Natalie Portman has been a vegetarian or a vegan for many, many years. She was always very vocal about it, even writing about it in a now-infamous Huffington Post essay regarding Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals back in 2009. Natalie was criticized back then for the essay because while she defended her veganism in particular and Foer’s book in general, she took a novel approach – comparing meat-eaters to rapists. For. Real. Here’s the relevant passage:

I say that Foer’s ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just “This is tasty, and that’s why I do it.” He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don’t believe in rape, but if it’s what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

[From Portman’s Huffington Post essay]

So, someone with such strong beliefs – strong enough to compare the non-vegan lifestyle to rape – should be able to stick with it even while pregnant, right? Wrong. As it turns out, while Natalie is pregnant, she’s been giving in to all of her rape fantasies about dairy:

Natalie Portman is giving into her cravings. The 29-year-old Your Highness star — who is expecting her first child with fiance Benjamin Millepied later this summer — is no longer a vegan.

“I actually went back to being vegetarian when I became pregnant, just because I felt like I wanted that stuff,” she said during a Monday phone interview with the Q100 Bert Show in Atlanta. “I was listening to my body to have eggs and dairy and that sort of stuff.”

“I know there are people who do stay vegan,” she added, “but I think you have to just be careful, watch your iron levels and your B12 levels and supplement those if there are things you might be low in in your diet.”

The Oscar-winning actress — who became a vegan in 2009 after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals — doesn’t regret her decision to become a vegetarian again.
“If you’re not eating eggs, then you can’t have cookies or cake from regular bakeries, which can become a problem when that’s all you want to eat,” she laughed. “I actually wanted eggs at the beginning and then they grossed me out after awhile.”

Food cravings aside, Portman added that she doesn’t know the sex of her unborn child — and she has no plans to find out any time soon, either.

“People can say a lot of things and they have a 50 percent chance of being right,” she laughed. “I’m Jewish and I think in Judaism, there’s a lot of superstition around not doing too much before the baby comes.”

[From Us Weekly]

Look, she has every right to eat whatever she wants while pregnant (and not pregnant, for that matter). It’s good she cares more about giving in to her cravings and getting the necessary nutrients rather than trying to adhere to veganism’s limitations. And hey, it’s not like she’s actually eating meat again – she’s just given in to dairy! Still, it’s kind of funny considering what a big friggin’ deal she made about becoming a vegan. And I just love the phrase “raping dairy” now.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

This is the face Jessica Simpson made when she heard that her fiancé’s “healer” told him to eat Tofurky. Yes, Jessica and Eric Johnson spent the Thanksgiving holiday in NYC, as opposed to Texas I guess. Jessica was in town to lip sync at the Macy’s parade under a Pillsbury Doughboy cloud, which are still my favorite Jessica Simpson photos, EVER (see the Pillsbury Doughboy photo bombing Jessica below). As for Eric’s veganism and how a proud meat-eater like Jessica dealt with the situation… well, if People Magazine is be trusted, then Jessica actually cooked some vegan dishes for her man and his family:

Jessica Simpson was one busy woman on Thanksgiving.

In the morning, she participated in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Later, the multi-talented star whipped up a vegan-friendly holiday feast for fiancé Eric Johnson and their families – in her hotel suite, no less.

The newly engaged singer, 30, who just released her new holiday album Happy Christmas, cooked a turkey, but made sure to include some vegan delicacies for her health-minded hubby-to-be.

“She cooked mostly traditional food with some vegan dishes for Eric and his family,” says a source close to the couple.

Simpson had to get creative to make Thanksgiving dinner for so many people at her hotel. “They had an oven brought into her suite,” says the source. “She also used the hotel kitchen.”

Simpson did not make a Tofurkey for her future husband, which she had joked about with Jimmy Fallon last week. “After getting out of the NFL, [Eric] went to this healer and is very healthy,” she said. “For Thanksgiving we have to make a Tofurkey!”

And tucking into a vegan meal is a far cry from what Simpson is used to eating, she told Fallon. “I’m from Texas – I’d fry a steak,” she laughed. “We eat all casseroles and giblets!”

Also at the Thanksgiving dinner in New York were Simpson’s parents, Johnson’s parents and some close friends. (Sister Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, her husband Pete Wentz and their son, Bronx, spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles.)

After dinner, the group headed to Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., to watch the New York Jets beat the Cincinnati Bengals.

“Jessica and Eric had a great day with their families and a bunch of their friends,” says the source.

[From People]

Um, do you believe that this happened? The part about getting an oven brought up into the hotel suite and Jessica cooking the whole thing…? Yeah, that one reeks. Papa Joe was smoking some crack when he called in this “tip” to People Magazine. My guess is that when Jessica “used the hotel kitchen” she was in fact using the hotel staff because she didn’t know how to make turkey of the vegan sea.

This week’s Goop is good one! Which is nice, because the last several Goops have been sucking, almost as if Gwyneth Paltrow was too constipated to write something interesting. Anyway, this week’s Goop is a “Make” and Gwyneth gets Paul McCartney to write it! And he even included a really nice photo of himself and his two (older) daughters, Mary and Stella (below). The whole thing is about getting people to sign on for “Meat Free Mondays” – all for health reasons, environmental reasons, and animal-cruelty reasons, I think. The complete Goop newsletter will be online in a little bit (I get the newsletter in my email, because I’m special), so here’s the Goop site, and here are some of the highlights:

I am not a vegetarian, but when I heard about “Meat Free Monday,” I was intrigued. I had never thought about the environmental impact of raising livestock. Below are the facts presented by Paul McCartney, our favorite vegetarian cookbooks, and a meat free dinner recipe from Mr. Chow to get us off to a good start.
Love, Gwyneth

From Paul McCartney:
my family and I launched Meat Free Monday in the UK, an idea which has been gaining support from people like Tom Parker-Bowles who, after a lifetime of denigrating vegetarians, recently wrote in his Daily Mail column, “I wince at the memory of my boorish antics” and who pronounced himself “intrigued”. Another supporter is Al Gore who stated that initiatives like Meat Free Monday “represent a responsible and welcome component of a comprehensive strategy for reducing global warming pollution and simultaneously improving human health.”

Even a number of schools have already done this in the UK with great success. The town of Ghent in Belgium has a meat free day and, amazingly, Sao Paulo has one even though Brazil is a large exporter of meat. In Sweden, the government is now labeling food to give the consumer the opportunity to understand the dangers of indiscriminate food consumption and there are many more examples appearing online.

The point is that so many people these days are looking for ways to “do their bit” for the environment. We recycle – something we never would have dreamt of doing in the past. Many people now drive hybrid cars but most people understand that we cannot leave this important issue to the politicians of the world. Recently, at the Copenhagen Conference for Climate Change, this issue was not even on the agenda and so I believe it is once again left to us, the people, to do it ourselves.

It’s amazingly easy to take one day in your week, Monday or any other day, and not eat meat. When you think about it, there are so many great alternatives, for instance, in Italian cooking, so many of the dishes are vegetarian already and Thai and Chinese cuisine are the same. All it means is that you have to think a bit about what you’ll eat that day but, in actual fact, far from being a chore, it’s a fun challenge.

Having been a vegetarian for over 30 years, I find it very simple and in fact, tasty and most enjoyable.

So there it is! Next Monday – don’t eat meat and do your bit to save this beautiful planet of ours. For more information, ideas and lots of meat free recipes, go to the official Meat Free Monday website.

Thanks Goopsters! Thanks Gwyneth!
Rock on ya’ll!

Paul

[From Goop]

I kind of like this idea. It’s not arrogant or mean, it’s just like, “Hey, just try it, it may work out.” As opposed to “Vegetarians are the best, meat-eaters are the devil.” The vegetarian recipes included are kind of funny, though. Goopy shares a recipe for “vegetarian fried rice”. Which, you know, is just fried rice. You don’t have to call it “vegetarian”. If it had meat in it, it would be “pork fried rice” or “chicken fried rice”. Mmm… pork fried rice. Meaty Thursdays.

If you ever wanted to know what Natalie Portman would look like as a rockabilly, here’s the magazine cover of your dreams. Natalie posed for the cover of V Magazine decked out in her best pompadour and “screw you” look. Meh. I think Natalie (at 28 years old) is one of the prettiest girls around, but this cover and the accompanying photos aren’t amazing, in my opinion. The photo shoot was done by Mario Testino, and the interview excerpts are all over the place. Here’s a summary:

Natalie on the short shelf-life of actresses in Hollywood: “You see people who were stars five years ago and already they’re waning. As actresses approach 40, it starts becoming really, really difficult.”

On plastic surgery: She’s still years from that marker, she’s ambivalent about plastic surgery in the future. “I would hope not,” she says of whether she’d ever go under the knife. She does not, however, completely rule it out, explaining that she won’t know how she’ll feel as she ages. While wrinkles aren’t a problem yet, she admits, “if I have a pimple I want to get rid of it.”

Natalie on her “acting” in the Star Wars franchise: “My acting was not exactly respected in those [Star Wars] films but those are the moments when you want to prove yourself again. When people think I suck, it helps.”

On websites poaching her naked body from movie stills: “[O]nline bullsh-t interferes with what I want to do artistically. I’m not opposed to sexuality or nudity in a film, but I’m very opposed to [pr0n] sites and you’re pretty much giving them material if you do any of that.”

On her already-buzzed about sex-filled lesbian role in Black Swan: “It’s not raunchy- it’s extreme.”

[V Magazine interview excerpts from People Magazine, CoverAwards and Radar]

I don’t really have a problem with most of what she’s talking about, but I always hate it when an actor disrespects their own films. It always strikes me as rude and unprofessional. If you hate the job so much, why the f-ck did you take it? Maybe it’s that I used to adore Natalie, but lately every move she’s made has been grating on my nerves. First, she signed the Polanski petition, and then she wrote about a widely-circulated and disseminated piece being a vegetarian for the Huffington Post. In that piece, she defends the notion that eating meat is somehow akin to rape. Seriously. This is what she wrote: “[Jonathan Safran Foer] reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just ‘This is tasty, and that’s why I do it.’ He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don’t believe in rape, but if it’s what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).” Uh, no. This is why Natalie is no longer one of my favorites. If you want to be a vegan or a vegetarian, fine. But by eating a steak, I’m not raping anyone.

Thanks to Cover Awards for these pics

There are many different kinds of vegetarians, and I was ready to rip on Eve for stupidly thinking that vegetarians can eat chicken, but apparently there is a form of “semi-vegetarianism” that encompasses people who only eat chicken and fish. I looked it up, and it’s legitimate and everything. My mom used to be a vegetarian, and I will admit that I sort-of influenced her to start eating chicken again after many years – my bad. She might be pleased to learn that some people think she still qualifies as a vegetarian. My dad is a fish-only vegetarian, and I always assumed that was the only animal you could eat and still call yourself a vegetarian.

Rapper Eve – who I always think of whenever I see a woman in public with those asinine pawprint tattoos on her cleavage, and it happens more often than you might think – recently asked for “something vegetarian” to eat like “chicken fingers.” I would guess that she’s so not vegetarian that she thinks that her request was vegetarian, if that makes sense. It’s possible she’s one of those people who doesn’t eat red meat but still thinks she’s vegetarian, though.

RAPPER/actress Eve seems a little mixed up as to what “vegetarian” means. She was at Blush Boutique Nightclub at the Wynn in Las Vegas recently, where our source says, “She was in the VIP area and got hungry, so she asked if room service could be ordered to the club. They agreed to help her out, but when they took her order, she said she wanted ‘something vegetarian, like grilled cheese or chicken fingers.’ The staff was pretty confused about it.”

[From NY Post]

So is that dumb, uninformed or actually correct on some level? There are plenty of people who believe that eating only chicken and no red meat means you’re vegetarian. Some of those people actually call themselves vegetarian. I did a little research on this, and am surprised to see how many people are confused about what it means to be vegetarian. To me, it’s pretty simple – vegetarians don’t eat meat, and chicken is meat. Other people think chicken doesn’t count. Tell that to the chickens. (The delicious, juicy chickens.)

Eve is show in the header on 6/4/09 (credit: PRPhotos) and below on 7/11/08 (credit: WENN.com)

Of all the crazy fights to have, the eternal debate about meat is one of funniest and most prevalent. I’ve known friends who try to be vegan for a guy they just met, and I’ve known guys who pretend to love soy milk because of some cute little vegan hipster girl they’re trying to impress. Personally, I love meat. And I’m not alone – Angelina Jolie is an unapologetic meat eater too, even chowing down on rare lamb chops during interviews, and (gasp!) feeding her kids a parcel of meat too. But this meat craze seems to be upsetting Brad Pitt. Brad seems to want his kids to go vegetarian for health and environmental reasons. Brad wants Angelina to do it too, but she’s refusing on all fronts:

It seems Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can’t agree on anything these days.

The couple, who have not been seen together in public since May, have been arguing over how to rear their rainbow brood.

Brad, 45, who has been a vegetarian for decades, wants 34-year-old Angie and their children to give up meat – which has caused a ruckus in their household.

‘Brad hates seeing the children eating meat and he’s annoyed with how much red meat Angelina has,’ says an insider.

‘He goes on about the damage caused by methane gases from cattle and that the family should go veggie but Angie says that’s never going to happen.’

[From Daily Mail]

The Daily Mail seems to claim Brad is some hardcore kind of vegetarian, but I haven’t really found any evidence of that. He admitted to trying out vegetarianism many years ago, and he’s also said that when he’s had to do something with his body (like for his bulk-up in Troy), he cut out meat. It’s perfectly possible he is still a vegetarian, or at the very least, he could eat meat sparingly. If he is trying to convince the family to go meatless, I have no problems believing Angelina totally refused. With that many kids, it’s probably hard enough to get them all fed in regular intervals without setting up food roadblocks along the way.

In other Angelina news, Page Six is reporting that a bunch of designer dresses meant for Angelina were stolen! Several designers had been sending Angelina’s stylist, Jennifer Rabe, their “best stuff”, and the pieces got stolen from Rabe:

THREE boxes of designer clothing were swiped from LA stylist Jennifer Rade Thursday night. An insider said Rade was collecting dresses for her star client, Angelina Jolie, who was scheduled to have a fitting with Rade the next day.

“Every designer who was sending pieces was trying to send their best stuff,” said the source. “Angelina was just starting the fitting process for pieces to wear when she begins promoting ‘Salt.’ ”

Rade didn’t return calls and e-mails, and Jolie doesn’t have a rep.

[From Page Six]

So if anyone sees a cracked-out waif wearing some glittery designer sack, you’ll know those dresses were totally meant for Angelina. Cough cough Lindsay Lohan cough. Even though it may or may not be Jennifer Rabe’s fault, I hope Angelina uses this an excuse to fire Rabe. Rabe may just be following Angelina’s orders on the dresses, but a better stylist could conceivably step up and do an intervention with Angelina. Anything to get her out of those shapeless, neutral potato sacks.

Header photo was taken by Brad Pitt and published last year in W Magazine

Paul McCartney has written a personal letter to His Holiness The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhism, urging him not to eat meat. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and in compassion for all living beings. One of the five precepts of Buddhism is “do not kill,” which is explained “One must not deliberately kill any living creatures, either by committing the act oneself, instructing others to kill, or approving of or participating in act of killing.” Buddhism does allow for personal choice and exceptions when it comes to the precepts, and they are not set in stone, but many Buddhists interpret that precept as a call to vegetarianism.

The Dalai Lama, however, continues to eat meat at the insistence of his doctors. Paul McCartney told him that they’re wrong and he doesn’t need meat, which inevitably causes suffering:

SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY tried to turn the DALAI LAMA vegetarian, insisting the famed Buddhist was “wrong” to eat meat.

The Beatles legend wrote to the spiritual leader to point out that meat-eaters contribute to the suffering of animals, contradicting his statement that Buddhists “believe in not causing suffering to any sentient beings”.

And the Hey Jude hitmaker even disagreed when the Dalai Lama insisted he ate meat for health reasons.

In an interview with Prospect magazine, MCCartney says, “I found out he was not a vegetarian, so I wrote to him saying ‘Forgive me for pointing this out, but if you eat animals then there is some suffering somewhere along the line’.

“He replied saying that his doctors had told him he needed it, so I wrote back saying they were wrong.”

[From Contact Music, thanks to vdantev for the tip]

I’m a meat-eater, but my dad and brother are vegetarians and I understand the choice. It’s something that people chose to do for personal reasons, and many site the intense environmental cost of meat production. You can get the same protein and nutritional benefits from a non-meat diet, but it’s not as easy and requires planning. It’s surprising to me that the Dalai Lama would eat meat given his personal philosophy, but he also seems like the type who follows his own path and isn’t one to let rock stars tell him how to live his life. Rock stars that have their own vegetarian food line I might add, not that it makes McCartney’s commitment to animal rights any less genuine.

On Wednesday Travis Barker gave his first interview since surviving a plane crash that killed four out of six of the people on the plane. In it, Travis mentioned that after 25 years as a vegetarian he has started to eat meat again, saying that his doctors told him he needs the food protein to heal.

Ironically today PETA released a statement that Travis’ ex-wife Shanna Moakler has become a vegetarian and recorded a commercial for the animal rights organization. Though Travis and Shanna have had a very acrimonious relationship, she has been by his side throughout his entire hospitalization.

“There are so many good reasons not to eat meat, but for me, the well-being of my children is the most important,” says Moakler, who has also appeared in several films and on many TV shows, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Dancing With the Stars. “I want them to be healthy and also to understand that when they say ‘No!’ to meat, they’re saying ‘No!’ to animal cruelty. We talk about our pets, and I say, ‘You wouldn’t eat Biscuit, would you? Well, then let’s not eat any animal, O.K.?’”

Although Moakler originally went vegetarian out of concern for animals, the health benefits came as a pleasant surprise. “I don’t think I really realized what I was putting into my body and the actual effects that it was having on me, so now I feel so much healthier, and I have so much more energy, and foods taste better!”

The compassion for animals that Moakler is imparting to her children goes beyond the dinner table. She’s an ardent fur foe–she won several fur coats in various pageants but now plans to donate them to PETA to use in its campaign to educate the public about the cruelty of the fur industry.

[From PETA.org]

The timing sure is suspicious. However PETA doesn’t give any indication of when Moakler shot the ad, and I seriously doubt she’s had time to do it since Travis’ plane crash. What I find especially interesting is Shanna’s statement that she feels healthier and has more energy. Of his decision to start eating meat again, Barker said, “‘I don’t regret it at all, I feel so much better.’” I guess it goes to show everyone’s body needs something different.

My first instinct when I saw this was, “Uh oh, they’re feuding again.” But I think the timing is just coincidental. It seems like Shanna and Travis have been getting along really well lately – not only has she been with him the entire time he’s been in the hospital, but she took a bus back to L.A. with him because he was too afraid to fly. I’m hoping they avoided any arguments and just ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Protein-filled and totally awesome.

Here’s Travis and Shanna at the T-Mobile Sidekick LX Launch Party in Los Feliz, California in October 2007. Images thanks to Bauer-Griffin.

Longtime vegetarian Sir Paul McCartney is urging a boycott of the behemoth fast food chain McDonalds after a branch in Liverpool, England displayed a photo of him with his former Beatle bandmates. The Beatles hail from Liverpool, where all the original bandmates first met in the late 1950s. Instead of being flattered that he was being honored, or quietly asking the chain to remove the photo, McCartney’s rep has called for fans to boycott McDonald’s.

The singer, who has been a vocal advocate of vegetarianism for 30 years was said to be furious after discovering pictures of the Beatles had been placed prominently in a restaurant in his home town.

His image appeared alongside former band mates John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.

Geoff Baker, a spokesman for Sir Paul said: “What sort of morons do McDonald’s think Beatles’ fans are.

“It’s ridiculous and insulting to use images to peddle hamburgers. Fans should boycott Mcdonald’s, and not just in Liverpool.”

Sir Paul is a staunch supporter of animal rights, president of the Vegetarian Society of Great Britain and an ambassador for People for the Ethical treatment of Animals (PETA). His late wife Linda had her own range of vegetarian foods.

A PETA spokeswoman said: “He became a vegetarian after watching lambs play in a field outside his home and surely would not want anyone to use his likeness to help promote meat.

“We hope anyone who sees his picture on the wall will be reminded that he’s a vegetarian and skip the Big Mac for a veggie burger.”

A McDonald’s spokeswoman said the pictures were to “acknowledge the outstanding contribution the Beatles made to both local and global culture.”

[From Telegraph.co.uk via ONTD]

I get the McDonald’s hatred – they get a lot of well deserved flack for many reasons. (I was kind of floored by Fast Food Nation, and here are reminders of the legitimate concerns people have about McDonalds. I still eat there occasionally though.) There are surely plenty of Beatles photos hanging in other restaurants that serve meat, though, particularly those brick a brack-decorated establishments like TGI Fridays and Applebees. Why focus on just McDonalds? It’s also kind of strange that he would be so offended by a McDonalds in his hometown displaying his image in homage to the birthplace of the Beatles. It wasn’t meant as an endorsement or anything, just an acknowledgment of the town’s place in music history.

Paul McCartney is shown at Paris Fashion Week on 10/2/08. Credit: WENN

Incensed over a t-shirt the country singer wore that read “Real Girls Eat Meat,” longtime animal rights activist and vegetarian Pamela Anderson, 40, let loose on Jessica Simpson in a name-calling tirade. Anderson didn’t go for the obvious criticism and call Simpson “stupid” or “misguided,” adjectives that have been aimed at Anderson on many occasions, and she didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt about wearing a shirt with a slogan many vegetarians find offensive. Anderson called Simpson a “bitch and a whore,” but then backtracked a little, suggesting it’s ok to eat man meat, just not animal meat:

Jessica upset Pammi and all her vegetarian chums by wearing a T-shirt proclaiming: “Real girls eat meat.”

But now the former Baywatch babe has hit back with a spectacular insult.

Speaking on radio in Australia – where she’s waiting to go into the Big Brother house – the star slammed her rival buxom blonde.

Pammi blasted: “I think she is a bitch and whore.

“Actually, I don’t know if she was talking about food or men.”

She added that she is proud of not eating meat, saying: “I think it’s healthy, good for your body and good for the environment.”

[From The Sun]

I know I’ve seen video of Anderson eating uh, the other kind of meat, and she does so with relish. Our advertiser Deceiver points out that Pamela Anderson might urge us to boycott KFC for their cruel practices and give up meat, but that she has a giant leather Hermes bag that retails for around $10,000. Is it worse to advertise that you eat meat or carry around a leather purse? At least the cow was made into luxury goods and wasn’t eaten, right? It’s not like you buy a new purse worth the price of a used car a few times a week, either, so you’re limiting your cow consumption to the amount you can afford.

Hopefully this will turn into a war of the words between these two intellectually challenged blonds known more for their tabloid personalities than their haphazard careers. Maybe Simpson will shoot back something like “Well she’s a nasty has-been. Is that cow or pig, that bag she’s carrying? Both are tasty.”

Jessica Simpson is shown after her appearance on The View in Las Vegas on 6/25/08. Pamela Anderson is shown at a celebrity memorabilia auction at Planet Hollywood on 6/21/08 where she auctioned off her car – A Dodge Viper with leather seats – to raise money for PETA. They were both in Vegas around the same time, they should have hung out. It strikes me that they would have a lot in common despite their differences over eating meat. Thanks to WENN for these photos.