I have written an entire post dedicated to this great one below. I came across this and immediately got busy typing.
The appeal of raw veganism lies in its freshness, its expensiveness, its popularity amongst models, its rarity, and its ritualized restriction.
I’ve maintained an interest in dubious diets ever since I came upon a copy of Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism Anthology in high school. Robert Christgau, the “minimalist” of the bunch that includes such authors as Terry Southern, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion, was included with his essay “Beth Ann and Macrobiotics.” First published in 1965 for New York Magazine, it tells the tale of Beth Ann Simon, a heroin addict from New Jersey-turned-Greenwich Village housewife who suddenly decided to go macrobiotic – practically overnight. She rarely strayed from Macrobiotic Regimen No. 7 (whole grain cereal only), soon developed scurvy, and died of starvation nine months later after losing fifty pounds.
The story haunts and fascinates me still, particularly when I walk around Tompkins Square Park, noting the macramé hangings in windows, debating between a Buddha Bowl or a Sesame Sea Salad from Quintessence, eyeing the frighteningly lean, black-clad, middle-aged men who float down Avenue A.
It’s easy to become obsessed with a subculture that boasts life-changing results endorsed by beautiful people. It’s easy to succumb to the temptation of buying little vials filled with gold flecks suspended in “magical” Mayan liquid. I understand all this and am very much victim myself to such marketing and zealotry.
But what does not sit well with me is the underlying dishonesty that seems so loud and so impossible to ignore. Raw veganism, superfoodism, macrobioticism. Very rarely are these lifestyles anything more than sublimated eating disorders. The typical transition from S.A.D. (Standard American Diet) to vegetarianism to veganism to raw veganism to restricted raw veganism (less fruit and nuts) is really nothing more than the slow spiral into anorexia. What was once a mere entry in the D.S.M. is now an ethical movement. The accounts of almost all raw vegans share similar miracles: mental clarity, extreme energy, a feeling of lightness.
From my experience, these are little more than the early and highly addictive symptoms that accompany the early stages of anorexia. Raw veganism is Anorexia Lite (ha!), a sickness dangerously protracted and cloyingly acceptable. The obsessiveness and dogmatism of raw vegans is indistinguishable from that of anorexics. Of course all raw vegans are not disordered eaters, but I’m sure that the overlap is very high, and I do not understand why this is never talked about.
That said… Off to make a salad!
—Alice
