Veganuary Will Not Save You
A month of atonement does not make you healthier
Afew days ago, I took a call with a reporter who wanted to talk about the unfortunately and idiotically named Veganuary.
I said, “You’re going to eat all the animal products you want 11 months of the year and you’re going to be ‘vegan’ in January and you want to know what benefits that might have brought you?”
OK. First, tell me what you ate the rest of the year, and then tell me what you ate in Veganuary.
Because if you have 12 Old-Fashioneds a day during the other 11 months of the year and you stop drinking for Drynuary, your liver is still going to “look like a Turner sunset,” in the words of P.G. Wodehouse.
Similarly, if you’re eating Whoppers daily for lunch and pepperoni pizza for dinner from Meatebruary through Pizzcember, you could stop eating altogether or eat only kale in January, and you’ll extend your lifespan by like 10 minutes. Furthermore: If you ate a balanced diet all year — one that includes animal products — and then consumed coke, French fries, PowerBars, and pea chips (or whatever), you just downgraded your diet by “going vegan.”
People of Earth: We gotta get over the “sin all week and go to confession on Sunday” thing. The day (or month) of atonement — the “I’m going…
