Weeks 10 and 11 Update: New Recipe – Cognitive Dissonance + Kool-Aid
Am I drinking too much of the raw vegan kool-aid? Probably …
More than a few of my friends have pointed out that I’ve become less discerning over the last few weeks. It’s true. I’ve posted with a less critical eye not only here (the girl in this video does come across as a bit … well … zealous to say the least), but also on my facebook page.
For example, I posted this list of interesting facts about veganism (from Freelea and Harley over at 30 Bananans a Day) and did not include caveats about the obvious potential flaws.
- they didn’t include a source for the “facts”
- calling them “unavoidable” facts does not allow for different interpretations of the data
- correlation does not equal causation, of course
- etc
Not to take a swipe at the excellent work Freelea and Harley are doing, but normally I’d refer to a page like that a little differently. I would have either pointed out the potential errors in thinking or I would have posted to it rhetorically asking my readers to discover the flaws themselves.
Why didn’t I do that? Well, even though I understand Cognitive Dissonance quite well, like everyone I’m susceptible to it. The 80 10 10 diet is so far outside the mainstream I find myself defending it several times a day. Even though I tend to preclude these conversations with things like “this is just an experiment” and “I don’t have a firm opinion on it yet myself” I find myself wanting to justify my decision.
Justifying the reasons for embarking on the experiment is only rational. Justifying the diet itself before I have more information to support a well-researched opinion is not.
Yet here I continue … My working hypothesis so far is that the diet is valid. When I am on the diet I feel, think, and act better than when I am not. This is, of course, only one man’s experience, but what I’ve observed in others tends to support the hypothesis as well. Still, I need to be more vigilant about my personal intellectual honesty.
Week 10
- no sugar
- no alcohol
- 15 – “banana island” meals
- 2 – 80 10 10 meals
- 2 – cooked vegan meals
- 2 – meat meals
- successfully resisted New York pizza when in NYC!
Week 11
- no sugar
- no alcohol
- 19 – 80 10 10 meals
- 2 – meat meals