Written by Michelle Sherrow
If you always have a sleepless night after watching a horror movie, you might want to think twice before sitting down to a meal of dead bodies. Here's why meat is more dangerous than an ax-wielding maniac:
If you're still eating fish despite the dangers of mercury, might I suggest that you may also enjoy a summer job at Camp Crystal Lake?
As every randy teenage slasher-flick victim can attest, hormones can be deadly. Hormones in meat can cause all sorts of unsexy conditions, such as "moobs." Which leads me to number three …
Eating meat causes impotence. Given their druthers, I think a lot of men would opt instead for the hockey mask–wearing serial killer.
That's another good reason not to ingest all the saturated fat that meat contains.
Find yourself short of breath when you hear that ominous theme music ("Ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma")? The toxic gasses and bacteria that wind spreads from factory farms make it even more difficult to inhale.
Do you ever shout, "Why are you running into the woods?!" when some moron is being chased by a psycho? People in real life do dumb things that lead to their untimely demise, too, like eating meat, eggs, and dairy products even though bad diets are to blame for one-third of all cancer deaths.
Have you seen PETA's slasher movie that features video footage from chicken farms? If you're too chicken … don't eat chicken.
Heart disease caused by diets high in artery-clogging animal products will do the trick, too.
In Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Voorhees is finally done in by toxic waste in the sewers. If the kids had only gotten him into one of the waterways polluted with factory-farm runoff, he would've been a goner a lot sooner.
Meat's got its own resilient killer: antibiotic-resistant bacteria caused by the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms.
Between meat and dairy products, trying to choose which is more deadly is like trying to decide which serial killer you want to take a weekend getaway with.
Poo. And lots of it. Yeah, it gets in meat, too.
Maybe the worst thing about how deadly meat is, is that we actually have to pay for it—both at the check-out counter and in the form of government subsidies. I mean, at least when Jason is swinging a machete, he's not simultaneously asking for your wallet—am I right?
Slash your risk of getting killed off early by running from meat as if your life depended on it. (But don't go running through the woods. That's never a good idea.)
After learning that New Orleans has been designated one of the most artery-clogging cities in America, PETA has offered to help fight plaque buildup with a pinup ambulance ad:
Nurse: © iStockphoto.com/Pavel Sazonov Ambulance: © iStockphoto.com/Jon Patton
Our ad could certainly help New Orleans residents reduce their risk of heart disease. Their number of fender benders, however, might be on the rise …
Written by Jeff Mackey
There are countless things that we can do that endanger our lives, but there's one thing we can do that can not only help us live longer but also save many more lives at the same time: adopting a vegan diet.
Around 16 billion (that's "billion" with a "b") animals are slaughtered each year to feed Americans, which works out to more than 100 animals per meat-eater in the U.S. But you're smart—you do the math. And then do the smart thing: Go vegan.
Written by PETA
When asked what one food he would ban if he could, PETA's chief medical adviser, Dr. Neal Barnard, responded with three: hot dogs, bacon, and ham. We'll let him tell you why!
In an interview with Forbes magazine, the bestselling author and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine cited those three processed meats as foods that no one, especially children, should ever eat.
In 2007," he says, "the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research released the most comprehensive review on diet and cancer ever published, prepared by the world's leading experts, and it was quite damning about the link between processed meat and colorectal cancer. In early 2011, an update to the report encouraged people to avoid processed meats altogether.
But the disease that's weighing on Dr. Barnard's mind and that has increased threefold in just the last 30 years isn't cancer—it's diabetes. And here again, meat is to blame.
Dr. Barnard notes that the fats that people consume, prevalent in meat, make muscle and liver cells resistant to the action of insulin, triggering diabetes. "The forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is frightening: one in three people born in 2000 will eventually develop the disease," he says. "The medical burden is bad enough—the average person with diabetes loses well over a decade of life."
To read the rest of Dr. Barnard's eye-opening interview, visit Forbes.com. And to find tasty recipes that are 100 percent ham-, bacon-, and hot dog–free, visit our "Living" page.
When we heard that MGM wanted to demolish the Harmon Tower—its brand-new but structurally unsound hotel and casino in Las Vegas―we had a dynamite idea: Turn the unusable building into a billboard.
We can't think of a better use for a doomed casino than an ad urging people not to gamble with their health, but instead to improve their odds of beating heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses by going vegan.
What's a lot easier than getting a 21 in blackjack? Getting a healthy body in 21 days with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program, beginning September 5.
An elementary school in Denver, Colorado, is giving its students food for thought. To promote healthy eating habits among its students, SOAR has become Colorado's first vegetarian school and earned itself a Compassionate School Award from PETA, for saving the lives of countless animals.
"There is tons of research about plant-based foods preventing disease," said SOAR's head of school, Gianna Cassetta. "[W]e're making a difference in the way people think about food. Hopefully by the time our kids are in fifth grade, they'll be very conscious about what they eat."
And it's working. SOAR lunches are loaded with fruits and vegetables, and even the food students bring from home must adhere to SOAR's guidelines. Parents report that when they are grocery shopping, if something isn't healthy enough to go school, it goes back on the shelf. SOAR is continuing its quest for a new generation of healthy kids with the opening of a second school next year.
To help the kids in your life make the switch to a healthy vegan diet that will help prevent heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other diseases, visit PETAKids.com/Vegetarian.
I've been vegan for more than 20 years and thought that was a long time, but Loreen Dinwiddie takes the vegan cake. The Oregon resident, who just celebrated her 108th birthday, went vegan in 1922 and never looked back. Loreen attributes her longevity to "fruits, vegetables, and nuts. It's all there in the Bible." She may be onto something, since studies show that vegans slash their risk of our nation's top killers: heart disease, cancer, strokes, and diabetes.
Watch Loreen in action and see if you don't agree that she deserves our vote for Cutest Vegan Centenarian. Do you know someone who's been vegan as long (or nearly as long) as Loreen? Comment and tell us about it!
Written by Alisa Mullins
Prompted by reports that churchgoers are more prone to obesity than those who don't go to church, PETA wants to help one of the largest churches in West Virginia—the U.S.'s fattest state—become one of the slimmest. PETA is offering Chestnut Ridge Church, a mega-church in Morgantown, vegan ads to place on their pews and a yummy meatless cookout to kick off the church's celebration of life this Easter.
Eating a plant-based diet is the best way to combat obesity as well as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. To "resurrect" your own health this Easter, simply take the Pledge to Be Veg for 30 Days.
Girls in the U.S. are now entering puberty as young as 7 years old. Half of African-American girls and 15 percent of Caucasian girls develop sexually by age 8. That means that young girls' bodies are maturing before a lot of them have even mastered riding a bicycle. Doctors and parents have good reason to be concerned. Early onset of puberty can lead to depression, short stature, stress, early sexual activity, and increased risk of breast cancer.
So what is causing girls to mature too early? Many doctors believe the hormones in meat and dairy products are to blame. Farmers give cows regular doses of growth hormones to make them grow as large as possible as quickly as possible. These hormones remain in the cows' tissues after they are slaughtered and also pass into their milk, and they are, in turn, ingested by people who consume those products.
The best way to avoid hormone overload is to pass on hormone-laden animal products and fill your body with healthy fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Then the only side effects you'll experience are easy weight management and lower risk of cancer, stroke, and heart disease. Not a bad trade-off.
Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum is in danger of being nevermore because of budget cuts. PETA is offering to help fund the museum in exchange for displaying an ad educating people about the other "Red Death": meat.
PETA wants to show visitors that they can prevent a premature burial by going vegan and reducing their risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other deadly diseases. What better way to prevent the fall of the house of Poe than by keeping it and its visitors up and running for a long time to come?
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.
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