Written by PETA
After winning us over with its tasty veggie burgers and meatless taco salads (yum!), the West Michigan Whitecaps' Fifth Third Ballpark has held a special place in our hearts. Unfortunately, the newest edition to the Whitecaps' 2009 menu has us reaching for the Pepto-Bismol.
Weighing in at a hefty 4 pounds, the Fifth Third Burger contains a whopping 4,800 calories. Between two 8-inch buns lie five 1/3-pound beef patties and enough fixins' to make even the heartiest eaters clutch their chests in horror: a cup of chili, five slices of American cheese, salsa, nacho cheese, Fritos, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. And what do you get for finishing this artery-clogging sandwich? A T-shirt.
Well, PETA is challenging anyone who chows down on the Fifth Third Burger to take on a side order of all the resources it took to create the massive meal. Producing just one pound of animal flesh takes 16 pounds of grain and 2,468 gallons of water. You're probably busy gagging over the mere thought of this monstrous burger, so I'll do the math for you: on top of the 4-pound sandwich, you'll be required to shovel in 27 pounds of grain and wash it down with 4,000 gallons of water. Think you can handle it?
For those gourmands who are intent on ingesting several days' worth of food in one sitting, we're asking the Whitecaps to offer the Fifth Third Veggie Burger. Vegetarian burgers don't waste all the valuable resources that meat products do, so they're a guilt-free indulgence for baseball fans who care about animals and the planet.
Written by Liz Graffeo
Case in point: This past weekend, Austin was home to the second annual veggie-hot-dog–eating contest, organized by iLoveMikeLitt. Now, last year, we bemoaned missing the first-annual (well, first-ever at that point) contest. So imagine how I feel about missing this year's event, since Austin's a mere three-hour drive from my home in Houston (slogan: "Houston's great—no, really!").
Somehow they managed to carry on without me, though. In fact, nearly 300 folks showed up—including Austin's famed vegan firefighters—to polish off 1,500 LightLife Tofu Pups, along with 14 gallons of vegan ice cream from Austin's own NadaMoo. In the solo contest, Spencer "Tree" Lockwood ate 21 hot dogs to narrowly edge out last year's solo champ, Colin "The Tim Duncan of Competitive Eating" Kalmbacher, whose sentiments captured the quintessentially Austin nature of the whole event:
What is more Austin than a bunch of vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores, all alongside each other, gorging themselves on hundreds of soy dogs for the sheer insanity of it?
Indeed. If you're an Austinite (Austinian?), be sure to sign up for the iLoveMikeLitt event newsletter so that you don't miss out on next year's contest—or other fun stuff like Vegan Arm Wrestling and Veggie Speed Dating. Those of us living in less "weird" places can still get in on the fun—I'm staging my own vegan hot-dog–eating party for the Fourth of July (though, so far, it's just me and my soy-loving hound, Gus). Our resident foodies have picked their favorites, but I'm interested to know what you'll have on the grill over the holiday. Fire it up!
Posted by Jeff Mackey
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
Follow PETA on Twitter!