The im****tance of a vegetarian diet (based on yogic principles) is very
im****tant to physical, mental and spiritual health and ultimately in
assisting one's meditation and spiritual practices - AND of course for
environmental and social reasons.
Healthy food is vital to a spiritual lifestyle and for a vegetarian diet
itself. It is also vital to the well being of the ecological system.
Vegetarian diet is the most harmonising environmentally, economically and
psychologically.
The below article and the 2 attachments explain further the ideals of a
vegetarian diet.
Dharmadeva
Vegetarianism - the ethical and ecological arguments
----------------------------------------------------
By Roar Bjonnes
From India to Alaska, McDonald's is selling double cheeseburgers by the
billions. Now there's mounting evidence that these whoppers are doing more
than smearing grease on kids' pants and clogging arteries. For many years,
experts have warned us about health hazards caused by saturated fat from
milk and meat. In fact, saturated fat has become the quiet killer of a
culture addicted to life in the fast-food lane. But that's not all.
According to many researchers, our meat craze also contributes to the
energy
crisis, water shortages, topsoil depletion, world hunger, animal suffering
and global deforestation.
The ethical argument
When kids begin to eat less meat parents sincerely believe they would
suffer
from protein deficiency. But awareness reveals that one should be more
concerned about the protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock.
Anyway it is fairly easy to become a non-carnivore after a terrifying walk
through a slaughterhouse. That excursion can be a good lesson and
education
in agronomy. It is shocking to witness the paranoid herd of bulls and
cows,
hear the bovine wails, and see the innocent animals enter the bloody
killing-floors. This experience convinces one that to consume meat is to
be
part of an industry of animal exploitation, unnecessary suffering and
premature death. As Leo Tolstoy said, "While we ourselves are the living
graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the
earth?" Tolstoy was, of course, an active vegetarian.
Just consider these facts:
In the USA, nine million living creatures are killed for meat each day.
Now
add on to that statistics from a whole lot of other beef and meat
producing
countries. What do you get?
Veal is usually so tender because calves are not allowed to take a single
step. The veal's whitish-pink colour comes from calves force-fed an
anaemia-producing diet.
The wingspan of an average leghorn chicken is 26 inches, but the average
space these chickens are given in egg factories is only six inches.
In a typical factory farm in an industrial country such as the USA, three
700-plus pound pigs are confined to a space the size of a twin bed.
Over half the antibiotics produced in the USA are not used as medicines
for
people, but as feed additives to cure stressed and infected animals.
Yes, please give some thought to these sobering facts. Seductive ads from
the meat and dairy industry will definitely not remind us, and neither
will
the ground beef in a McDonald hamburger or the mute, featherless chicken
in
the supermarket freezer.
John Robbins is no stranger to the business of factory-farming and
cholesterol. He was heir to one of the largest ice cream franchises in the
USA - the Baskin-Robbins company. But he declined to be part of the
business
as it was in discord with his lifestyle. Robbins, a vegan (a no animal
by-product diet), instead moved to a forest cabin with his wife. There he
embarked upon a life of voluntary simplicity, contemplation and research.
After three years, he published his findings in the Pulitzer
Prize-nominated
book Diet For A New America (Stillpoint, 1988). It became an instant
best-seller, and was hailed as the world's most comprehensive indictment
against the meat industry.
Animal suffering was also the inspiration behind Robbins' ground-breaking
research on factory farming. "I felt an urge to respond to it," he says,
"to
unearth some of the causes, to expose some of the hidden ways in which
we're
damaging our selves and the whole web of life." On his visits to these
farms
Robbins saw animals kept indoors under conditions that violate their
instincts and frustrate the urges. Pigs were stacked in cages three high;
the excrement of the ones above drops continuously on the ones below. He
saw
animals chained so tight at the neck that they could not lay down. "I've
seen dairy cows treated with such contempt for their natures that they
become so neurotic they have to be given tranquillisers to keep them from
going berserk."
Throughout history there were many people who became vegetarians for
ethical
reasons, people like Gandhi, Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Leonardo Da
Vinci
and Einstein. They felt it was unnecessary to eat animal flesh when other
food sources were available. This sentiment also motivated Andrew
Nicholson
to become a vegetarian. Nicholson is a medical doctor and Director of
Preventive Medicine at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in
Wa****ngton DC. He lectures on vegetarianism and preventive medicine to
physicians and nurses, hospital patients and the general public. "It is
not
only unethical to kill animals," says Nicholson , "it also does not make
any
sense nutritionally." As a daily practitioner of meditation and yoga,
Nicholson feels it is im****tant that his source of food is as "sentient"
(conducive to consciousness) as possible. It effects both our mind and
body,
he claims. The im****tance of purity and vitality of food was also
appreciated by Pythagoras. Two thousand five hundred years ago, he said,
"Only living, fresh foods can enable man to apprehend the truth."
The ecological argument
American actress Cybill Shepherd used to do beef commercials on TV. But
when
she got pregnant, she discovered that the breast milk of meat-eating
mothers
has higher pesticide residues than is allowed in cows' milk. In fact, the
pesticide contamination of breast milk is 35 times higher in meat-eating
mothers than in vegetarians. This is a result of the vast amounts of
pesticides used in today's commercial agriculture. These pesticides first
ac***ulate in grain and gr*****, then in cattle, pigs and poultry.
Finally,
these toxic substances end up in humans who consume meat.
To satisfy the hunger for meat in the industrialized world, millions of
acres of forest have been cleared to create pastureland for grazing
cattle.
Since 1960, more than 25 percent of the forests of Central America have
been
clear-cut or burned. By the late 1970s, two-thirds of all agricultural
land
in Central America was taken up by cattle and other livestock. By the
mid-1980s, these countries had 80 percent more cattle than twenty years
before. Ironically, most of the meat produced there ends up on the dinner
tables in the industrialized world, particularly the U.S. In Australia
the
cattle industry has create enormous damage to soils.
The creation of this vast cattle kingdom has enriched the lives of a
select
few, pauperised much of the rural population, and spawned widespread
social
unrest and political upheaval. But the ecological costs are also enormous.
Only 2,000 years ago, the tropical rainforest belt covered five billion
acres (two billion hectares) of the earth and took up 12 percent of the
earth's land surface. In the last two centuries of European colonial
expansion, half the tropical biomass has been destroyed to create
pastures.
Most of the forests of Central and Latin America have been destroyed to
sup****t the beef diets of people in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Mexican
ecologist Gabriel Quadri warns, "We are ex****ting the future of Mexico for
the benefit of a few powerful cattle farmers."
Deforestation is, according to many ecologists, one of the main ecological
disasters of our time. In India, according to P.R. Sarkar, deforestation
has
dried up many rivers. The solution, he says, is that all river systems
should be "covered by dense forests." This would of course be much easier
were we to ****ft to a vegetarian diet. Such a world-wide dietary ****ft
would
according to Robbins "save enough land to restore the forests and habitats
for wild creatures." We would also have "enough land to save species from
becoming extinct, to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to
stabilize
the climate, to give us oxygen, to stabilize our hydrological cycles, to
prevent droughts and floods, and to conserve topsoil which is currently
being eroded at an alarming rate."
Desertification is another destructive ecological problem caused by a
meat-cantered diet. According to Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef
(Dutton, 1992), there are four main reasons for desertification:
over-grazing of livestock, over-cultivation of land, deforestation and
improper irrigation. However, cattle production is the primary factor in
all
four causes. According to United Nations' estimates, 29 percent of the
earth's landmass now suffers "slight, moderate or severe desertification."
And, not surprisingly, the regions most affected by this are all the
cattle-producing areas of the planet: the western half of the United
States,
Australia, Central and South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Rifkin
describes cattle as "hoofed locusts" that eat their way through 900 pounds
of vegetation each month, strip the rangeland of native plants and compact
the soil with the pressure of 24 pounds per square inch. Thus the soil is
less able to hold the water from the spring melting of snow. This results
in
erosion and flooding. Seeds are washed away, and during hot summers the
landscape becomes barren and dry.
Most people are aware that global warming may become the world's most
destructive environmental disaster. But the connection between a Big Mac
hamburger and global warming is not so obvious. But here are some
disturbing
facts that should turn the most meat-loving environmentalist into a
vegetarian:
Much of the biomass (trees, grassland and agricultural waste) burned in
the
world today is in connection with cattle-ranching. The biomass burned in
the
Amazon rainforest alone amounts to about nine percent of the total
worldwide
contribution to global warming.
Mechanized agriculture uses a sizable amount of fossil fuel. In the U.S.,
it
takes the equivalent of one gallon (3.8 litres) of gasoline to produce a
pound (.45 kg) of grain-fed beef. A family of four meat-eaters consumes
260
gallons (988 litres) of fossil fuel annually - producing as much carbon
dioxide as the average car emits in six months.
Petrochemical fertilizers, used to produce cattle-feed, emit nitrous
oxide,
another greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide released from fertilizers accounts
for
six percent of the global warming effect.
Cattle emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane is also emitted from
peat bogs, rice paddies, and landfills. But the increase in the cattle and
termite population and the burning of forests account for most of the
recent
increase in methane emissions. Methane emissions cause 18 percent of the
global warming trend.
A meat-cantered diet is also a poor way to utilize our resources. More and
more scientists are therefore recommending a vegetarian diet to help solve
some of the food shortages on the planet. It has been calculated, for
example, that it takes sixteen times more grain to feed a meat-cantered
diet
than it does to feed a purely vegetarian diet. If the consumption of beef
in
the United States was reduced by 10 percent, the amount of grain saved
could
feed 60 million people - more than the entire number that will die of
malnutrition and starvation this year. There are of course also political,
economic, and social reasons why food is not properly produced and
distributed. But as Robbins says, "it definitely won't reach them if we
continue to cycle it through the livestock we eat."
So, come on, give everyone human and other life a fair go. Spread the
message and convince people to stop eating their friends.
---
Some information
----------------
Methane (cows) is a far more potent contributor - by a factor of 21 times
-
to global warming than carbon dioxide.
- Excerpt from Environmental Business mag.
Some interesting figures from a re****t entitled Stopping the Great Food
Swap
- Relocalising Europe's food supply. The re****t is based on back ground
research by the UK food and agriculture group, Sustain, and Colin Hines
(author of 'Localisation A Global Manifesto). International food trade:
* exacerbates climate change
* forces down food and animal welfare standards
* contributes to disasters such as Foot and Mouth and BSE
Some statistics from the re****t as case in point:
Excerpts from a pocket sized book by on vegetarian eating by Rosemary
Stanton (a leading oz nutritionist):
- Overall, almost one-quarter of the earth is used to sup****t almost 1.3
billion cattle. They consume more that one-third of the earth's yearly
harvest.
- The use of water in the USA is such that half of the water consumption
is
used to produce grain to feed cattle.
It's not very hard to become a vegetarian these days And the food is
wonderful, eg tofu, tempeh, nuts, fruits, etc.
ANU Food Coop
-------------
The ANU Food Coop is a great place to get all the healthy goodies at
reasonable price. Have organic veges, fruit etc.
Some quotes
===========
Albert Einstein.
* ' Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for
survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution of a vegetarian diet'.
* 'Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds'.
Mahatma Gandhi
* 'The greatness of nation can be judged by the way its animals are
treated'
If you have a liking
--------------------
Here's the brownie recipe ...
1 cup sugar (raw)
2 tbs carob or cocoa
1 1/2 cu flour
1 teas baking soda
1/3 cup oil
1 teas vanilla (optional)
1 tbs vinegar
1 cup cold water (or soya milk)
1/2 c chopped nuts
Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Put vinegar, vanilla, oil and water in bowl.
Add wet to dry ingredients. Mix until blended, don't overbeat. Add nuts.
Mixture will be thin. Pour into greased cake tin. Bake 175 degrees for
30 mins.
Can omit carob, add grated apple, coconut etc.
Can use mixture of flours, wholemeal, bit of rye, etc.
And for sweet bran muffins ...
1 c flour
1 c bran flakes
1 teas. baking soda
1 teas. baking powder
1 cup sugar
sultanas
1 cup milk (soy or water)
2 tbs. golden syrup
Mix dry ingredients. Heat syrup with milk or water. Add hot to dry
ingredients. Mix.
Put in greased muffin tins. Bake 190 degrees approx. for 15 mins.
Veg links
---------
Vegetarian Network of Victoria
http://www.vnv.org.au/
The Vegan Society (UK)
http://www.vegansociety.com/
Vegetarian Society (Wellington, NZ)
http://vegsoc.wellington.net.nz/veg_home.htm
Australian Vegetarian Society
http://www.veg-soc.org/
ACT Vegetarian Society
----------------------
ACT Vegetarian Society Inc.
GPO Box 1786
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Ph: 02 6258 6632
http://www.vegetariansociety.org.au/
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