#19: Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

My best advice? RUN FROM THIS BOOK. My friend recommended this book to me - she said I would never look at food the same way again. And that may be true, but Skinny Bitch is, at its core, filled with untrustworthy information written by two women who are not qualified to be prescribing such advice.

At its most basic, Skinny Bitch is deceitful. This is a book promoting a vegan diet and while I have no personal problem with that, I wasn't interested in reading a manifesto on the subject. Veganism is not mentioned anywhere on the front cover or the back cover blurb. The authors (and perhaps marketing people) have done this purposely, in order to ambush the reader – thinking, and probably rightly so, that a book on veganism is not going to sell as well as one that’s billed as “a no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to quit eating crap and start looking fabulous!” It’s kind of amazing then that Freedman and Barnouin manage to take everyone else – the FDA, the USDA, the dairy people, the beef people, Johnson & Johnson – to task for being sneaky in order to sell a product when it's exactly what they've done here.

Despite the fact that Skinny Bitch directly says that doctors are underqualified (p. 60), neither of these women are qualified to be dispensing what is essentially medical advice. Let me say it again: THEY ARE NOT QUALIFIED. Rory Freedman is billed as a former model's agent and a self-taught know-it-all. Kim Barnouin, a former model, holds an MS in Holistic Nutrition that she earned online from the Clayton College of Natural Health. According to the New York Times, she did most of her research online - don't worry, I will get to the problems with that.

The biggest flaw in this book is that the authors don’t acknowledge that there are different schools of thought, that people can have differing but still valid opinions, and that there are data sets to support just about everything. Everyone else, in the writers' unqualified opinion, is wrong – every other scientist, dietician, everyone. (Unless of course, they agree with them.) Their book is like listening to Sarah Palin speak – it’s just so hateful and doesn’t recognize that anyone else’s expertise/opinion can be equally valid. To Sarah Palin, you’re “un-American” if you don’t agree with her. And to these women, disagreement makes you a “fucking moron” or a “selfish whore.” I don’t even understand why these words are acceptable. It’s not tough love, it's abuse, and as the writers themselves say, “There is nothing uglier than a pretty woman who’s nasty.”

I am not a qualified medical professional, but some of Skinny Bitch's conclusions rang false to me. Since I don't want to go on here forever, I'll leave it at that. HOWEVER, I did work as a magazine fact-checker for a number of years, and I feel absolutely qualified to discuss the authenticity of one's sources. At the back of the book, Skinny Bitch lists a number of sources - some are from nutrition books, but the majority are from websites and online articles. The thing is, newspaper articles are not considered a primary sources and neither is the Internet - and that's because neither outlet is fact-checked. I am astounded that the majority of this book was written and then published based on such flimsy sources.

I took a look at 10 of the links provided (out of perhaps 30). Three of them no longer exist. One was a newspaper in India and another was what looked like a reputable newsmagazine. Truthaboutsplenda.com used research to back up its claims, but is funded by the Sugar Association, which represents the (conflicting) interests of the American sugarcane farmer. One had an advisory board with doctors, but was ultimately there to sell products; another's mission was aiding the spiritual evolution of the human race and unveiling conspiracy theories. Holisticmed.com, used multiple times, does not list an author (so you don't know who's writing this information) and says clearly on page one that the information is not intended as medical advice. And lastly, the last website had a well-known, if self-styled author, who was the center of controversy in 2002 after other vegans accused him of making false claims and distorting the (already bad) truth. They also relied quite a bit on information from PETA, which is a respectable but biased organization. In short, none of these are valid sources and would not pass muster at any major magazine. They could all be starting points, sure, but from the citations, it doesn't appear that the writers followed them up to find more concrete facts.

There's nothing wrong with veganism and I'm sure it has a good amount of science to support it. I just hope that anyone considering such a radical dietary change will find out about the pros and cons by reading a book written by legitimate experts.