Edited

Taken from:
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/lunch-att/lunch-attitudes-1a.shtml


"Functional and Dysfunctional Lunch-Attitudes". Written by Tom Billings, a long-time raw-food vegetarian, and who's followed many of the common raw vegetarian diets: fruitarian, natural hygiene-style, living foods. His current diet is lacto-vegetarian (includes some raw dairy), 75-90% raw.




Lunch-Righteousness

Lunch-righteousness is a delusion--a false sense of individual superiority (self-righteousness) that is based on the quality/type of one's diet (their lunch) versus the quality/type of others' diets. That is, one has a "better" diet than others, hence one believes the delusion that he or she is "superior" to others.

Typical Examples:

* An ethical vegan who believes that he or she is "more compassionate" than a meat-eater.

* A puritanical raw-fooder who believes that he or she is "purer" than those "poor souls" who eat "dead" (cooked) food.

Extreme Example:

Raw-food zealots who engage in some of the following behaviors: hostility, threatening others, plagiarism, intellectual dishonesty, and/or promoting the dietary equivalent of racism, because they are under the delusion that their 100%-raw vegan diet makes them "superior," and the ends justify their negative means.

It should be mentioned here that some raw zealots promote lunch-righteousness by actively spreading the false myth that a 100%-raw vegan diet makes one "superior" to those who eat cooked foods. Not only is this false, but it is a form of bigotry.

In her book, To Eat Flesh They Are Willing, Are Their Spirits Weak? (1996, Pythagorean Publishers), philosopher Kristin Aaronson nicely summarizes the moral trap of dietary self-righteousness (p. 18):

No one who feels morally superior ever is, for the simple reason that [self] righteousness is itself a moral taint. We may feel better, feeling that we are better; but the better we feel we are than others, the worse--and worse off--we will be. We can be corrupted by a good thing, by too much of a good thing, by taking a good thing much too seriously.

Note: material in brackets above [ ] is my own explanatory note.




Lunch-Identification

Lunch-identification occurs when one closely integrates their dietary philosophy (i.e., their lunch philosophy) into their self-identity. Here one strongly identifies with their lunch; in figurative terms, the lunch eats you, rather than you eating the lunch.

Typical Example:

* A person with lunch-identification is easily upset when his/her diet is criticized, challenged, or questioned, because he/she interprets criticism of the diet as personal criticism.

Extreme Examples:

* Zealots lashing out with hostility against all who dare to challenge their delusions about their supposedly "perfect, natural, ideal diet." Tweet