Plant-based diets go Hollywood

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes I watch crappy TV—I call it "mind candy" after a long day of writing about tough issues like meat production, farm animal welfare, and the environmental problems caused by nitrogen pollution. Once in a while, however, these two worlds collide.

A few weeks ago, the entertainment show Access Hollywood featured a story about a new diet that is sweeping across Los Angeles. Nope, not Atkins, the meat-centered plan that Jennifer Aniston and Renee Zellwegger claim help keeps them slim. Instead, this new diet book, Skinny Bitch—A No-nonsense Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous, by self-proclaimed “skinny bitches” Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, focuses on a plant-based or vegan diet plan that helps its followers gain energy while losing weight. Their most notable reader, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham of “Posh and Becks” fame, was recently photographed buying the book at a chic L.A. boutique, propelling Skinny Bitch to the New York Times bestseller list shortly thereafter.

The authors don’t mince words, calling soda “satan” and noting that cigarettes are for “losers,” junk food is really junky, and too much alcohol will just make you fat and sloppy. All good—if blunt—advice for hundreds of young women who drink (and eat) too much and don’t get enough exercise.

But the book goes a little further than just telling readers what not to do. It also gives sound advice on what a healthy diet can look like (one of the authors holds an M.S. in holistic nutrition). Barnouin and Freedman—with some attitude—focus on steering readers away from meat, eggs, and dairy products. These products, they say, are not only unhealthy, but inhumane—that’s not an assertion you see in most diet books. They also help readers visualize how filling—and fulfilling—a vegan diet can be, featuring suggestions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that center around legumes, seitan (the meat alternative, not the devil), tofu, tempeh, nuts, and, of course, lots of veggies.

But perhaps the most important advice the authors dish out overall is that eating well and taking care of yourself can not only be healthy, but "hip."