Skinny Bitch by: Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

Carrie read the book version and I listened to it on CD.  These ladies are clearly sassy and irreverent, so if you are easily offended by adult language or graphic explanations then this isn’t the book for you!  It was a funny and entertaining listen that made me wish my commute to work was longer. 

They discuss in-depth the evils of coffee, medications, fasting and eating meat and animal by-products. These ladies are vegan and explicitly describe how animals are fed, treated and slaughtered, before they show up in your fast food wrapper. I eat meat a couple times a week, but I haven’t cut it out completely. I have to be honest that some of the descriptions were pretty gruesome. 



 Some of my favorite take-aways include:

·         Soda is liquid Satan.  Nothing in it should be put in your body.  And Diet soda is even worse than regular.  Aspartame is a main ingredient in diet soda and other sugar free foods.  Aspartame turns into formaldehyde; you know what scientists use to preserve things?  No wonder your fat butt is still there, you are preserving it with all the diet soda you are drinking!

·         Unless you are eating organic dairy & meats you are ingesting hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and steroids. 

·         Despite the recent Time magazine cover, most of us no longer drink breast milk, so why are we drinking cow’s milk?  We don’t drink horse milk or elephant milk, so why cow milk?  Despite all the calcium claims of “Milk does a body good” you don’t need to drink milk from another animal to have strong bones.  You get more calcium from grains, nuts and green vegetables.  If you are insisting on drinking cow’s milk make sure that it is labeled rBST free (recombinant bovine somatotropin-a growth hormone).  If factories are giving rBST to 2,000 pound cows to make them bigger, what do you think it is doing to you??  We are also the only industrialized nation that allows milk that contains rBST to be sold. 

·         So what is safe to drink?  Brian likes almond milk, and I prefer coconut milk (so does health guru Jillian Michaels).  You can also try rice milk.  This should be a separate post, but I would avoid anything soy as it is overprocessed.  At Christmas time Whole Foods carries a chocolate mint coconut milk that was amazing, and Brian drinks the Dark Chocolate Almond milk for a sweet treat. 

·         Read Ingredients.  I’m not talking about the front of the package that says “Natural” or “Wholesome” I’m talking about the actual list of ingredients on the back of the label.  Funny how it can say “Natural” on the front but there are 10 things I can’t pronounce on the back.  I don't buy it if it has something I can't pronounce or don't know what it is.  If you aren't at that point yet, then make a threshold for your situation.  Is is 2 unknown ingredients, or 5?  Make sure that the first few ingredients are all real, since that is the majority of what the product is made of.  When high fructose corn syrup is listed first (or at all!) that can’t be good for you.  If you are eating just fruits & vegetables you would have to eat bags full to go over your daily goal. 

My audio version of the book came with a great 170 page recipe book, shoot me an email if you want to check it out. 

 I’ve got to work on my summer reading list…….What health focused books or magazines do you read?