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Sat, 31 Jan 2009

PETA Claims Vegetarians Have Better Sex, Banned From Super Bowl

This has put me up on my Savvy Veg soapbox!

On Tuesday, NBC declared a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals commercial—featuring, among other suggestive images, a woman preparing to pleasure herself with a broccoli stalk—too racy to be shown during the Super Bowl. The text in PETA's advertisement reads: "Studies show vegetarians have better sex." Do they? Not necessarily, according to Nina Rastogi, Slate, 1.29.08

Ms. Rastogi's article, 'Debbie Does Salad', presents arguments for and against the claim that vegetarians have better sex. Overall, her article is tongue-in-cheek, getting a few laughs by poking fun at vegetarians. After all, the subject couln't possibly be serious - right?

Some of the material in this piece is pretty funny - also dated and irrelevant, as in quotes like this: "Sylvester Graham, the crusading 19th-century dietary reformer and inventor of the eponymous cracker, believed that meat—along with feather beds, coffee, tea, and richly seasoned foods—encouraged the "degenerating habits of luxury, indolence, voluptuousness and sensuality."

Equally silly are the statements that "Vegetarian diets tend to correlate with higher rates of zinc deficiency, which is closely associated with lower testosterone levels and depressed sex drives. Vegetarian women are also more likely to develop amenorrhea (loss of periods), a condition that's usually accompanied by low testosterone, vaginal dryness, and poor libido." Well, yeah! Vegetarians who know nothing about veggie nutrition, or anorexic teenage vegans - maybe. No references for these claims.

If you don't mind vegetarians being ridiculed, read Nina Rastogi's article. If you have a taste for veggie porn, watch the banned PETA video ad, on the same page. Personally, I found the ad offensive and insulting. I think PETA has set back the vegetarian cause by decades, degrades healthy sex between consenting vegetarians, and is anti-feminine - liberation for animals, but not for women!