If you eat-a the meat-a, then prepare for some resistance from PETA!
When you are trying to convey a message of peace, love, care and concern as a core belief in your organization, then you would at least expect the members of that group to exhibit these traits themselves in the tactics they use to promote their philosophy. But apparently that doesn’t hold true if you are a member of the extremist animal rights, anti-meat wacko group known as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They are a fringe organization that is doing everything in their power to prevent people from consuming meat for two main reasons: 1) on moral grounds for the welfare of the animals and 2) for health reasons contending that a vegetarian or vegan diet is far superior nutritionally to one that consists of meat.
I don’t personally have a problem with someone who chooses to eat a meat-free diet (although you can make your low-carb lifestyle vegetarian, I do think you are limiting yourself from some truly fabulous nutrient-rich foods that are indeed an essential part of a healthy diet), but PETA always seems to take things to the extreme to say the least: dressing up in nothing but cellophane and describing meat-eaters as “cannibals”; conducting a national letter-to-the-editor writing campaign trashing the Atkins diet using the exact same letter; creating fake public surveys to make it look like the ultra-low-fat, vegetarian diet is more mainstream than it is; PETA nutcase Jody Gorran bringing a frivolous lawsuit against Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. that ran the good Atkins name through the mud for several years before a judge finally threw it out last year; and most recently in September 2008, PETA convinced the United Nations that meat consumption was a major reason for global warming! In fact, just this week they pressured the star of the #1 movie in America Daniel Craig from the latest James Bond flick Quantum of Solace to go vegetarian for the sake of the animals and health. Oh brother!
EXTREME? I think that’s putting it nicely. But you gotta hand it to them–just when you think they can’t go any more overboard than they already have, along comes something else that is equally shocking and almost always controversial like this news story out of Vermont last week. You should watch the video report of it because you’re not gonna believe what the PETA people are wanting to do in the Green Mountain State!
With all the gall and audacity that they could muster up in a letter addressed to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, PETA claimed that since meat-eating is so unhealthy the health insurance premiums of meat-eaters in that state should be increased. Additionally, they surmise that vegetarians and vegans live healthier and should be rewarded with decreased health insurance premiums. They’re SERIOUS about this, too!
“Given the latest news about the effects of E. coli on meat-eaters — and the mountain of evidence linking meat consumption to some of our nation’s deadliest diseases — this change will benefit Blue Cross Blue Shield’s bottom line while also helping to ensure that your policyholders don’t flat line,” the PETA representative wrote in a letter to the president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont.
Oh where do you begin with something like this? The continued hyperbole that PETA uses to communicate their message is quite nauseating to say the least. It’s a well-known fact that there is no danger of E. coli if you stick to grass-fed beef and the alleged “mountain of evidence” against meat does not exist. I suppose if you repeat a lie often enough some people will begin to believe it is true, but that doesn’t suddenly make it a fact.
My contention is that those of us who consume a healthy meat-based high-fat, low-carb diet are benefiting our weight and health much more so than the vast majority of Americans who are consuming excessive amounts of processed, refined, garbage foods that are the real culprit in obesity and disease. Meat is not the great health threat PETA wants you to believe it is–sugar, junk food, fast food, and soda are the real enemies to optimal health. Why doesn’t PETA spend any time and money at all exposing the truth about these real detriments to health if they care so much about the subject?
Rather than admit there are multiple ways to live a healthy lifestyle besides being a vegetarian, PETA instead insisted that Blue Cross Blue Shield take action AGAINST meat-eaters to punish them.
“By giving your policy holders a financial incentive to go vegetarian — and penalizing those whose meat-based diets fuel our nation’s worst health problems — Blue Cross Blue Shield could save millions of dollars in the long run,” the PETA representative asserted in the letter.
How about this, PETA? You eat your diet that makes you healthy and I’ll eat my diet that makes me healthy and neither one of us criticizes the choice of the other. That sounds like an amicable plan, right? I’ve always contended that people should find the plan of action that works for them and then do it. If that means low-fat, low-carb, Weight Watcher, and even vegetarian or vegan, then just do SOMETHING that will put you on the pathway towards bettering your health. Too many people are apathetic because they think they have to live up to some standard of perfection in their efforts. But this journey is not about perfection, but rather pursuit. Staying in the game is most of the battle.
Thankfully, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont isn’t buying PETA’s propaganda…YET!
“Under Vermont law, we would not be allowed to vary rates based on the dietary and nutritional habits of various members,” a representative noted. “We have no information one way or the other if vegetarians are more healthy.”
This is why groups like PETA need to be responded to when they propose such public changes. I wouldn’t put it past them to attempt to change the state law in more liberal ones like Vermont, Massachusetts, and California, for example, to define what a “healthy” diet is as low-fat vegetarian. And they’d have a precedent in place on the federal level with the USDA pushing low-fat diets as part of their U.S. Food Pyramid for the past three decades. It sounds outrageous to think about it happening, but the reality is this could indeed come to fruition if PETA gets their way.
Lest you think my description of PETA labeling them as “extremist” is a little too harsh, look at the campaign they are doing for the Thanksgiving holiday season entitled Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals!. It’s quite cutesy (kinda like the Bad Fats Brothers was for the American Heart Association), but the message is so far from the truth it’s not even funny. Be sure to play the game all the way to the end as you get to make your own Tofurkey! Mmmmm, yummy! NOT!
This reminds me of that classic scene in the hit CBS-TV comedy “Everybody Loves Raymond” where Raymond’s mother Marie is on a low-fat diet “health” kick during the Thanksgiving holiday season. So she made a tofurkey and forced everyone to eat it. This is just too funny not to share!
