Everything you need to eat right for your health, for animals and for the Earth Eating for life 3 Peta VSK Australian 12-12 (14016).indd 3 12/03/2013 09:14 Congratulations! By opening this guide, you’ve just taken the fi rst exciting step towards one of the best choices that you can make for yourself, animals and the planet. The pages that follow are packed with important information, easy tips and scrumptious recipes to help you establish eating habits Fruits and vegetables: © Tatyana and vegetables: © Tatyana Fruits Vychegzhanina/Dreamstime.com that you’ll feel great about. It’s easy to live and let live, and this guide will show you how. • Carl Lewis, Vegetarian Athletes “Olympian of the Century”, Why are vegetarian athletes always at the top of their game? One reason is Olympic medallist in track that plant foods provide athletes with all the nutrients that they need to stay • Greg Chappell, healthy, competitive and strong – minus the saturated fat, cholesterol and other cricket legend contaminants found in meat and dairy products that could slow them down. Carl Lewis, perhaps the greatest Olympic athlete ever, says, “[M]y best year of track • Dave Rastovich, competition was the fi rst year I ate a vegan diet”. © Kevin Lynch surfi ng sensation • Amanda Beard, Local vegetarian champions include Greg Chappell, Robert de Castella, Ruth seven-time Olympic medallist Heidrich (New Zealand Ironman title winner) and surfer Dave Rastovich. in swimming World-class mixed martial arts athletes – including Jake Shields, Nate and Nick Diaz and Mac Danzig – • Brendan Brazier, also stay strong while avoiding animal products. endurance athlete and Ironman Vegetarians receive optimal nutrition from plant • Chris Evert, foods and weigh less, on average, than meat-eaters. tennis champion They also have better cardiovascular health and more © Starmaxinc.com • Robert de Castella, stamina. All these things help athletes perform at their marathon runner peak potential. Physician and author Dr Neal Barnard explains that “a healthy vegan diet gives important • Jake Shields, advantages over a meaty diet, which is why many mixed martial arts champion Olympic and professional athletes are vegetarians”. • Peter Siddle, A study involving the Australian Institute of Sport fast bowler found that “many successful endurance athletes are vegetarians”. © Phakimata/Dreamstime.com © Brendan Brazier Paul McCartney Abbie James Cameron “I am a vegetarian Cornish “It’s not a requirement to eat animals, because I realise that “I was we just choose to do it, so it becomes even little chickens really a moral choice and one suffer pain and fear, puzzled by that is having a huge experience a range of the idea that impact on the feelings and emotions, people could planet, using up and are as intelligent feel compassion resources and as mammals, including for a dolphin but, at the same time, they destroying the dogs, cats and even were quite prepared to eat a cow or a pig. biosphere.” some primates.” It was confusing because I thought of all animals as equal.” 2 Eating for life FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HEALTHY VEGAN EATING AT PETA.ORG.AU. Peta VSK Australian 12-12 (14016).indd 4 12/03/2013 09:14 Alec Baldwin Natalie Tobey Maguire “Every time we sit Portman “I just never really down to eat, we “I am a very liked meat. I had make a choice: Please strict vegetarian. a really tough choose vegetarianism. … I just really, really time even eating Do it for … animals. Do it love animals and I act chicken. I would for the environment, and on my values. … I am really start imagining do it for your health.” against cruelty [to] animals.” what I was eating and the life of the Bill Clinton Russell Brand animals and all “I like the vegetables, the fruits, the “I became that kind of stuff.” beans, the stuff I eat now. … All my vegetarian blood tests are good, at 14. … Isabel Lucas and my vital signs I’ve never “[Being are good, and I feel regretted it. vegetarian is] a good, and I also I’m incredibly simple small step I have, believe it or sentimental can take. … [I]t works not, more energy.” about well for my body, and I animals.” also feel more in tune.” Missy Higgins Stella McCartney “I looked into the “It is wrong to eat dead ethical side of animals on many levels: [eating meat] even it is destructive for the more and I realized environment, it is not that I really just ethical, it has been didn’t approve of proven to be damaging to the way animals are your health,and, spiritually, treated in factory farms.” you should love and live with your fellow creatures, not kill them!” Chris Lilley “Even at the young age of 5, I knew that it was Hugo Weaving wrong to eat animals. “Both my children Pamela Anderson So I went vegetarian are vegetarians. … “Chickens, pigs and other animals? – it’s about the only The more I started They are interesting individuals with politically correct thing thinking about it, personalities and intelligence. What I’ve ever done!” the more I thought people need to understand is that my son’s natural, if they’re eating animals, they are childish reaction promoting cruelty to animals.” Bryan Adams was spot on.” “[T]he moment I began to understand what was going on with the treatment of © Phakimata/Dreamstime.com animals, it led me more and more in the Anne Hathaway Xavier Rudd way of the path I am [on] now, which is “I was sent a copy “When I realised how animals have to a complete vegan.” of Jonathan Safran suffer in the meat industry, I decided Foer’s Eating never to eat meat again. The industry’s Animals. I read it and anonymity and the treatment of animals that was it for me in as worthless beings used only for terms of being able production really to eat fish … I just annoyed me.” can’t support the way fish are farmed and caught.” Celebrity photos: © Starmaxinc.com, except Missy Higgins Splash News, Xavier Rudd Celebrity © 2007 MPL Chris Lilley © Flash Studio/Shutterstock.com and Paul McCartney James Looker, Ltd/Max Vadukul Communications FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HEALTHY VEGAN EATING AT PETA.ORG.AU. Eating for life 3 Peta VSK Australian 12-12 (14016).indd 5 12/03/2013 09:15 Eating for Life Leading health experts agree that a vegetarian diet provides optimal nutrition for both children and adults. The Australian Medical Association warns of the health risks of meat-heavy diets. Nutrition Australia says, “There is a substantial body of evidence supporting the belief that Fruits and vegetables: © Tatyana and vegetables: © Tatyana Fruits vegetarians in Western countries experience significantly less cancer, less heart disease, fewer Vychegzhanina/Dreamstime.com strokes and generally live longer than omnivores”. Vegetable Spring Rolls According to Dr T Colin Campbell, nutritional researcher at Cornell University and director of the largest epidemiological study in history, “[T]he vast majority … of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented … simply by adopting a plant-based diet”. The Victorian Government’s Better Health Channel reports, “A well-balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can provide many health benefits, such as a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes [and] some types of cancer. Vegetarians and vegans also have lower rates of illness and death from a number of degenerative diseases”. Scientists have found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than What About Protein, Iron and Vitamin B12? meat-eaters; this means that they are less According to medical authorities, you need from the plant world – broccoli, susceptible to everyday illnesses like the vegetarians get plenty of protein without beans, many leafy green vegetables, flu. Vegetarians are also far less likely to having to pay particular attention to their almonds, soy milk, tofu, calcium-fortified be overweight. diets. Healthy vegetarian protein sources orange juice, soy yoghurt, figs, almond include whole grains, oats, beans, peanut butter and tempeh are all great sources. Meat, dairy products and eggs are butter, brown rice, peas, lentils, tofu, soy completely devoid of fibre and complex milk, nuts, seeds, mushrooms and mock Fifty years ago, most people got their carbohydrates, the nutrients that we’re meats, such as vegetarian hot dogs and vitamin B12 from bacteria in their water or supposed to consume more of for good burgers. By contrast, consuming too much on fruits and vegetables. Now that water health. They’re also loaded with saturated animal protein has been scientifically is purified and produce is so clean, good fat and cholesterol, which can make us linked to osteoporosis. According to a sources of B12 include fortified foods, such overweight and tired in the short term US Department of Agriculture report, as breakfast cereals and soy milk, as well and lead to clogged arteries and heart vegetarian women have stronger bones as vitamin supplements. In fact, the B12 attacks in the long term. than women who eat meat. in supplement form and fortified foods is actually much easier to absorb than that You can get all the calcium and iron that found in animal products. Recipe photos: © Steve Lee Studios 4 Eating for life FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HEALTHY VEGAN EATING AT PETA.ORG.AU. Peta VSK Australian 12-12 (14016).indd 6 12/03/2013 09:15 Roasted Red Pepper Hummus Q & A Ask the Experts “What do you think of ‘low- carb’, meat-based diets?” I call them “the ‘make yourself sick’ diets” because they cause the body to go into ketosis – a state that occurs when we are seriously ill.