Wearing only a leafy bikini top and G-string, actor and pin-up queen Pamela Anderson – best known internationally for her starring roles in the TV series Baywatch and V.I.P. – appears in PETA India's newly released ad. With the tagline "Turn Over A New Leaf. Try Vegetarian", Anderson challenges readers to sign the Pledge to Be Vegetarian on PETAIndia.com.

PETA and Anderson want people to know that a vegan diet – one devoid of all animal products – is the best way to stay trim, lighten your conscience about the suffering endured by animals raised and killed for food, avoid life-threatening illnesses and even spice up your sex life without popping pills.

"I've found that going vegetarian is the best – and easiest – method of staying slim and sexy", says Anderson, who has been a vegetarian since she was sixteen.

Eating meat clogs the arteries to all of the body's vital organs, which can result in impotence. Also, vegetarians live longer. Eating meat causes heart disease – the world's leading killer. Vegetarians are 40 per cent less likely to die from cancer than meat-eaters.

Consumption of meat and other animal products also has been linked to diabetes, and societies with the highest rates of dairy consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis – the very disease that dairy companies claim their products prevent.

Unfortunately, at a time when vegetarianism is on the upswing in some countries, many people are mimicking the unhealthy, meat-laden eating habits of Western cultures.

When she was a little girl growing up in British Columbia, Canada, Anderson raised such a ruckus when her father brought home a deer that he had killed that he never hunted again.

Then she learned about the cruelty endured by animals raised for food, went vegetarian, and joined PETA. Years later – as the special guest of Prince Albert of Monaco – she held up a well-attended midnight dinner until the chef furnished her with a vegetarian meal. Animals raised for food lead miserable lives and suffer terrifying deaths.

Chickens in India are raised on cruel factory farms, where they are treated like machines. They spend their brief lives in terrible conditions. Chickens are so crowded together that they cannot spread a wing.

Many do not get a breath of fresh air until they are roughly gathered and crammed onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the slaughterhouse – often in sweltering or freezing temperatures and without food or water. The animals are hung upside-down, and their throats are cut, often while they are still conscious.

"Why go vegetarian?" Anderson asks. "With so many great reasons, I think a better question is, 'Why not?'"

Pamela is joined by a growing number of celebrities who have kicked the meat habit – including Sir Paul McCartney, Martina Navratilova, Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Mahima Chaudhary, Joaquin Phoenix, Moby, R. Madhavan, Rajneesh Duggal, Kareena Kapoor, Aditi Govitrikar and Tobey Maguire.