Celebrity Chef hits back at vegan activist for telling Gen Z to ditch turkey on Christmas Day: ‘It’s tradition!’
A celebrity chef has hit back at PETA’s calls for Gen Z to ditch turkey this Christmas, sparking a heated debate over traditional festive meals.
Jennifer White, senior media and communications manager at PETA, urged everyone to embrace a vegan Christmas, claiming there’s “nothing healthy about eating the rotting corpse of a tortured bird.”
Celebrity Chef Theo Michaels strongly contested this view, defending the centuries-old tradition of turkey at Christmas.
Jennifer White senior media and communications manager at PETA told GB News: “We are urging everyone to have a vegan Christmas and enjoy the festive season with delicious and nutritious vegan foods instead. You really can have it all.
“If you want that traditional Christmas feel, you can have a vegan turkey, but also you could have a bucket of vegan fried chicken too, if that’s what you’d rather.
“But the main thing is that you can enjoy all of that nostalgia of your favourite foods, all of the taste, but just without any of the cruelty.”
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She added: “There’s absolutely nothing healthy about eating the rotting corpse of a tortured bird.
“We know that people who have a vegan diet suffer less from certain types of cancer, from high blood pressure, from heart disease to a host of other health conditions.
“So the best thing that you can do for your own health as well is absolutely eat a diet that is high in vegan foods, which of course is fruits, vegetables, grains.
“You don’t have to have a meat alternative this Christmas if you don’t want one, but there are certainly options available for everyone.”
Celebrity Chef Theo Michaels said: “The rotting corpse of a turkey. That was brutal. Look, I think the reality is I’m not salivating, if I’m honest, over the idea of a nut roast for my Christmas dinner.
“There’s a tradition of turkey that’s been around since Henry the eighth. And turkey, there’s an entire industry around turkey farming. It’s really healthy meat. It’s really lean when it’s cooked great and it’s rested for a good hour.
“It’s succulent and juicy, and to me, that’s part of the absolute tapestry of our Christmas dinner.”
He added: “I wouldn’t be able to pull my cracker with someone if they were serving me the vegan turkey.”
White fired back: “Tradition is no excuse for cruelty. And we are talking about individuals here. I’m not here telling people what they can and can’t eat. I’m simply encouraging people to make more informed choices.”
This comes after it was revealed that more than half of Gen Z and Millennials believe festive classics need a modern makeover to stay relevant.
The survey revealed that mince pies top the list of traditional foods young people want to axe, with 31 per cent voting against them.
Christmas pudding follows closely behind, with 29 per cent eager to remove it from the festive menu.