantastic”, while knowing that we’re reducing animal suffering and helping the planet. But it’s fine, too, to go vegan for purely selfish reasons, as “the healthiest start to the year”. | January is now also Veganuary, in which the soaring number of vegan converts urge us to “take the pledge”, the temperance movement having, you gather, no monopoly on quasi-religious oaths of renunciation. We will, its organisers promise, “feel fantastic”, while knowing that we’re reducing animal suffering and helping the planet. But it’s fine, too, to go vegan for purely selfish reasons, as “the healthiest start to the year”. |
| Why not, in fact, combine it with one of the latest diet innovations, like raw water, or Dr Michelle Braude’s “eat carbs lose weight” regime, or Prof Tim Spector’s plan for enhancing “good” gut bacteria, and evacuating the bad ones? In 2018, the professor tells the Daily Mail, a healthy gut is all about eating like the Hadza, “an indigenous group of people in Africa”, whose “gut bacteria is about 30% more diverse than in western nations”. | Why not, in fact, combine it with one of the latest diet innovations, like raw water, or Dr Michelle Braude’s “eat carbs lose weight” regime, or Prof Tim Spector’s plan for enhancing “good” gut bacteria, and evacuating the bad ones? In 2018, the professor tells the Daily Mail, a healthy gut is all about eating like the Hadza, “an indigenous group of people in Africa”, whose “gut bacteria is about 30% more diverse than in western nations”. |
| It was in the midst of this seasonal surge of physical idealism that Michael Wolff brought the world, in Fire and Fury, further details about Trump’s patent “eat more, move less” regime. The Hadza were not the only indigenous people to be completely appalled. | It was in the midst of this seasonal surge of physical idealism that Michael Wolff brought the world, in Fire and Fury, further details about Trump’s patent “eat more, move less” regime. The Hadza were not the only indigenous people to be completely appalled. |
| It was already known, of course, that the president binged on junk food and overdone steak. His favourite dinner – two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish, chocolate malted shake – comes in, at 2,530 calories, over the approved daily intake for an adult male. Now, thanks to Wolff, we learn that, when not endangering his health where his preferences can be witnessed by fellow junk food enthusiasts, he still favours a cheeseburger, eaten in bed, at 6.30pm. | It was already known, of course, that the president binged on junk food and overdone steak. His favourite dinner – two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish, chocolate malted shake – comes in, at 2,530 calories, over the approved daily intake for an adult male. Now, thanks to Wolff, we learn that, when not endangering his health where his preferences can be witnessed by fellow junk food enthusiasts, he still favours a cheeseburger, eaten in bed, at 6.30pm. |
| Even Bill Clinton, now a vegan but once famed for his prodigious appetite and with a similar predilection for bolting Big Macs, liked to jog healthily to a local provider as opposed to masticating alone, between sheets that the president prefers to strip himself (not the only way in which Trump recalls the hero of John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces). | Even Bill Clinton, now a vegan but once famed for his prodigious appetite and with a similar predilection for bolting Big Macs, liked to jog healthily to a local provider as opposed to masticating alone, between sheets that the president prefers to strip himself (not the only way in which Trump recalls the hero of John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces). |
| As much as a gluttonous leader sets a dreadful example, and must cause a good deal of unnecessary anxiety to Melania, the cheeseburger evidence is probably less problematic, and not just for the president’s critics, than if Trump were suddenly revealed to be so dedicated, privately, to bodily purity that he could teach Gwyneth Paltrow a thing or two about mind and spirit detox. An unhinged belligerent who refused meat would not, of course, be the first leader whose behaviour tested any alleged correlation between vegetarian diets and benevolence; it could nonetheless challenge the increasingly popular view of food preferences as spiritually meaningful. Perhaps it consoles clerics who miss Lenten observance, and fish on Fridays, that this type of exercise has not so much vanished as migrated, complete with puritanical homiletic, to the lifestyle, occasionally political, pages. | As much as a gluttonous leader sets a dreadful example, and must cause a good deal of unnecessary anxiety to Melania, the cheeseburger evidence is probably less problematic, and not just for the president’s critics, than if Trump were suddenly revealed to be so dedicated, privately, to bodily purity that he could teach Gwyneth Paltrow a thing or two about mind and spirit detox. An unhinged belligerent who refused meat would not, of course, be the first leader whose behaviour tested any alleged correlation between vegetarian diets and benevolence; it could nonetheless challenge the increasingly popular view of food preferences as spiritually meaningful. Perhaps it consoles clerics who miss Lenten observance, and fish on Fridays, that this type of exercise has not so much vanished as migrated, complete with puritanical homiletic, to the lifestyle, occasionally political, pages. |
| It’s become virtually impossible to separate, for instance, Jeremy Corbyn the incorruptible politician from Jeremy Corbyn the incorruptible food-group-excluding teetotaller who drank apple juice for a treat on Christmas Day. Admirers of Mr Corbyn’s gut now watch in awe as he treads the narrowing path from vegetarian to vegan, already assured that we will, if he is ever elected, be represented by some of the best-kept intestines in British political history. In one of his earliest dietary bulletins he confirmed that some issues, unlike Brexit or regime change in Iran, lie too deep for constructive ambiguity. What was his favourite biscuit, Mumsnet members asked him, in 2016. “I’m totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits,” he said. Then – perhaps mindful of the fruit bowl that once made such a statement in Tony Blair’s den – “but if forced to accept one, it’s always a pleasure to have a shortbread”. | It’s become virtually impossible to separate, for instance, Jeremy Corbyn the incorruptible politician from Jeremy Corbyn the incorruptible food-group-excluding teetotaller who drank apple juice for a treat on Christmas Day. Admirers of Mr Corbyn’s gut now watch in awe as he treads the narrowing path from vegetarian to vegan, already assured that we will, if he is ever elected, be represented by some of the best-kept intestines in British political history. In one of his earliest dietary bulletins he confirmed that some issues, unlike Brexit or regime change in Iran, lie too deep for constructive ambiguity. What was his favourite biscuit, Mumsnet members asked him, in 2016. “I’m totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits,” he said. Then – perhaps mindful of the fruit bowl that once made such a statement in Tony Blair’s den – “but if forced to accept one, it’s always a pleasure to have a shortbread”. |
| Trump’s unmindful intake of impure food is surely not among his graver offences | Trump’s unmindful intake of impure food is surely not among his graver offences |
| That this special perspective on visible Hobnobs – as a species of late capitalist torture – did not lastingly affect Corbyn’s reputation is just one measure of how far the public has come to accept food-group renouncers at their own (often high) estimation. In The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell wrote the commonest socialist was not working class but “a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him”. That was alienating, he thought, to decent people. “And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity”. | That this special perspective on visible Hobnobs – as a species of late capitalist torture – did not lastingly affect Corbyn’s reputation is just one measure of how far the public has come to accept food-group renouncers at their own (often high) estimation. In The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell wrote the commonest socialist was not working class but “a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him”. That was alienating, he thought, to decent people. “And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity”. |
| What Orwell couldn’t have anticipated is what last week’s vegan-spiking scandal confirmed: that vegetarians and vegans would so far advance as to establish themselves as the decent people and their critics as the ones devoid of common humanity. And, as gut-maintenance and veganism attract influential followers, it is undiscerning, junk-food consumers who find themselves the object of media derision and pity. Reporters instructed to try Trump’s meals have reported, like so many grossed-out Zellwegers, on their low, Bridget Jones-like ordeals. How could anyone eat like this? | What Orwell couldn’t have anticipated is what last week’s vegan-spiking scandal confirmed: that vegetarians and vegans would so far advance as to establish themselves as the decent people and their critics as the ones devoid of common humanity. And, as gut-maintenance and veganism attract influential followers, it is undiscerning, junk-food consumers who find themselves the object of media derision and pity. Reporters instructed to try Trump’s meals have reported, like so many grossed-out Zellwegers, on their low, Bridget Jones-like ordeals. How could anyone eat like this? |
| Ask the patrons of a million chicken shops and McDonald’s. While the reasons for all this junk consumption must – assuming they’re not simply cash-, class- and time-related – remain mysterious, it seems unlikely their customers are as disgusted as are many opinion-formers by people who’ve never tried kimchi. | Ask the patrons of a million chicken shops and McDonald’s. While the reasons for all this junk consumption must – assuming they’re not simply cash-, class- and time-related – remain mysterious, it seems unlikely their customers are as disgusted as are many opinion-formers by people who’ve never tried kimchi. |
| Trump’s unmindful intake of impure food is surely not, unless the plan is to impeach him on the deadly sins, among his graver offences. Like steady weight gain, it’s an attribute he shares with many underprivileged supporters. So it could be counterproductive – and arguably insensitive – to make too much of it. As vegans showed last week, and Jamie Oliver’s stubborn chip-eaters did before that, people can get very indignant when their diets are disrespected. Anyway, if public figures are rightly damned for lax food choices, it follows that they ought to be admired whenever they advertise control over their appetites; whether by religious fasting, or by pledging secular abstinence from meat or biscuits. Though there are probably thousands of food bank users who do that the entire time, and without earning anything like the acclaim bestowed upon the indigenous Hadza people of Africa. | Trump’s unmindful intake of impure food is surely not, unless the plan is to impeach him on the deadly sins, among his graver offences. Like steady weight gain, it’s an attribute he shares with many underprivileged supporters. So it could be counterproductive – and arguably insensitive – to make too much of it. As vegans showed last week, and Jamie Oliver’s stubborn chip-eaters did before that, people can get very indignant when their diets are disrespected. Anyway, if public figures are rightly damned for lax food choices, it follows that they ought to be admired whenever they advertise control over their appetites; whether by religious fasting, or by pledging secular abstinence from meat or biscuits. Though there are probably thousands of food bank users who do that the entire time, and without earning anything like the acclaim bestowed upon the indigenous Hadza people of Africa. |
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