PeTA and the Paleo Diet
Here is a little pre-Thanksgiving lunacy before the real craziness begins. PeTA has gone over the top, again. They love controversy and they dish it out by the bucket load. This time with an advertisement aimed at little kids, that equates eating a Thanksgiving turkey with eating a pet. Can we say “going off the deep end”? But then there are no limits to what some people will do to get their agenda across. There is no doubt that PeTA and Paleo diet are polar opposites.
PETA's new ad for Thanksgiving
From ABC News: The bizarre Thanksgiving ad, which was released Monday, features a Jack Russell terrier’s head photoshopped onto a turkey’s body and says, “KIDS: If you wouldn’t eat your dog, why eat a turkey? GO VEGAN.”
“Turkeys may not be as familiar to us as dogs or cats but they have the same ability to suffer and that’s something people inately understand, especially kids,” said PETA’s manager of campaigns Ashely Byrne. “There are a lot of kids out there who don’t want to see a dead bird as the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner.”
PETA plans to erect numerous billboards of this ad near public schools in major cities in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Florida, New Mexico, Utah and Tennessee, to “spark a dialogue between kids and their parents,” according to Byrne. However, PETA is still negotiating with local advertising companies in various cities.
Now the premise of the ad is that turkeys experience pain just like our pets do, which is indespuitable. In fact I will go so far as to say that turkeys, pets and nearly every other organism on the planet experiences pain to one degree or another. Just like humans. For many of the creatures on the planet it’s hard to say to what degree or how they may experience it, but since they are living beings and have a built-in instinct for survival, and pain being a survival mechanism, it’s a fair bet that they feel it.
But the nature of life on this planet is also death. It is eat and be eaten. Without death, life would not exist and there would be only devastation. To push the agenda of veganism is to enter the realm of actively encouraging malnutrition. 2 million plus years of human evolution has ensured the need for animal protein in our diets. There is no avoiding that. The vegans that run PETA would have us believe that we can undo our evolutionary needs by sheer will power. Sadly, for them, this is not so.
And their advice to eat a tofurkey (shudder) is even worse. Unfermented soy has many known toxicity problems. It affects the brain, the thyroid, inhibits the absorption of minerals and worse. From the Weston A Price website:
….the soybean contains large quantities of natural toxins or “antinutrients.” First among them are potent enzyme inhibitors that block the action of trypsin and other enzymes needed for protein digestion. These inhibitors are large, tightly-folded proteins that retain their configuration even when heated for long periods of time. They can produce serious gastric distress, reduced protein digestion and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake. In test animals, diets high in trypsin inhibitors cause enlargement and pathological conditions of the pancreas, including cancer.
And if you are male and concerned about your libido, avoid even the partially fermented tofu. Again from the Weston A. Price website:
Although tofu is marketed as sexy today, it’s invention was anti sex. Lord Liu-An of Hua-nan China, was a ruler and inventor committed to adding a low-cost protein to the vegetarian monastic diet……
…..Soon after, the aptly named “meat without a bone” appeared on monastery menus as an aid to spiritual development and sexual abstinence.
…..Seems the monks noticed that when tofu consumption went up, the naughty behavior went down!
…..And that’s why Japanese wives serve extra helpings of soy to straying husbands.
There is a lot more to the soy problem. Visit the Weston A. Price website for complete information.
The better solution is to work to change how animals are raised, right now. The Paleo diet encourages eating grass-fed, pastured animal products when ever possible. Their efforts would be better spent encouraging people to buy turkeys (indeed all other animal products) from humane sources. These sources exist across the US. Visit Eatwild.com to find a source near you. Rather than trying to convince 8 year olds that they don’t need meat to thrive, I’d rather see them expose the CAFOs for what they are. Cruel factories where animals are raised on virtual assembly lines with no access to fresh air, sunlight or species appropriate food.
There is one saving grace. NBC refused to air the spot during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
PETA had hoped to air the spot during NBC’s broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that year, but the network declined, saying the ad “does not meet NBC Universal standards.”
It is unfortunate that the vegans at PeTA and the Paleo diet are opposite sides. There is quite a bit in common. Both have concern for the well-being of animals. Paleo diet followers know that the best nutritional profile comes from animals who’ve been allowed to graze, forage or peck as they’ve done for millions of years with access to fresh air, plants and sunshine. Vegans wish to see animals treated humanely too, for different reasons. And ultimately, when vegans discover that their diet has been responsible for making them so ill, they invariably find the Paleo diet as the best solution. Maybe the reason PeTA goes off the deep end so frequently is that their vegan diet has addled their brains. Since it is deficient in essential nutrients this would not be out of the realm of possibility. Fellas, you may want to look into that….
