PETA's Whale of a Time is Over

PETA has been generating a bit of controversy lately regarding their penchant for featuring scantily clad models and celebrities in their ads to encourage eating a vegetarian diet and supporting animal rights. Their latest model, however, had to be replaced.

A Jacksonville, Florida billboard campaign showcased a rear view of an obese woman with the tagline, “Save the Whales – Lose the Blubber. Go Vegetarian.” The attitude that “trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach” (a quote from PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman) riled many who considered the advertisement to be sexist and demeaning to women.

About a week after erecting the blubber billboard PETA announced that they will be replacing it with a more benign version:

Another whale-related campaign by PETA encouraged people to “Eat the Whales”. The idea behind this was to start a discussion as to whether or not it is preferable to kill one sizable animal in order to feed many, or to kill scores of “lesser” animals to feed the same. The ad also asks where and why lines are drawn to divide animals into two segments: acceptable for consumption, and not acceptable.

Though this topic may have been a bit weightier in terms of moral issues, it did not attract nearly as much attention as the “whale” woman.

"Cash for Cluckers" Might Get You a Buck

Why bother with collecting cash for your clunker? Sure, a rebate for up to $4,500 might be nice, but wouldn’t you rather be guaranteed of a dollar right now? You can get that dollar if you go to your grocery store and purchase a vegan faux chicken product and send PETA the receipt. In return you’ll get a $1.00 rebate and a vegetarian starter kit.

One of the motivations for the Cash for Clunkers programs is to reduce emissions, but chickens have a fairly deep carbon footprint as well. From PETA’s blog:

According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the equivalent of taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.

Here are the details of the rebate:

· No tardiness! Receipt for your (repeat) vegan chicken product must be dated between August 6 and September 30, 2009 and received by PETA by October 5, 2009.
· No foreigners! You must be a U.S. resident.
· No liars! You must include a written statement affirming you have never tried faux chicken before.
· No seconds! Sorry, only one per household.
· No swarming! Offer is limited to the first 5,000 entries.

If you fit the above requirements, send your receipt and declaration of fake meat virginity to:

Cash for Cluckers
PETA
501 Front Street
Norfolk, VA 23510

All joking aside, this is admittedly another one of PETA’s creative ways to utilize current events and a catchy tagline to provide more awareness of animal rights. (Maybe next year we’ll see Cents for Salmonella. No?)

Visit PETA’s blog for more info.

Michael Jackson's "Ben" may Become Tune for PETA

PETA is seeking the rights from recently deceased Michael Jackson for his 1972 song “Ben”. They wish to utilize the tune for raising awareness regarding animal experimentation on lab rats. The Animal Welfare Act excludes birds, rats, mice, livestock intended for food, cold blooded vertebrates and all invertebrates from protection from cruelty.

Jackson’s song was included on the soundtrack for a movie also entitled “Ben”, a film about a lonesome boy who befriends a rat.

PETA and Jackson have clashed in the past. As recently as March of 2009, PETA protested via post and blog to reports that Jackson planned to replicate a “jungle” theme onstage at the ill-fated O2 arena shows. The rumored guests included elephants, panthers, snakes, tropical birds and monkeys. Jackson later decided against it.

After abandoning Neverland Ranch in 2005, PETA believed Jackson left the remaining animals in undesirable living conditions. Jackson’s ranch was subsequently inspected by federal officials and was cleared from PETA’s cruelty allegations.

In other Jackson news, his former personal chef Kai Chase plans to publish a cookbook of the King of Pop’s favorite dishes. Media reports and the singer himself claimed Jackson was a vegetarian, but Chase’s version of his diet includes tuna and chicken. Jackson’s nutritionist shares another variation of his eating habits, claiming the singer subsisted on a juice and smoothie diet, along with a little bit of trail mix and an occasional treat of fried chicken.

Like many facts regarding Jackson’s lifestyle, the vegetarian issue continues to be cloudy and without significant substantiation.

Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch has Cancer

Vegetarian Adam Yauch, better known as "MCA" of the Beastie Boys announced back in July in a video at www.beastieboys.com that he has a "very treatable" cancerous tumor in his left parotid gland, which is a gland that resides in the throat. It is also in his lymph node, but has not spread to any other area of his body.

Because of this health issue, the Beastie Boys are postponing both their upcoming tour and the release of their next album entitled "Hot Sauce Committee Part I".

According to Yauch, the surgery and subsequent radiation will not affect his voice.

To view the message from Yauch himself with fellow groupmember Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz at his side, visit the Beastie Boys' Official Website.

Battle Royale: High Fructose Corn Syrup Versus Sugar

Which is better? High fructose corn syrup or sugar – or are they “compositionally equivalent”?

The advertisements lauding the quality of high fructose corn syrup do appear to be a bit biased, as if somehow the Corn Refiners Association (who funds THESE ADS) might have something to gain. They invoke a cautious curiosity as political ad campaigns do – one might expect a stalk to appear at the end and declare, “I am a corn cob, and I approved this message.” The goofy, Kerri Kenney look-a-like in the commercial above resonates with the fool in all of us. “How could I have been so stupid?” We all strive to be the enlightened, juice-pouring power Mom who scoffs in the face of whiny syrup haters. Who wouldn’t want to be more like her?

The folks at www.sweetsurprise.com are resolute to repudiate the “myths” prevalent in today’s increasingly label-aware society. A recent print ad reenacts an exchange between two women. One says something like, “My hairdresser says corn syrup is bad for you.” The other replies, “Wow, your hairdresser is a doctor?”

The smarmy, don’t-be-a-parrot tone beckons one to simply iterate the Corn Refiners Association’s (CRA) greed-fueled lies instead. The CRA boldly states that HFCS is “fine in moderation…just like sugar”. A can of soda might contain about 13 teaspoons of HFCS. Does that reflect moderation, or excess? The FDA recommends a limit of 10 teaspoons of sugar per day. One has to wonder how many teaspoons are in the unlabeled juice of the commercial above? It looks like the ones that sell for about $1.19 per gallon, and are so sweet it will make your lips pucker.

All of this excess corn ingestion makes one feel like the “terrorists win”. You may recall the old warning that stated if you buy gasoline or vote a Muslim into political office, the terrorists win. Well who wins when giant corporations control its nation’s bellies and health?

Right, so perhaps the switch should be made back to regular old white sugar. It’s slightly humorous how refined sugar has become the good guy. Looking at it from a vegetarian or vegan standpoint, it should be known that some refined sugar processing plants use bone char, or charred animal bones, to filter out such nasty impurities in sugar like its…well, color. Just like many other gifts of Mother Nature, man has been able to destroy and mutilate sugar from its beautiful and healthy beginnings as sugar cane.

So the dilemma remains. Whichever route one decides to take, these four points might be a good start:

1. Eliminate soda, including artificially sweetened colas.

2. Be aware of the HFCS contents in the foods you are eating. All growth begins with awareness, and corporations will blind you with science. Paid science, so to speak.

3. Begin to make little changes. Try agave nectar, a honey-like sweetener imported from Mexico’s agave plants. The agave is a plant that looks like a cactus, but is actually related to the lily family.

4. Pay no attention to women pouring juice at parties. It might just be Kool-Aid.

Food, Inc.

A great 90 minute film is in theatres now called “Food, Inc.” If you haven’t seen “The Future of Food”, you may be interested in the eye-opening but sickening details in this movie by award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner.

If you are one of those rare individuals who’d rather read than watch a movie, there is also a book available, containing 13 essays from experts in the food field such as Gary Hirschberg of Stonyfield Farm and Robert Kenner himself.

Here are a couple of points from the movie that you might not know about:

Did you know that in January, 2008 the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, despite two votes from Congress to delay the decision until more information was gathered, and letters from 150,000 citizens expressing their disapproval of the consumption of cloned meat? It is even more disconcerting that if cloned meat is introduced into the marketplace, the FDA will not require these foodstuffs to be labeled as cloned goods.

Did you know that 45 percent of U.S. corn and 85 percent of soybeans are genetically engineered? Many of the processed foods on supermarket shelves contain high fructose corn syrup and soybean soils, so it is estimated that over 70 percent of these foods contain genetically modified ingredients.

Did you know that 1 of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants do not have adequate food? Not a million, a billion. This issue could be improved with major changes to the way food corporations and the FDA are allowed to operate. Food, Inc. believes these changes can begin with consumers, likening each purchase we make to a vote - a vote for corporate greediness and unhealthy food, or clean and healthy sustenance.

Here is the Food, Inc. trailer: