Radley links an unintentionally hilarious website sponsored by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and designed to make beef seem hep to teenage girls. Yes, I’m serious. No, this is not a setup for some Nabakovian punchline. The site is called “Cool-2b-Real.”

I guess the industry’s typical advertising tended towards the macho, and they figured they needed somethign pink and frilly for the benefit of the fairer sex. Anyway, among all the pretty cartoons of burgers and risible, ham handed slang-slinging are the requisite plugs for girls to eat more beef. Usually there’s a line about the importance of getting enough protein, and the suggestion that meat is a good source.

Well, protein is important of course, but a friend who’s a better vegetarian than I recently shared a fact I hadn’t known. Vegetarians get too much protein—or anyway, well over the RDA on average. Meat eaters get waaaay too much. This was good to know, since I’d been (incorrectly) told for a decade and change about how important it is for vegetarians to pay scrupulous attention to their protein intake or we’d all drop dead, and had never actually bothered to give it much thought. Well (you’re probably wondering), what about all that “four food groups” stuff we all learned back in health class? Surprise number two: my friend reveals that most health textbooks are underwritten by the meat and dairy industry—a fact she checked against a few texts when she heard about it because it sounded so X-Files. Sooner or later, I suppose I’ll have to pick up the book from which she got all this… I’m resisting largely because it will probably guilt me into going vegan, which I know from friends is a huge pain in the ass. I could still justify eating free-range eggs and dairy in my own kitchen, but that would probably require me to (gasp!) learn to cook or something.