Viva Lewes Issue #156 September 2019

COLUMN
Eleanor Knight
Keyboard worrier
For all that I struggle to understand her
purpose, the reason I can’t judge Kim
Kardashian is that I will never be able to walk
a mile in her shoes. The first hundred yards
would see me limping through the doors of
the Victoria Hospital’s minor injuries unit,
begging for mercy, plasters and a pair of comfy
daps to go home in.
But you only have to look at the feet of our
young in the Priory Prom photos to know you
can’t deny the woman’s influence. Speaking as
one whose Twitter followers might, if they all
turned up at once on a sunny day, create only
a minor queuing event at the Pells Pool, I can
only gape in awe, wonder, and some alarm at
the idea that Kim Kardashian, the names of
whose four children are known to my own,
was (last time I looked) followed on Instagram
by 108 million people*. That’s way more than
Phil and his team could cope with at the Pells.
In fact, it’s the same as the population of the
Philippines.
So it hardly took that august organ of news,
Metro, to spread the word that the mother-offour-and-lawyer-in-the-making
(do keep up)
recently adopted a plant-based diet. When
she’s at home. Well, it’s easier to rely on the
lighting for your avocadoes, I suppose.
To many of us, the phrase ‘plant-based diet’
evokes images of worried herbivores – sheep, if
you like – nibbling away at flaccid greenery and
having to deal with the consequences (and if
Kim Kardashian suffers from flatulence,
she doesn’t share it on Instagram). But
potatoes are plants, too, which means
that – for the time being at least –
the humble bag of chips, locally
sourced (and we have some excellent
local sources in Lewes) can still be
enjoyed as an essential and active part of saving
our planet.
Though he probably wouldn’t describe himself
as a bag-of-chips-man, environmentalist
George Monbiot would certainly approve.
An unlikely ally of Her Serene Kimness,
George has long been encouraging (don’t say
haranguing) us to eat more plants in order
to slow down climate change. He suggests
that just a kilo of grass-fed beef has the same
carbon footprint as a flight to New York.
‘Oh no!’ say the, well, nay-sayers, ‘You’ve got
your facts wrong, George, mate. According
to Science, it’s much more like…. 11 kilos.’
Whichever way you slice it, that’s about five
times a Sunday lunch for up to six, and I don’t
know about you, but when you look at it like
that I’d sooner cross the Atlantic anyway.
So as I see it we can either strap steaks to our
feet and prepare to walk the long way round to
the Big Apple, or do like Kim ’n’ George and
resolve to eat more plants and fewer animals.
That way we might help save the world’s
nation most vulnerable to climate change – the
Philippines.
* I looked last year. This year it’s upwards of
140 million.
Illustration by Hasia Curtis
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