>>> BTW, it is not "quite obviously true" that the average American >>> consumes too much. >> >> "Whenever Americans ask me 'What can I do?,' I think, 'Eat less, >> motherfucker.'" >> - Arundhati Roy, in a private conversation with a mutual acquaintance > > > >> >> Excellent! What a beautifully provocative way to say it > > I dunno, don't you think that it locates the problem at the wrong level of > the society?
It's a terrible, terrible thing to say to Americans who are systematically misinformed about food and nutrition and have essentially had their bodies mutated by industrial agriculture and its heavily subsidized grain-based food simulacra. I'm not sure how interested people are in issues like this, but I wonder if anyone has seen Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories (based on this epoch-making NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?sec=health), which fully demolishes the vegan liberal elite's propaganda that working class Americans are fat because of a weakness of will or a consumerist mania. I realize that the issue of overconsumption raised here is not really about eating too much food, but Arundhati's unfortunate comment is an example of how the highly destructive activities of capital--in this case, the colonization of the body--are so often ignored in favor of moralistic attacks on the "American" lifestyle. Asad
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