Chew This Fat

Would you look at that: U.S. Cellular Field is the fifth most vegetarian-friendly baseball park in the nation, per PETA. The animal-loving organization highlighted the veggie dogs, veggie burgers, veggie tacos, PB&Js;, salads, nachos with salsa, fruit cups, and corn on the cob that are all available at the home of the Sox, and which we personally have never ever noticed because we are generally blinded by hot dogs and beer.

Coupled with this actually pretty nice accolade, though, we also get this sideswipe from PETA Assistant Director Dan Shannon:

“Cholesterol-packed, meaty fare makes fans fat, so if you want to stand up for the seventh inning stretch, give the delicious vegetarian foods a try!”

We’re not interested in getting into a pissing contest with the all-powerful, rarely-rational battle arm of PETA, but we would like to put out there that it really irks us that PETA’s new angle on converting everyone to vegetarianism is playing on the obesiphobia (did we just make that word up?) that seems to be driving so much of the culture lately.

We’re the first to admit that we, ourself, could probably stand to lose a few pounds. But we spend far more time mindlessly eating Fritos (vegan!) than we do chicken breasts or bacon or — delicious, cruel, and very low-fat! — veal. And while we’re totally happy that the White Sox cater to the more gastronomically enlightened portion of the population (we are 99% convinced that in a hundred years, historians will look back on our consumption of meat with the same horror that we today look back on, say, slavery), we don’t mean “enlightened” in the pounds-and-ounces sense: we know plenty of fat vegetarians, plenty of skinny carnivores, and a whole slew of folks who fall somewhere in between. To claim that simply by dint of eating meat, we’ll get so fat that we can’t even stand? To put it concisely: Shut up, PETA.

White Sox rock with vegetarian eats, says PETA [The Stew]

[Photo: Uncommonly beautiful photograph of a hot dog at U.S. Cellular, via Tristan_Garret’s Flickr]

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Chew This Fat