Archives for the 'peta' tag
Vegetarianism Bad for Teens
A new study carried out by a Minnesota college professor of nutrition
…found that while adolescent and young adult vegetarians were less likely than meat eaters to be overweight and more likely to eat a relatively healthful diet, they were also more likely to binge eat. Although most teens in Robinson-O’Brien’s study claimed to embark on vegetarianism to be healthier or to save the environment and the world’s animals, the research suggests they may be more interested in losing weight than protecting cattle or swine.
For one thing, many young “vegetarians” continue to eat the white meat of defenseless chickens (25% in the current study), as well as the flesh of those adorable animals known as fish (46%), even when butchered and served up raw as sushi. And in a 2001 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that the most common reason teens gave for vegetarianism was to lose weight or keep from gaining it. Adolescent vegetarians are far more likely than other teens to diet or to use other extreme and unhealthy measures to control their weight, studies suggest. The reverse is also true: teens with eating disorders are more likely to practice vegetarianism than any other age group.
Whole thing at Time.com.
But parents shouldn’t freak too much. Like the PETA staffer who changed her name from Karin Robertson to GoVeg.com and then back to Karin Robertson, a teenage vegetarian–like surly teenagehood itself–is probably going through a passing fad. (Just ask Padma!)
The Voice Gives Foie Gras Farming Thumbs Up
Is foie gras a humanely produced product, as proponents like me contend, or is it something sinister, as the folks at PETA and HSUS claim? Village Voice food writer Sarah DiGregorio decided to find out.
If I had seen with my own eyes that Hudson Valley produced foie gras by abusing ducks, this article would have turned out very differently. But that just wasn’t the case.
Read DiGregorio’s brilliant, 400+-word investigation here. And feel free to follow that up with a helping of my own foie opus here.
Bacolicio.us Makes Even PETA Website Look Edibly Crispy
Holy brilliance! Not only does it stay with you as you scroll, it works with any website. Baconify whatever site moves you here.
Blow your mind by baconifying the bacolicio.us site itself. Double the bacon!
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
The Perfect Furry Storm
Everything about this story is a joy. 1) New York Magazine, 2) Nigella Lawson, 3) Fur, 4) peeved PETA. What’s not to love?
PETA is not pleased with television chef Nigella Lawson. When asked on BBC1’s The One show if she thought the fashion industry should outlaw fur, Nigella replied that she would wear it if she could kill the animal herself. The host asked what she would think of fur-wearing celebrities who started wearing dog or cat fur, and Nigella blurted out, “I’d love a dog or a cat!’’ Then she made a stabbing motion and added, “Going into a shop and buying a fur coat would be an act of weakness. But if I could go into the woods and kill a bear myself, I would wear it proudly as a trophy.’’
Breast Milk Update
Here’s an update on the Swiss restaurant owner who is replacing cow’s milk with breast milk in the food he serves: Apparently, he’s created a trend…
Yesterday, PETA wrote a letter to Ben & Jerry’s, urging them to replace cow’s milk with breast milk in their ice-cream:
Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America’s number one cause of death.
[...]
The breast is best! Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?
Ben & Jerry’s response?
We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.
We (Brad, co-guest blogger and I) agree . . . no thanks PETA. It seems like PETA is devaluing their own mission here by making ludicrous requests — do they really expect Ben & Jerry’s to go around the country gathering breast milk from lactating women? Cows are better suited for the job and it’s definitely cheaper. Plus, breast milk tastes best from the teat, which is why it’s for babies. So, let’s keep it that way.
Crispy Podcast Episode 4
In the fourth episode of our weekly podcast, we discuss the news about food shortages, Burger King’s ill-fated Foie Gras Burger, PETA’s synthetic meat initiative, miracle fruit, Duckathlon IV, the alleged dangers of competitive eating, and this week in bacon – LA bans bacon dogs.
BTW, that’s me with the meat is murder t-shirt recording the podcast. If you ever want to watch and listen to us live as we record the show, just follow me on Twitter (@jerrybrito) and I will tweet when we’re ‘on the air’ and provide a URL. We have a chat room going while we record and we take listener questions and comments. Pretty nerdy, but pretty fun. Live versions of past shows are here.
We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ll tell us what you think. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every week.
UK BK Flirts with £85 Foie Burger
Best done in the voice of that movie voiceover guy…
In a land ruled by a queen… an upstart king tries to lure customers with a golden goose… against the wishes of a ninny prince… and PETA… and some other, lesser-known group of anti-humans…
This summer, it’s Burger King: Home of the Foie-pper Gras-pper .
Coming soon to a theater theatre near you.
PETA Acts Not Dumb
Yesterday PETA launched a $1 million contest to convince some mad scientist to come up with a way to create meat in a lab setting that “would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten”–what it’s calling “in vitro meat.” PETA claims the contest is a way to advance its so-called anti-cruelty agenda, stop harming the environment, etc.
I think it’s really just an admission by the group of what carnivores and omnivores have always known: meat tastes good. So good that it seems the overwhelming majority of manufactured vegetarian food–plant life that didn’t grow from the ground (or ocean)–serves little more than to provide calories that mimic the taste of meat.
Alas, I could go on about how awful PETA really is, but I must instead respond to a vegan friend, who wrote me this morning, regarding the PETA contest, with this challenge:
I dare you to put up a positive blog post one of these days about vegetarians or vegans and something they do or eat.
So here goes: this contest is a great idea. Bravo to PETA. This is exactly the sort of thing groups like PETA should have been doing all along. Not terrorizing or suing or intimidating what should be free choices made by peace-loving meat eaters. But putting their money where their breasts mouths are in order to effect voluntary consumer change. All while helping vegetarians eat better tasting food.
One final note… I wonder if the chicken breast cutlet photo PETA used to announce the contest comes from chickens killed specifically for its campaign, or whether they nabbed the photo from a provider like Corbis. Just wondering.
Britney Spears Sane, Attractive, and Rational Compared to PETA
The douchebags at PETA think they know why Britney Spears is a walking meltdown: it’s because she eats meat and dairy products.
It’s not as if celebrity vegetarians are a particularly healthy bunch: Alicia Silverstone (formerly fat vegan); Paula Abdul (often drunk, along with fellow vegetarians Peter Buck of R.E.M., Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Gos, and one-time actress Brett Butler); Brigitte Bardot (crazy); Posh Spice (dangerously thin and ugly); Fiona Apple (see Posh Spice); Kirk Cameron (possessed by the Lord); and Adolph Hitler (not exactly a celebrity, but a vegetarian for the most part nonetheless).
Speaking of eugenicists, PETA recently suggested Britney’s pregnant sixteen-year-old sister should be neutered. More PETA and Britney coverage at The Superficial.
