New PETA Billboard Urges Modesto Residents to Go Vegetarian and Be Happy

City residents throughout the U.S. winced when Forbes magazine recently ranked the top 10 most miserable towns for 2009. Unfortunately, Modesto came in at number five. While the general misery index has spiked in recent months because of the tanking economy, PETA has a cure for the blues that’s as simple as changing what’s on your plate: Go vegetarian. That’s why the group is planning to erect a brand-new billboard that shows several pedestrians with fruits and vegetables for heads walking through a crowd above the tagline “Put a Smile on Your Face, Go Vegetarian! Be Healthy, Be Happy, Be Veg.”

Why is going vegetarian the key to happiness and good health? For one thing, the consumption of meat and other animal products has been conclusively linked to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, obesity, and several kinds of cancer. And people who have packed on a few unwanted pounds over the winter will be happy to learn that vegetarians and vegans are fitter and trimmer, on average, than meat-eaters are.

Going vegetarian is also the single best thing that anyone can do to protect the planet. A 2006 U.N. study concluded that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes, and trains in the world combined. And the misery index for the billions of animals raised and killed for food goes down whenever someone adopts a healthy, humane vegetarian diet. In fact, every vegetarian saves the lives of more than 100 animals each year.

“We don’t have much control over the misery that results from rising unemployment rates and home foreclosures, but we can control what’s on our plates,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Just by going vegetarian, you can improve your health, save animals’ lives, and protect the Earth–and that’s a lot to smile about.”