Skinny Bastard

Author Rory Freedman & Kim Barnouin
Running Press Publishers, 2009

So…..My wife bought me this book. Someone gave her the similarly titled book written with women in mind, and she liked the humor that the authors used. It was refreshing for her to read, what is essentially a diet book, that tackled the subject with so much humor. Admittedly, as an NFL player the last thing I want is to become skinnier. The authors address this early on by mentioning that they know men want to add muscle, not get skinny. They just wanted to keep the franchise going. Basically Skinny Bastard encourages a vegetarian, preferably vegan, approach to diet and nutrition. While I agree that most people get too many of their calories in the form of animal proteins, I tried to be vegan, then vegetarian, then flexitarian, before I realized why you don’t run into many 6’5, 255lbs vegans. With my active lifestyle, the vegan diet that they champion in the book really would make me skinny. I agreed with their demonization of all things containing preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and high fructose corn syrup. I disagree that meat and dairy are always bad. The trick is to eat a little less, but don’t spend any less. Pay a few more bucks to get high quality, grass fed or pasture raised products. Buy local when available. Making sure your animal products are sustainably raised almost always ensures that they are free from the hormones, antibiotics, and carcinogens that the authors want you to avoid.

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