Lettuce Bikini-Clad Pamela Anderson Invites Belfastians To Go Vegetarian

For Immediate Release:
19 May 2003

Contact:
Dawn Carr 020 7357 9229, ext. 224

Belfast – Exchanging her trademark red Baywatch bathing suit for a bikini crafted from lettuce leaves, Baywatch babe and vegetarian Pamela Anderson has posed for a new PETA ad, in which she urges everyone to ‘turn over a new leaf’ by going vegetarian. PETA is hoping that the billboard will encourage residents of Belfast—recently named the eighth-fattest city in the UK by Men’s Fitness magazine—to switch to a healthy, humane, vegetarian diet. The billboard will be up at the corner of Great Victoria Street and Grosvenor Road in central Belfast on 20 May, coinciding with National Vegetarian Week, which begins 19 May.

The Men’s Fitness survey reveals that, on average, Belfast residents consume a whopping 38.6 per cent of their calories from fat and eat only a minuscule 1,506 grams of fruit and vegetables every week—making them the lowest consumers of fruit and veggies in the UK. The magazine also reports that obesity in Britain has trebled during the past 20 years: ‘According to the National Audit office, one in five British adults is dangerously overweight.’

Meat, dairy products and eggs—all of which are packed with cholesterol and saturated fat—are major culprits in the obesity epidemic, which contributes to the UK’s top killers: heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer. Compared to vegetarians, meat-eaters are 50 per cent more likely to suffer from heart disease. At 339 cases per 1,000 residents, the city’s incidence of coronary heart disease is among the highest in the UK. In an Oxford University study, researchers found that, on average, vegan men weighed 5.9 kg less and vegan women 4.7 kg less than their meat-eating counterparts.

Eating meat also means killing animals—900 million land animals and countless fish are killed for their flesh every year in the UK. Many are raised on filthy, crowded factory farms, rarely—if ever—smelling fresh air or feeling the sun on their backs until the day they are sent off to slaughter.

‘Belfast’s meat addiction is responsible for immense animal suffering as well as life-threatening obesity in consumers’, says PETA’s Sean Gifford. ‘It’s time for Belfastians to lighten up on animals and lighten themselves up, too.’

For more information and to order a free vegetarian starter kit, please visit GoVeg.co.uk.