no, Meatless Mondays will not cause eating disorders The real problem with Mindful Mondays

CW: Eating disorders

“OPINION: The unintended consequences of Meatless Mondays” pops on my phone. A few seconds into my Instagram scroll, I’m appalled at the content and the ironic timing of this absurd article.

Happy Eating Disorders Awareness Week, everyone! Today, we will be equating a vegetarian diet to a complex mental illness.

The article centers around the idea that by encouraging a form of restriction, Meatless Mondays also encourage disordered eating. This argument completely trivializes the complexity of eating disorders. Restriction does not inherently equal disordered. In fact, restriction can be present in a healthy lifestyle. Many healthy individuals limit their consumption of sweets and drag themselves to the gym at 7 a.m., as may those with eating disorders. Forgive the oversimplification, but it boils down to this: If someone with an eating disorder accidentally overeats or unintentionally misses a workout, they will spiral. Others say “oops” and move on.

So, no, not all forms of restriction will “lend itself to disordered eating,” as Lewis claims. It is not about what a person eats but about why they do or do not eat those things. Choosing to be vegetarian for environmental purposes or skipping lunch because of a tight class schedule does not automatically imply that an individual is suffering from an eating disorder. Externally-forced restriction — as in dining halls not offering meat or your lunch period being too small

— is the opposite of disordered restriction. Eating disorders consist of self-imposed restrictions. There’s a difference between not finding chicken in a dining hall and not being allowed to eat chicken because of some illogical rules constructed by a mental illness. Sorry you went to Frary and had to eat tofu. I can promise that your pain does not come close to the hell on earth that is an eating disorder.

Impressively, the article acknowledges that the relationship between eating disorders and vegetarianism is correlational, not causal, and even provides the correct reason for this connection — yet it still misses the point. Yes, vegetarianism can be a “guise.” But no, vegetarianism does not cause eating disorders. Meatless Mondays will not cause eating disorders.

If someone really wants to claim that Frary is encouraging eating disorders, I would add that protein is the least dangerous food group to not serve. Those who have struggled with disordered eating may have different fear foods, but eliminating the food groups we demonize as “fattening” — i.e. carbohydrates and fats — would be more questionable. Having meatless meals for environmental purposes doesn’t ring any alarm bells.

P.S. On behalf of all Asians, tofu is good. Sorry your taste buds suck.

Daniela Sechen HM ‘23 is from Los Gatos, California. She likes field hockey, pretending to play the drums and Graham Central Station ice cream.

CW: Eating disorders

My name is Sara Anderson, and I am the creator of Mindful Monday. I have been a vegetarian for eight years and an athlete for 18. Hannah Hughes, my co-writer, is the founder and president of the club 5C PlantBased Mission.

Before I created Mindful Monday, I surveyed more than 200 Pomona College students, many of whom expressed a willingness to eliminate meat from at least one meal a week. However, Mindful Monday is not Meatless Monday. Contrary to popular commentary, meat was not completely eliminated from the options. Frary Dining Hall and Frank Dining Hall still offered grilled chicken at the Grill, tuna salad, meat proteins for omelets and many others. Mindful Monday was not designed to withhold meat, but rather to increase student awareness, i.e. mindfulness, around the sheer amount of meat that dining halls serve on a daily basis by decreasing the amount of meat served for one meal at both Frank and Frary on Mondays — a simple elimination of meat from the main line while maintaining access to meat in all other sections of Frary and Frank.

As a member of the varsity track and field team at Pomona, I am aware of the desire and even need for lean protein that many athletes have. As such, the head chefs of both Frary and Frank and I ensured that this type of protein was main- tained for these individuals.

In her article, Lewis mentions how the dining halls’ “forced restriction” of meat has the potential to promote disordered eating among students. She cites a study from the National Library of Medicine that suggests vegetarianism and eating disorders can have a correlational relationship. But a correlational relationship only indicates that two things happen to occur simultaneously — we cannot infer from this study alone that the promotion of vegetarianism causes eating disorders or disordered eating practices.

Moreover, this study only recruited a small, limited group of female participants without the use of random sampling methods. This means that the findings aren’t generalizable to the entire population of college students at the 5Cs — to make that generalization is a blatant inaccuracy and an incorrect application of the study’s findings.

Eating disorders are something that we should be having open dialogue about at the 5Cs, but to do so exclusively in the context of vegetarianism is a mistake. In reality, many factors can contribute to eating disorders, and to say that vegetarianism is an indicator of illness is a gross oversimplification. Vegetarianism is so much more than a “restrictive” eating practice — it’s about time we stop treating it as such.

The real problem with Mindful Mondays lies not in its “restrictions,” but in its politics. Many Pomona students claim to care about the environment — until it affects them. Too much of the standard environmentalist mindset at Pomona is developed

Jasper’s Crossword: Lights Up

Trades [Central Europe]

33. Round places to live 34. 7-Eleven drink 35. Kind of meal you can make overnight? 36. Parisian pals 37. Assuage 39. Reason not to watch a Game of Thrones scene 40. “I just took a ___ test, turns out...”

41. Took a dip 42. Finely chop garlic 43. Rudolph and Lin, for two [South Asia]

46. “...in my opinion”

47. Danny’s wife in the “Ocean’s” films 48. Anti-Oxford comma regime

50. Musical about a certain neighborhood — or where this puzzle’s circled answers are found?

54. “Jeez, tell us how you really feel!”

55. ___ dancer 56. Code for the web 60. Crunchyroll genre 61. Late PBS anchor Ifill

Woodwind featured on Art Garfunkel’s “Bright Eyes”

More cogent

64. “Cherish the Day” singer

65. Profs’ achievements

DOWN

1. Reddit Q&A

2. Min.’s sixtieth

3. Slayed

4. Walls on a balcony

5. Non-consideration for Elon

Musk

6. Soccer shoes

7. Its powerhouse is the mitochondria

8. Source of back pain

9. Excite

10. The first bilingual Muppet

11. Kelly on “Live!”

12. Activist Brockovich

13. Foxes’ hangouts

21. Places to crash, in a couple ways

22. Affleck in “Manchester by the Sea”

23. Saudi capital

24. They come back for a weekend

25. Titular Mrs. Maisel in a Prime show 29. Mom not with considerations of climate justice but with the preservation of the status quo steeped in neocolonialism.

Opposition to the Mindful Monday program lies in its perceived connection to morals. Lewis says that “colleges should not be assigning moral value to foods and need to recognize potential consequences when they do.”

But why do we need to think of sustainability as a moral concept? Sustainability is simply the culmination of actions that attempt to guarantee a future for every citizen of the planet. It should not be a moral but rather a standard of behavior.

In 2009, Former Pomona President Oxtoby adopted the Pomona College Climate Action Plan, which commits the school to being carbon neutral by 2030. To attend a school with this goal, with these values, students must understand that sustainability is intrinsic to so much of what they do on campus. From ensuring pools are covered at night to retain heat to composting food scraps from the dining hall at the Farm, student activity is constantly monitored for the potential to make it more sustainable.

The real problem with Mindful Monday is that it showed students how they can contribute to a more sustainable planet — and they weren’t ready to hear it.

Sara Anderson PO ’23 is an international relations major with a focus on environmental policy and security. She is a varsity track and field athlete who throws discus and hammer. Hannah Hughes PO ’25 is a public policy analysis major from Thousand Oaks, California. She loves cats and baking vegan desserts.

BELLa

37. Drowning (in), metaphorically

38. Participates in a coop?

39. Spot for overpriced t-shirts

41. More refined

42. Vapor

44. Where couch potatoes like to be

45. Drooped

49. It’s tapped for apps

50. “___ elected to lead, not to read” –President Schwarzenegger on “The Simpsons”

51. “Strega ___”

52. Gemini, say

53. State where hogs outnumber people seven to one

57. “In truth,” in a text

58. PC game hack

59. “___ Misérables”

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS