Sex and Vegetarians
Are they pulling our chain or what? Do you think vegetarians have better sex than carnivores? What if they did? Would that be sufficient reason to give up steak, hamburger and pork, not to mention shrimp, scallop, lobster and every manner of creature that slithers, grazes, bounds or swims.
The assumption that many would switch teams seems to have motivated the good folks at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to craft a commercial for airing during the Super Bowl - at a cost of three million dollars a minute.
Unfortunately, CBS network executives previewed the ad, a dazzling piece of work that proclaimed Studies show vegetarians have better sex, and told the PETA folks to forget about it.
I've seen the ad and I can't see what the NBC censors got so uptight about.
But, I am a little less squeamish about explicit sexual imagery than most people, so I might have missed something offensive.
I learned about the controversy at the Slate website in an article by Nina Shen Rastogi entitled, Debbie Does Salad, dated January 29, 2009.
I suppose NBC might have viewed this title alone a bit much for prime time viewers.
All this aside, let's get back to the basic question raised by the ad that never aired.
Do vegetarians have better sex than carnivores? Even if they do, in what way is veggie sex better? Most important, would the most amazing level of difference be sufficient to turn Super Bowl fans into carrot heads or broccoli munchers and the like? I can tell you it would not do the trick for me.
If being a vegetarian absolutely guaranteed that I would live 100 years without a day of illness while enjoying daily multiple orgasms that made me and anyone in my vicinity happy as a loon (or whatever creature is the happiest of all living things), this fact would not motivate me to surrender my great pleasure in devouring all manner of sea inhabitants.
(Steak, hamburger and other forms of land beasts I could easily do without, but never seafood.
) However, that's just me.
Maybe you are not so devoted to eating fish and their watery companions.
Would you have made the switch if Debbie Does Salad convinced you that vegetarians have better sex? Before deciding, let me summarize the pros and cons, or at least a few of the claims made for the health benefits of being a vegetarian, versus not being so restrictive in your dietary choices.
On the plus side, PETA and other advocates of a non-meat diet make the following claims: * Eating meat makes people fat, sick, and boring in bed.
* Vegetarians are, on average, fitter and slimmer than meat eaters.
* Meat and dairy consumption is associated with, if indeed does not cause, impotence, heart disease and obesity.
* Vegetarians and vegans tend to weigh less and have lower body-mass indexes and lower cholesterol levels than omnivores.
(All of these assertions are found in the Slate story quoted above.
) Wow.
If all that's true, then you have to really love meat and seafood (and maybe hate plants as well) to NOT become a vegetarian.
But, on the negative side, opponents of this vegetarian perspective argue that the main reason vegetarians have better health status than meat eaters is likely due to the fact that they are more health-conscious.
They have higher quality lifestyles and statistically are composed of people with better educations, more money and circumstances more advantageous than the meat-eater crowd.
To complicate matters for those who want to believe the promise in the Debbie Does Salad ad, critics note that many vegetarians have zinc deficiencies, which is not something you want to have if your goal in life is to be a high performer in the boudoir, or wherever else you choose to perform, if you get my drift.
If you are a zinc-impaired male, you have low testosterone levels, which means a depressed sex drive.
Like Debbie, such veggie-disposed guys might have to favor salads for sexual partners, which does not have a lot of appeal for most.
Debbie herself is at risk of amenorrhea.
It's odd that PETA would suggest (or would have, save for the prudish execs at NBC) that sex is better for vegetarians, since a meat-foregoing diet is historically linked with chastity, not prolific indulgence and even licentiousness.
Remember Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham and the other anti-masturbation purity promoters who viewed meat eating as a sure path to the degenerating habits of luxury, indolence, voluptuousness and sensuality? (Source: Nina Shen Rastogi, Debbie Does Salad, Slate as above.
) Well, as I mentioned, even if the ad is accurate and vegetarianism makes a fellow, even at age 70, a total stud-muffin, I'm going to enjoy my Fruitte de Mare and other such delights.
I asked my scientific adviser, Dr.
David Randle, about sex and vegetarians.
He replied: I am willing to test sex with a vegetarian and a carnivore - and I'll tell you which is better.
A short while later, my editor (who also doubles as my wife) came into my office after reading the first draft and asked, "Is that really true? You'd stay with your silly seafood even if you could perform daily like some kind of stud muffin?" She did not appear amused.
I started to say something about literary license and was tempted to bring up the notion of metaphors, but decided against it and assured her that if the ad Debbie Does Salad proves accurate, I'll never eat seafood again.
The assumption that many would switch teams seems to have motivated the good folks at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to craft a commercial for airing during the Super Bowl - at a cost of three million dollars a minute.
Unfortunately, CBS network executives previewed the ad, a dazzling piece of work that proclaimed Studies show vegetarians have better sex, and told the PETA folks to forget about it.
I've seen the ad and I can't see what the NBC censors got so uptight about.
But, I am a little less squeamish about explicit sexual imagery than most people, so I might have missed something offensive.
I learned about the controversy at the Slate website in an article by Nina Shen Rastogi entitled, Debbie Does Salad, dated January 29, 2009.
I suppose NBC might have viewed this title alone a bit much for prime time viewers.
All this aside, let's get back to the basic question raised by the ad that never aired.
Do vegetarians have better sex than carnivores? Even if they do, in what way is veggie sex better? Most important, would the most amazing level of difference be sufficient to turn Super Bowl fans into carrot heads or broccoli munchers and the like? I can tell you it would not do the trick for me.
If being a vegetarian absolutely guaranteed that I would live 100 years without a day of illness while enjoying daily multiple orgasms that made me and anyone in my vicinity happy as a loon (or whatever creature is the happiest of all living things), this fact would not motivate me to surrender my great pleasure in devouring all manner of sea inhabitants.
(Steak, hamburger and other forms of land beasts I could easily do without, but never seafood.
) However, that's just me.
Maybe you are not so devoted to eating fish and their watery companions.
Would you have made the switch if Debbie Does Salad convinced you that vegetarians have better sex? Before deciding, let me summarize the pros and cons, or at least a few of the claims made for the health benefits of being a vegetarian, versus not being so restrictive in your dietary choices.
On the plus side, PETA and other advocates of a non-meat diet make the following claims: * Eating meat makes people fat, sick, and boring in bed.
* Vegetarians are, on average, fitter and slimmer than meat eaters.
* Meat and dairy consumption is associated with, if indeed does not cause, impotence, heart disease and obesity.
* Vegetarians and vegans tend to weigh less and have lower body-mass indexes and lower cholesterol levels than omnivores.
(All of these assertions are found in the Slate story quoted above.
) Wow.
If all that's true, then you have to really love meat and seafood (and maybe hate plants as well) to NOT become a vegetarian.
But, on the negative side, opponents of this vegetarian perspective argue that the main reason vegetarians have better health status than meat eaters is likely due to the fact that they are more health-conscious.
They have higher quality lifestyles and statistically are composed of people with better educations, more money and circumstances more advantageous than the meat-eater crowd.
To complicate matters for those who want to believe the promise in the Debbie Does Salad ad, critics note that many vegetarians have zinc deficiencies, which is not something you want to have if your goal in life is to be a high performer in the boudoir, or wherever else you choose to perform, if you get my drift.
If you are a zinc-impaired male, you have low testosterone levels, which means a depressed sex drive.
Like Debbie, such veggie-disposed guys might have to favor salads for sexual partners, which does not have a lot of appeal for most.
Debbie herself is at risk of amenorrhea.
It's odd that PETA would suggest (or would have, save for the prudish execs at NBC) that sex is better for vegetarians, since a meat-foregoing diet is historically linked with chastity, not prolific indulgence and even licentiousness.
Remember Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham and the other anti-masturbation purity promoters who viewed meat eating as a sure path to the degenerating habits of luxury, indolence, voluptuousness and sensuality? (Source: Nina Shen Rastogi, Debbie Does Salad, Slate as above.
) Well, as I mentioned, even if the ad is accurate and vegetarianism makes a fellow, even at age 70, a total stud-muffin, I'm going to enjoy my Fruitte de Mare and other such delights.
I asked my scientific adviser, Dr.
David Randle, about sex and vegetarians.
He replied: I am willing to test sex with a vegetarian and a carnivore - and I'll tell you which is better.
A short while later, my editor (who also doubles as my wife) came into my office after reading the first draft and asked, "Is that really true? You'd stay with your silly seafood even if you could perform daily like some kind of stud muffin?" She did not appear amused.
I started to say something about literary license and was tempted to bring up the notion of metaphors, but decided against it and assured her that if the ad Debbie Does Salad proves accurate, I'll never eat seafood again.
Source...