89922_cover_out:Vegstarter kit update 2/02 2/26/09 9:03 AM Page 3 F R E E Recipes Inside! Vegetarian Starter Kit Everything you need to eat right for your health, for animals, and for the Earth 92237_text_out:VSK (New look) Layout 7/29/09 3:56 PM Page 2 Congratulations! By opening this guide, you’ve just taken the first step toward one of the best choices that you can make for yourself, animals, and the planet. The pages that follow are packed with important information, tips, and recipes to help you establish eating habits that you’ll feel great about. It’s easy to live and let live, and this guide will show you how. Dig in! • Carl Lewis, “Olympian of the Century,” Sir Paul McCartney: Olympic medalist in track (top left) “I am a vegetarian because I realize that even • Robert Parish, one of the “50 Greatest little chickens suffer pain and Players in NBA History” fear, experience a range • Desmond Howard, Heisman trophy of feelings and emotions, winner and Super Bowl MVP (center left) and are as intelligent as Portraits: © AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS WORLD AP/WIDE © Portraits: • Bill Pearl, professional bodybuilder mammals, including and four-time “Mr. Universe” dogs, cats, and even Constance Marie: some primates.” • Keith Holmes, boxing champion “I stopped eating meat … when I was working on the movie Selena. • Mac Danzig, martial arts champion (bottom left) During the shoot, I had to hold a chicken for five hours—if you hold it • Edwin Moses, two-time Olympic gold medalist in hurdles Casey Affleck: and feel its little heart beating for “I don’t eat hours, you just can’t think about eating it.” Vegetarian Athletes meat or any other Why are vegetarian athletes always at the animal products... Kevin Lynch © top of their game? One reason is because because they’re plant foods provide athletes with all the Photo: unhealthy and they’re nutrients that they need to stay healthy and the product of strong, minus all the saturated fat, a violent and cholesterol, and contaminants found in inhumane meat and dairy products that can slow them industry.” down. Carl Lewis, perhaps the greatest Olympic athlete ever, says, “[M]y best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.” Besides receiving optimal nutrition from plant foods, vegetarians also weigh less, on average, and have Tobey Maguire: better cardiovascular health and more stamina than “I just never really meat-eaters—and all these things help athletes liked meat. I had perform at their peak potential. Physician and author a really tough time Alicia Silverstone: P M l C t Ph t C MPL © i ti Ltd Dr. Neal Barnard explains that “a healthy vegan diet even eating “Since I’ve gone vegetarian, my gives important advantages over a meaty diet, chicken. I would body has never felt better and my taste which is why many Olympic and professional start imagining buds have been opened up to a whole athletes are vegetarians. A healthy vegan diet what I was eating new world. It’s one of the most rewarding will give you the strength and stamina you need and the life of the choices I’ve ever made and I invite you to leave those sluggish meat-eaters in the dust.” animals and all that to join me in living a healthy, Learn more at PETA.org. kind of stuff.” cruelty-free lifestyle.” C l b it h t STARMAX© I 2 eating for life FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HEALTHY VEGETARIAN EATING AND G 89922_text_out:VSK (New look) Layout 2/26/09 9:11 AM Page 3 Russell Simmons: Carrie Underwood: “Chickens raised “I do it because I for food today are ... really love animals James Cromwell: covered in excrement, and [killing animals “So-called farms they’re diseased, and for meat] just today treat animals they’re drugged up with all makes me sad.” like so many boxes in sorts of toxins that you are a warehouse, chopping ingesting if you eat chickens. One off beaks and recent study found that chicken tails and flesh in this country has four times as much genitals arsenic—yes, arsenic, the poison (which is used with no in the drugs the chickens are given)—as any other Photo: © Ebert Roberts Forest painkillers at meat. ... I have been a vegan Whitaker: all, inflicting for many years ...” “Life is full of third-degree burns choices, and repeatedly by branding many years ago, cows, ripping out the teeth I chose to become of pigs, and just a horrible catalog a vegetarian, and it of abuses that, if done to dogs was one of the best or cats, would be illegal on grounds choices I’ve ever made.” of animal cruelty.” Alec Baldwin: “Every time we sit down Natalie Portman: to eat, we make a choice: “I am a very strict Please choose vegetarianism. vegetarian. … I just really, Do it for … animals. Do it for really love animals and the environment and do I act on my values. … I Kristen Bell: it for your health.” am really against cruelty “I have always been [to] animals.” an animal lover. I had a hard time disassociating His Holiness the animals I cuddled the Dalai Lama: Joaquin Phoenix: with—dogs and cats, for “I have been “Animal rights is a part of my example—from the animals on particularly concerned everyday life. When you live my plate, and I never really cared with the sufferings by example, you create for the taste of meat. I always of chickens for many years. a certain level of loved my Brussels sprouts!” It was the death of a chicken awareness. Friends that finally strengthened my resolve of mine, people I have to become vegetarian. These days, never discussed animal when I see a row of plucked chickens rights or vegetarianism hanging in a meat shop it hurts. with, are adopting I find it unacceptable that vegetarian habits violence is the basis of some because they of our food habits.” see it.” Pamela Anderson: “Chickens, pigs, and John Salley: Paul McCartney Photo: © MPL Communications Ltd. Photo: © MPL Communications Paul McCartney other animals? They are interesting “It's good for your individuals with personalities weight. It's good for and intelligence. What people your health …. need to understand is that g Going vegetarian is if they’re eating animals, the best damn way to they are promoting eat. Period.” cruelty to animals.” Celebrity photos: © STARMAX, Inc. photos: © STARMAX, Celebrity D GET MEAL PLANS AND HUNDREDS OF FREE RECIPES AT PETA.ORG eating for life 3 92237_text_out:VSK (New look) Layout 7/30/09 2:52 PM Page 4 Eating forLife Leading health experts agree that a vegetarian diet provides optimal nutrition for both children and adults. The largest nutritional and medical organizations, including the American Dietetic Association, confirm that balanced plant-based diets are healthier than diets that include meat. According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, What About Protein, Savory Pot Pie nutritional researcher at Cornell Iron, and Vitamin B12? Get the recipe at PETA.org/Recipes University and director of the largest epidemiological study in According to medical authorities, history, “The vast majority of all vegetarians get plenty of protein without cancers, cardiovascular diseases, having to pay particular attention to and other forms of degenerative their diets. Healthy vegetarian protein illness can be prevented simply sources include whole grains, oatmeal, by adopting a plant-based diet.” beans, peanut butter, brown rice, peas, The American Heart Association lentils, tofu, soy milk, nuts, seeds, and reports that vegetarians “have vegetarian burgers and hot dogs. By a lower risk of obesity, coronary contrast, consuming too much animal heart disease (which causes protein has been scientifically linked to heart attack), high blood pressure, osteoporosis—according to a 2003 U.S. diabetes mellitus, and some Department of Agriculture Q A forms of cancer.” (USDA) report, & Scientists have found that vegetarian women Ask the Experts vegetarians have stronger immune had stronger systems than meat-eaters do; bones than “Isn’t fish a health food?” this means that they are less women susceptible to everyday illnesses who ate Anyone who eats fish for health reasons should like the flu. Vegetarians are also far meat. think again: The Environmental Protection Agency less likely to be overweight; in fact, (EPA) revealed that women who ate fish just twice a meat-eaters are nine times more week had blood mercury concentrations that were seven likely to be obese than vegans. times higher than those of women who didn’t eat fish. Meat, dairy products, and A woman who eats just one can of tuna per week will be eggs are completely devoid of 30 percent over the EPA cutoff for safe mercury levels. Dr. Neal Barnard, author fiber and complex carbohydrates, Mercury is known to cause severe health problems of Foods That Fight Pain the nutrients that we’re for humans, including brain damage, memory supposed to consume loss, and damage to a developing fetus. One study showed that more of for good health, women who regularly ate fish were more likely to have babies who and they are loaded with were sluggish at birth, had small head circumferences, and had saturated fat and developmental problems. Women who consume even low levels cholesterol, which can of fish contaminated with PCBs, mercury, or other toxins have make us overweight and a more difficult time conceiving. Some of these chemicals tired in the short term and remain in the body for many years. Plant foods like walnuts lead to clogged arteries and and flax seeds and vegetarian DHA capsules contain Roasted Red Pepper Hummus heart attacks in the long term.