As a life-long vegetarian, I’m thrilled to learn that for the third year in a row, Amitabh is India’s hottest herbivore, according to your favourite animal rights outfit:

The veggie voters have spoken, and it is official – the Big B is again the Big V, and breaking the Bollywood monopoly, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone has won PETA India’s Hottest Vegetarian Alive Contest for 2004. More than 50,000 Web surfers cast their votes this year.

This year, the contest was even hotter, with vegetarians like Shahid Kapoor, Pamela Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, Yana Gupta, Avril Lavigne, Mandira Bedi, Tobey Maguire, Shania Twain and Esha Deol as nominees.

Celebrities cite many reasons for forgoing flesh foods, from avoiding the cruelty to animals that is inherent in meat production to improving their health and energy levels to helping the environment by not contributing to hog- and chicken-farm pollution.

Amitabh is just one of many stars who probably taste better. Upon perusing the list of esteemed nominees, I was surprised to find that “Lord of the Rings” star and blazing-ball-of-awesome-hotness Orlando Bloom is also an herbivore. As if he wasn’t fantastic enough already. Stothrum!

Sadly, Mutineer Manish wasn’t nominated, or he would’ve surely killed Big B’s shot at a three-peat. 😉