A PETA affiliated vegan group calling itself The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is behind multiple anti-cheese billboards in locations including Wisconsin and New York. Wild guess but at least one of these misinformed docs probably participated in the making of the pro-vegan film What The Health, a documentary that gets an “A” for obsessive ideology but an “F” for actual science.
The huge Wisconsin billboard was originally planned to feature the grim reaper wearing a cheesehead hat right near Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, of all places. In New York, the billboards featured bloated bellies and dimpled thighs as the “inevitable” result of cheese consumption.Â
When Foamation, the company which holds the cheesehead trademarks got wind of the plan, it threatened legal action causing the billboard vendor to refuse to put up the ad in its original cheesehead form even after the vegan physician group offered reimbursement for any legal expenses.
As it turned out, the billboard went up anyway but with a hatless grim reaper warning that “Cheese can sack your health. Fat. Cholesterol. Sodium”.
It seems that the vegan physicians didn’t get the memo from the World Health Organization (WHO) that more than half of the sixteen million deaths each year from cardiovascular disease occur in those eating a plant based diet.
I guess they also missed the research that aged cheese is one of the highest foods in Vitamin K2, a critical nutrient known to be highly protective against all degenerative illness including heart disease and cancer. Vitamin K2 is also very difficult to get enough of in the diet and plenty of cheese goes a long way toward filling that nutrient gap.
Perhaps this is why people so instinctively desire cheese given its prominent standing as the #1 most stolen item in the world!
Clearly, this round is a knock out by the cheeseheads.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Source: Heart of the Matter: Sulfur Deficits of Plant Based Diets, Dr. Kaayla Daniel
I’m somewhat new to traditional eating, but I’ve lost 2 pants sizes in a short few months while transitioning from 18 years of vegetarianism to a traditional diet, that includes more (raw) cheese than I ever thought I would eat. Amazingly enough, I don’t get the “lactose intolerance” symptoms with raw dairy, fancy that! Like Nicole said, I was hungry all the time as a vegetarian, but now, I eat when I’m hungry, stop just before full, and struggle to be hungry for 3 meals a day.
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that PETA is behind some anti-animal food campaign. Since when do people take nutrition advice from animal rights lobbyists? Oh, wait, they take nutrition advice from professionals with very little background in nutrition, but lots of background in pharmacology and anatomy…
So thankful for blogs like Sarah’s to keep me up to date on the happenings in the “nutrition world,” as well as all the amazing info provided to learn this new-old way of eating!
Thanks!
I was heavy once in my life–it was when I was a vegetarian. To lose the weight I followed Atkins for a year. To keep the weight off, I never went vegetarian again. Add me to the club of women who have had a child and yet can fit back into their “skinny jeans” while eating meat and cheese. Furthermore, I also have hypothyroidism and PCOS, which make it even more likely that I would have a problem losing the pregnancy weight. I now wear between a size 0 and a size 4 jeans, depending on the brand. When I was a vegetarian I wore a size 12 or 14 jeans, despite the fact that I was 15 years younger back then. When I was a vegetarian I was never satisfied and ate constantly. It is likely that my body was crying out for fatty acids, despite the fact that I took vegetarian oils and plenty of vitamin/mineral supplements. I also suspect that it was my reliance on soy as a vegetarian source of protein, from the time that I was 14 to the time that I was 22, that actually led to my developing PCOS. My body was so full of plant estrogens that it just stopped making its own estrogen. Plant estrogens fill up the receptor sites, so your body’s estrogen never gets used. The body takes this to mean that it can go ahead and downregulate its estrogen production. Unfortunately, it was only in recent years that I learned I must avoid soy and such damage is not easily undone. Maybe we should put up a billboard of me with my hair falling out from low estradiol (think balding at the temples), horrible acne, an ultrasound of my ovaries chock full of cysts, and a baby carriage with a line through it, with the message, “This is your hairline, your skin, your ovaries, and your fertility on soy! Eat up!” If folks choose to be vegetarian that is fine with me, but the physicians suggesting that heavy folks are heavy simply because they eat animal products is inappropriate and not in line with scientific fact. The vegan physicians should be ashamed of themselves! I have heard outrage over these billboards from friends who are vegans and from vegans on the Web.
I can’t only occasionally get raw milk cheese from the farm that I buy my milk from, otherwise we use the regular store cheese. Is that cheese alright to consume? We are hispanic so we eat a lot of cheese! I’ve just started on the road to traditional foods.. would I need to give up the regular store cheeses?
Hi Monica… Not sure where you live, but I found raw-milk cheese at Sprouts today {I live in Texas}. I think the brand was Organic Valley. I bought the mild cheddar, and I think they had a couple of other types that were made from raw milk. If you don’t have a Sprouts near you, you might check similar stores to see if they carry it. Good luck!
Even people who don’t know much about proper nutrition should know that cheese doesn’t make you fat. Atkins laid that myth to rest years ago. Also, doesn’t everybody know that its refined carbos that gives you a spare tire? So, hopefully this billboard will not affect most people. It’s pretty disgusting either way.
Yep, that’s a beer belly, grain belly, or processed carbs belly. Not from cheese! Everything they say is so wrong.
Excuse me BUT… that belly is not a cheese belly. That is a BEER belly. I lived with an alcoholic with a belly such as that and even though he ate a lot of cheese, when he cut back on beer, the belly disappeared. Yes over eating can cause problems but cheese alone is NOT going to do it. PETA needs to pay attention to solving their own problems like their 95% KILL RATE for adoptable pets. HSUS gives less than 1% of their buckets of money to help animals. It all goes into their pension funds and lobbyists and the same with the ASPCA. They lie and make people thing they have shelters … they DON’T. Neither does the HSUS.
Hypocrisy at it’s finest.
Touche!!!!
It’s ridiculous– they have targeted Albany (close to where I live). I don’t think they’re gaining a whole lot of support!
http://www.realfoodfreaks.com/2012/01/23/stop-the-saturated-fat-insanity/
Cheese is one of the most nutrient dense foods. Its stupid how this simple fact is missed in the anti-fat propaganda.
So insane! I love cheese and am not fat even after having 4 babies! Such propaganda!
Yeah, I eat cheese every day! Perhaps that’s why I am a whopping 100 lbs even after having two babies, lol. 🙂 Love my full fat raw milk cheese and Gouda, thank you. No advertisement would keep me away from my slice!