by Alecks P. Pabico

	Actress-model and environmentalist Chin-Chin Gutierrez has been a vegetarian for six years now. [ad photo courtesy of PETA]

SHE’S BEEN known to talk to plants, but maybe she’s only complimenting them on how delicious they are. A vegetarian for six years now, actress/model/
environmentalist Chin-Chin Gutierrez probably only vaguely remembers the taste of meat, but doesn’t look like she regrets eating only vegetables and fruits.

In fact, she looks pretty darn good. But maybe that glow is also coming from her glee over the attention the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and its advocacy of vegetarianism and animal rights are getting these days. The 30-something Gutierrez is among the celebrity endorsers of PETA issues, and while her print ad for the group has yet to appear (Ms. Gutierrez's ad came out a few months after the release of this issue of i Report — Ed's note), PETA is already reporting record queries in the country about what vegetarianism is all about.

PETA Asia-Pacific director Jason Baker says when he first came to Manila last year, the Philippines was ranked 31st in terms of volume of requests for vegetarian information that PETA got from its website. By November though, the Philippines had shot up to seventh place.

But that’s not all. Local fashion, lifestyle, and cooking magazines have also begun devoting cover stories and features on vegetarianism, vegetarian diets, and recipes. Food courts in malls are gracious hosts to vegetarian restaurants. Fast-food chains like Burger King now sell veggie burger, while Seattle’s Best and Starbucks offer soymilk.

“It’s amazing because you can’t get veggie burger from Burger King in the rest of Asia,” says Baker.”“You have soy milk in Starbucks but in China, which is where it originated, they don’t have it. Starbucks may not be for everyone but when you have soymilk entering the mainstream, you really have a change there. It’s no longer just a vegetarian restaurant on the outskirts of the city that is serving this. And that’s the exciting thing.”

It’s also quite a feat in a carnivorous country like the Philippines, where celebrations inevitably turn into “big lechon happenings” and there are still a considerable number of macho men wanting to turn Bantay into pulutan. Baker thinks PETA’s celebrity-dominant endorsements have a lot to do with the great reception his group is getting. But perhaps it’s also because Filipinos are experiencing multiplying aches and pains brought about by a 24/7 lifestyle and illnesses that can be traced back partly to bad diets or simply bad food. More Filipinos have become conscious of what they are eating, and going vegetarian is just one among many options some are considering to help repair their aching bodies or just to keep healthy. From those who have decided to do away with junk food, there are also those who want to make sure what they eat is as free of human intervention as possible.

	Another Filipina model, Isabel Roces, has also graced PETA's vegetarianism ads.

EATING, WHICH humans merely used to do as a matter of survival, has indeed become increasingly complicated and dangerous in today’s world of corporate-controlled, technology-driven industrial agriculture. So much so that to satisfy your hunger, you now have to make sure you’re not slowly killing yourself in the process.

Health red flags obviously go up once the animals destined for our stomachs begin falling sick. For years now, fish and other bounty from Philippine waters have succumbed to seasonal plankton infestation commonly referred to as “red tide” and other toxic contaminants like lead, arsenic, and mercury. In addition, diseases have been known to plague factory farm animals from which the food for our everyday sustenance is derived. Filipinos should count themselves lucky that local factory farms have so far been hit only by foot-and-mouth disease, which afflicts pigs. Abroad, cattle have been hounded by mad cow disease while chickens have fallen prey to the bird flu virus.

Illness outbreaks from food-borne pathogens are likewise becoming common. E. coli, believed to live mostly in the intestines of cattle but which has also been found in the intestines of chickens, deer, sheep, and pigs, has been associated with ingesting contaminated ground beef. Salmonella found in chicken eggs makes more than a million Americans sick every year.

Commercially grown fruits and vegetables, which were thought of earlier as safe, have also been found to be laden with a lot of pesticides and other chemical preservatives. And in the advent of biotechnology, staple grains like rice and corn have been subjected to genetic manipulation, the long-term consequence of consuming which may prove inimical to human health as well as to the environment and local agriculture.

The onslaught of a fast-paced lifestyle, which has given rise to fast-food restaurant chains all over the country offering supersized orders of fatty, high-calorie and cholesterol-heavy “value meals,” is also taking its toll on personal health. And if all these are not yet enough to make anyone paranoid about what he is about to put in his mouth, groups like PETA are always at the ready to serve up data designed to be more than food for thought.

PETA’s undercover investigations reveal, for instance, that today’s factory farms subject animals to cruel treatment and inhumane conditions, keeping them in cramped stalls and cages, and often bleed them to death while they are still fully conscious. Animals from factory farms are also fed a steady diet of powerful growth hormones and antibiotics that humans ingest when they eat the animal flesh or drink cow’s milk.

PETA is thus trying to push into the mainstream vegetarianism and veganism (strictly vegetarian regimen shunning even dairy products and eggs), which are derived from the conviction that only a plant-based consumption is truly beneficial to human health — while at the same time helps preserve the environment and promotes animal rights and welfare.

PETA’s arguments are not without backing by medical and scientific researches that serve to debunk people’s earlier notions of their proper dietary requirements. The fact that people with cancer still harbor hopes of beating the illness by eating organically grown food is because doctors and oncologists themselves are prescribing a low-fat, plant-based diet. Vegetarians, scientific evidence has shown, are about 40 percent less likely to get cancer than nonvegetarians.

As studies by leading epidemiological experts like Dr. T. Colin Campbell reveal, “the vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented simply by adopting a plant-based diet.” Eating meat, with its high fat and cholesterol content, has been proven to cause heart disease. Animal protein in meat and dairy products, meanwhile, is the prime carcinogen that causes human cancer.

Diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, hormonal imbalance and other diseases have also been linked to the consumption of meat and dairy. Cow’s milk, which the dairy industry would have people believe helps prevent osteoporosis, is actually high in animal protein that causes calcium to be leached from the bones. A study of the Harvard Medical School of 75,000 nurses even found that the women who drank the most milk had the most bone fractures.

Chin-chin Gutierrez herself says she turned vegetarian because of health concerns, and specifically because she was alarmed by family members and relatives who had suddenly become afflicted with ailments like diabetes and cancer. But now she also says that with all the pollution in the environment,’“the least thing we could do is to be careful about what we put in our mouths.”