PETA: Still Stupid

There is a lot more wrong with PETA than their anti-meat eating crusade! I am a big supporter of animal welfare.

There is a lot more wrong with PETA than their anti-meat eating crusade! I am a big supporter of animal welfare.

As I've mentioned over on that blog o' mine, the "anti-fat" angle of vegetarian activism is one that I just don't like. And though I support a lot of the work that PETA does (the stuff that doesn't get publicized), their attention-grabbing billboards that end up insulting the people they're trying to inform will always bother me.

I too am a supporter of a lot of PETA's work, but their constant advocacy of a vegan diet for weight loss (not vegetarian, they specifically advocate veganism for weight loss) is directly at odds with many of their ardent supporters. For example, in their last quarterly news magazine I noticed PETA members of all different sizes who were celebrated for their various animal welfare activities. Surely PETA notices that these people may in fact be eating a PETA-endorsed plant based diet and still be much larger than the average PETA celebrity endorser. They will have to wake up sometime.

ouch-why does PETA keep doing these dumb things.. They make all animal activists look bad when they do dumb sh*t like this... first of all it makes many people think that all vegans and vegetarians are anti-fat bigots who try to proselytize and thats just not true... as a fat vegetarian and someone who knows a lot of fat and fat-friendly veggies and vegans I find this truly absurd..

I haven't seen it here in Chicago, but if I do you can bet I will find out how to get it taken down. Then again, most people here will probably ignore it or realize how nuts Peta is.

I was a vegetarian for over a decade, but I've always had problems with PETA. Their ads attempt to shock, but many of them are sexist and just plain mean (remember the one about Rudy Guliani after he had an operation for prostate cancer?). It's a pity, because their mean-spiritedness clouds their principles and keeps them relgated to the fringe.

PETA needs to face the FACT that there are fat vegetarians, and even some fat vegans!

By all this "go vegan, get skinny" rant they're re-enforcing the old idea that vegan diets leave you malnourished and emaciated (and anemic).

Let's celebrate the good news - that someone, somewhere, decided NOT to allow it to be posted!

There have been studies that suggest that going veg* can actually help with certain real health problems.  For example, veg*s aren't being exposed to all of the chemicals in commercial meat.  (There is, however, still the issue of pesticides.)  Additionally, many people don't like the way factory-farmed animals are treated (highly understandable, by the way!) or are simply uncomfortable with the idea of their dinner involving another creature's death. In light of the genuine health and ethics concerns that usually accompany going veg*, promoting veg*ism as—of all the petty things—a weight-loss diet is particularly ridiculous.  Then again, PETA does a lot of ridiculous things. By the way, I'm not veg* myself (although I'm avoiding non-seafood meat products as much as possible for health reasons), but one of my roommates is vegan.  For the record, she's on the slim side of average—5'11", somewhere between 140# and 150#—but not scrawny (so much for that notion), and has ethical issues with PETA. -Qit