For Immediate Release:
27 August 2003
Contact:
Anuradha Sawhney (0) 98201 22602; AnuradhaS@petaindia.org
Mumbai – Between coaching the Indian cricket captain, Sourav Ganguly,
and trips to India, former Australian cricket captain and living legend
Greg Chappell has taken time out of his busy schedule to team up with
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to create a new ad
touting veganism. Chappell recommends veganism as a diet for everyone
from athletes to businessmen and credits his vegan diet for improving
his own health. The full-colour ad features a vegetable-juggling Chappell
and reads, ‘Don’t juggle with your health’.
In his book Health and Fitness, Chappell says that giving up
meat and dairy products in favour of healthier foods, including soya
and vegetables, made him feel stronger and healthier: ‘We are
the only species of animal on earth that still consumes milk products
after being weaned. To make things worse, we do not even consume our
own milk products but get them from another kind of animal. Dairy milk
is a perfectly balanced food for calves but for nothing else. It does
contain certain nutrients, but it also contains things which do us much
more harm than the nutrients do us good.’
Chappell joins Indian cricketer Anil Kumble and American tennis star
Martina Navratilova, who have also appeared in PETA ads promoting healthful
veggie foods. The world’s most nutrition-conscious doctors now
advocate a vegan diet. Dairy products have been linked to a high rate
of lactose-intolerance in India – a problem that plagued Chappell
himself until he became vegan – as well as diabetes, some types
of cancer, heart disease, obesity and osteoporosis. Writes Chappell,
‘I gave up red meat at the same time as I gave up dairy foods,
but while the benefits of avoiding red meat took awhile to become evident,
the effect of giving up dairy foods was immediate. Clearly, I had been
showing all the symptoms of lactose intolerance. Within days, literally,
of giving up milk and cheese, these symptoms disappeared’.
Dr T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University in the US reports that ‘the
vast majority … of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases and other
forms of degenerative illness can be prevented … simply by adopting
a plant-based diet’. Dr Dean Ornish of the University of California
has demonstrated that artery blockages can be reversed with a low-fat
vegetarian diet. Turkey and chicken are loaded with fat and cholesterol
– a turkey leg contains more cholesterol than many cuts of beef
– which lead to obesity, heart disease, cancer, strokes and other
diseases. Vegan foods are low in fat and have absolutely no cholesterol,
but they do provide iron, calcium, protein and other nutrients.
A vegan diet also saves animals. Turkeys, chickens, sheep and other
animals are raised on ‘factory farms’ where they are treated
like machines. They spend their brief lives in crowded conditions so
cramped that many cannot even turn around or lie down comfortably. Many
do not get a breath of fresh air until they are prodded and crammed
onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the abattoir, often through weather
extremes and always without food or water. The animals are then hung
upside-down, and their throats are sliced open, often while the animals
are fully conscious.
Vegetarianism is the diet of many celebrities, including Sir Paul McCartney,
Kim Basinger, Martina Navratilova, Amitabh Bachchan, Bryan Adams, Pamela
Anderson, Shania Twain, Yana Gupta, Joaquin Phoenix, Ashley Judd and
Spider-Man’s Tobey Maguire.
For a copy of Chappell’s ad, please contact
PETA.
