Annexure 4 - Non-Vegetarian food

Non-Vegetarian Food



A few words about meat, fish, eggs etc. The whole world is completely deluded. There are some vested interests, that are telling you that animal proteins are very much needed for man, and without it, it cannot be helped. And the word “protein” has magic spell in the mind of man. The people are going after animal protein. Let me make it very very clear from different angles.

Morally speaking

The person who lives by the principle of compassion can never take meat or fish or eggs. Compassion is a most important thing. If you have daya you cannot really commit violence to anyone. Morally, ideally speaking, non-vegetarian foods are not meant for the human individual.

Physically speaking

Our structure is not meant to deal with animal food. There are two kinds of living being in the world. The carnivorous animals and the herbivorous animals. There are certain animals which are purely meat eaters. They are carnivorous animals. And there are certain other animals which are purely non-meat eating animals. They are herbivorous animals. The structure of the two kinds of animals are different. If you look at the structure [at this time, we are discussing the digestion aspect of it] of the digestive system of the cow, the buffallow, the elephant and the sheep you will find the stomach, the small intestine and the large intestine. Let us take up the small intestine first. The small intestine of the herbivorous animal is very very long. It is as long as 22 times the length of the trunk of the animal. Why? The herbivorous animal eat food with a lot of roughage. And the food with roughage will pass very quickly and that which will pass quickly will require a long path. A long tube is needed. Otherwise it cannot digest everything. Whereas in the case of carnivorous animals, the length of the small intestine is only 3 to 5 times the length of the trunk. Take the lion, take the tiger, the length of the small intestine is only 3 to 5 times the length of the trunk. In the case of man the small intestine is about 12 times the length of the trunk. And if any one becomes a carnivore there will be only trouble for him. This is so far as the small intestine is concerned. In the case of large intestine, the colon in the case of carnivorous animals is very very small. After the small intestine ends, there is practically nothing. Only the anus is there. In the case of the herbivorous animals it is very long again. Here again we have got 5 to 6 feet of large intestine. The stomach of the herbivorous animals secretes less hydrochloric acid, only 1/10th of the hydrochloric acid as compared to the carnivorous animals. Carnivorous animals take food which contains plenty of proteins. So more hydrochloric acid is needed. So in the case of carnivorous animals the stomach secretes lot of hydrochloric acid. In the case of herbivorous animals, the hydrochloric acid is very little. It is more or less neutral. Man is like the herbivorous animal. His stomach secretes very little Hydrochloric cid. So if he stats taking meat, he will not be able to digest the proteins. And even with the structure of the teeth the carnivorous animals have got a lot of sharp teeth, above and below to cut the animal, to tear the flesh and they got very little grinding teeth. Whereas the herbivorous animals have got only 2 or 3 sharp teeth above and below, and the rest of it are all grinding teeth. In the structure of the teeth and the structure of the jaw, ours are like that of the herbivorous animal. Will it be correct if the human individual like the herbivorous animal, tries to take meat? The meat-eating nations are not very healthy. There is more cancer here, there is more heart disease, more diabetes. You look at any western country. Look at the incidence of disease there. It is not that we are free from disease. Absolutely not. There is more cancer, more diabetes. So much for the structure.

Nutritionally speaking

Now come to the nutrition side. People recommend meat for its protein. The word protein is not protein even in the word water is not water. Proteins are different types. Some are of a very simple nature, which can be digested very easily and some are very complicated. They cannot be digested very easily. Modern man has by and large a very poor digestion. I am not referring to a Tarzen living in jungle. Let him eat anything he likes. I do not mind. But the modern man living in towns and cities and even in the villages is having very poor digestion, thanks to various factors. If he begins to take complicated proteins he will not digest it and what is not digested will not give amino acids. The vegetable proteins are simpler to digest and certainly man’s requirement of protein is much less. And if you begin to take food which contains too much of protein you will get into trouble. So the fact that meat contains much protein is an argument against, and not for, the use of meat. And shat applies to meat applies to fish and equally to eggs.

Now let us come to the fat. People think the flesh contains fat, and that it is the best way to give fat to the body. No, the word fat is not fat again. There are two types of fats. Saturated and unsaturated fat. Man’s anatomy, man’s system, requires the unsaturated fatty acids and not the saturated fats. Meat, fish and all other animal foods contain saturated fat. If you take saturated fat regularly you will get hear trouble, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, hardening of the arteries, flatty decomposition of the heart, fatty decomposition of the liver, fatty decomposition of the kidney. The fat being the undesirable type, even from that point of view, meat is not desirable. Then what else does it contain? Let us go further into it. Now a good can be food only so long as it is not decomposed. Even regarding vegetables, I told you earlier, that cooked food should be taken immediately after cooking. It should not be decomposed. You cannot get flesh, unless you kill an animal. The moment an animal is killed, its flesh starts decomposing. Does it or does it not? And in the time lag between the killing of the animal and the consumption of its meat the bacteria in it increases considerably. Well, it is decomposing like anything. At the time of consumption it is decomposed food. And, how can you get protein and fat from a decomposed food? I do not mind if, like a carnivorous animal, you go and jump upon a prey, tear it up, drink the blood and eat the flesh immediately, if you can do it. You go to a shop and buy meat, meat which has been got hours after the killing, it is decomposed meat. Carnivorous animals are healthy because they would not eat a carcass lying on the ground. They will kill their own prey. They will drink the blood when it is warm. They will chew the bones. They will eat the entire animal, minus the skin. Man eats only the flesh. He cannot eat anything else. He cannot drink the blood. And the fleshy part of it is predominantly acidic. And of you take the flesh part alone [you cannot take the bone, you cannot drink the blood] more and more acidity will be there and you will get into trouble. Comparatively, vegetables and fruits are predominantly alkaline. Even the chappathy and rice are neutral. In the vegetable food taken today, there are only 3 stuffs which are more acidic than meat. Vegetarians are taking it. That is why I am drawing your attention to it. There are 3 food stuffs which are more acidic than mat in the vegetable foods of today. What are they? White sugar, which is consumed fairly in good quantity. White sugar is more acidic than meat. Worse than white sugar is confectionery. What the world calls confectionery. I call “infectionery”. Well this is more acidic than white sugar. And still worse than this confectionery is hydrogenated oil. You must avoid hydrogenated oil. You must avoid confectionery and white sugar. Use jaggery. Well some 100 or 200 years ago, people were using only jaggery. You prepare sweets with jaggery. I do not mind. Do not prepare sweet with white sugar. Avoid white sugar and confectionery to the greatest extent possible, or fully even. You would not have any trouble with acidity. Meat, fish and eggs are highly acidic from the nutritional point of view. Every acidic food that you take into the system will deplete your body of the vitamins and the mineral salts and it will create disease.

A few more points.

A meat eater takes the flesh of an animal. It is a part of the living being whereas a vegetarian takes a small part of the plant. When you pluck, say a little paddy or a little vegetable, the plant is still alive, the plant is not killed. Your plant is alive and you take only a small part. Whereas in the case of the animal, you have got to kill it to take the flesh. The flesh o the animal is just like our flesh. I am not gong to the ethical aspect of it. In the living body, two kinds of work are constantly going on; assimilation and elimination. Waste matter is being produced in every part o the body, the animal body as well as our body. Urea, Uric acid, mucus, waste matter is being produced all the time. So the flesh of the animal which is taken just at the time of killing, contains not only proteins and fats but also the waste matter, which had the animal continued to like a little longer, would have been removed. So a flesh eater takes the waste matter whereas in the various vegetables, there is no waste matter like the mucus, the urea, the uric acid, the cell waste, and the tissue waste. These are poisons. In the fruit and vegetables there are no such tings. Now, when this is taken, it creates irritation. This irritation is just akin to the feeling of stimulation one gets after taking alcohol. So the meat-eaters says, “I have more strength”. It is actually irritation and nothing more. The poisons, which is there in the waste matter, irritates and this irritation is mistaken to be strength whereas the vegetable food does not contain any such irritants. Now if the animal killed was normal, the waste matter will be very little. But you know the kind of animals that are being killed these days. There is the meat trade which thrives on business. They fatten the animal to the maximum extent possible. Only then they can get plenty of flesh. So animals are fed like anything, overfed so that they will add a lot of fat and only diseased animals, fatty animals are killed, these days. So the waste matter in the flesh of these animals is more than the wild animals. And no animal is killed alone. It is not like the execution of a man separately. Animals are killed by thousands. Go to a butchery and see it. The beatings, the cry of the animals that are left out, sightings, you cannot bear it really. Well when one animal is being killed or a few animals are being killed a number of them are awaiting their turn. All are in terrible fear and agony. That agony, that fear creates further poisons and these poisons the meat-eater has also got to take. Kindly understand what amount of harm you are doing to yourself by taking the so-called nutritious food. I plead for a change of heart, not because I am a seventh-Day-Adventist, not because I am an Arya Samaji or any such thing, but purely from the hygienic angle. You will sand to gain immensely by switching over to vegetable food.

The vegetarians are, of course, unhealthy today. Why? Because they do not take the vegetable foods rightly. I have already pointed out the mistakes. Avoid the mistakes in vegetable eating. Become a vegetarian, eat rightly and enjoy health. One thing more. The non-vegetarians object that if all of us turn into vegetarians there will be no land available in the world for cultivation and we would all starve. Absolutely wrong! The non-vegetarians require far more land for their sustenance than the vegetarians. After all, the animals too have to be fed on some grass or something, which grow on land. If you feed an animal with 100 pounds of food it can give you 4 pounds of flesh of a doubtful value. Well; there is a National Farmers Union in U.K. which have worked out the details. The vegetarian who does not take even milk, can sustain on 0.3 acres of land in a year. A vegetarian requires only 0.3 acres of land for his sustenance. If he takes some milk and milk products, he might require some 0.6 acres of land. Whereas non-vegetarian requires as much as 5-6 acres of land for his sustenance. When the world population is growing like anything, when the pressure on land is increasing when government all over the world are finding it difficult to feed the people, it will be foolish to use the mildest of words, to take to non-vegetarian food. If everyone of us become vegetarian, completely vegetarian we will see that the earth feeds many more people. From the agricultural point of view too, it is very important. From the ethical point of view the non-vegetarian food is definitely objectionable. Everybody goes to the temple. Call it mandir, temple, church or anything. What does God want? He wants compassion. Without compassion you cannot live. If there is no compassion in us, we cannot live healthily. We cannot live happily. There is an old Sanskrit verse. You see I have got a weakness for Sanskrit. I do not know why. If I do not quote some Sanskrit, I do not feel satisfied. Well, when you go to a temple do not take flowers that will fade off in a few hours. God wants the unfading flowers of your heart. God wants unfading flowers that have grown in the heart. That is what an ancient Sanskrit verse says. God wants eight flowers, everyone nurtured in the garden of your heart. They are:
(1) Ahimsa pushpam, (2) Pushpam indriya nigraha, (3) Sarvaboothadaya pushpam, (4) Kshama pushpam, (5) Gnanam pushpam, (6) Dhyanam pushpam, (7) tapah pushpam, (8) Sathyam pushpam.

What are the flowers that God wants from you? Ahimsa. Do not poison yourself, do not commit himsa, do not commit violence on yourself. When you overat, when you take acidic foods, when you take a pill, you are committing himsa or violence on yourself. You are defiling the temple of God. First practice ahimsa on yourself. The question of your practicing ahimsa to other comes later. Ahimsa prathamam pushpam – non-violence is the first flower. Pushpam indriya nigraha. The Creator has given us some channels through which we can work in this world, the sense organs, the eyes, the nostrils, the tongue, the ears, without which we cannot move in the world. These sense organs have got to be kept under some sensible control. Today they control us. They are not under our control. That is the difficulty. That is why the smokers are willing to walk a mile just to get a cigarette. He is not able to control himself. Pushpam indriyanigrahah. Keep the indriya or sense organs under some sensible control. No suppression. You are not killing them, but keeping organs under some sensible control. So that they will serve you throughout your life. You will never develop cataract, you will never develop deafness, and you will never develop any kind of trouble. Ahimksa prathamam pushpam, pushpam indriya nigrahah. The third flower sarvabhoothadaya. Beome a st. Franis. Love all animals. Love all. Not only human beings. Sarvabhoothadaya. Compassion towards all the living beings of the world. Everything is a manifestation of the Lord sarvabhoothadaya and if you really accept sarvabhoothadaya you can never use any drugs. Every drug comes after animal experimentation, after vivisection. Do you know the horror to which these animals are subjected to? Only 3, 4 days ago the Prime Minister publically said, “I do not take injection because many of them contain animal products”. Well, not only that, even cosmetics, toilet products contain animal products. Many of the things in common use contain animal stuffs. There is an organization called Beauty Without Cruelty. By all means have beauty aids but not those which are the products of animal experimentation, not those which use animal products. This organization has its headquarters in London. They have got branches all over the world. And if we should use toilet products, if we should use soaps, if we should use agarbathis, if we should use these things; let us use only such products which do not involve animal torture. It is very essential. This organization, “Beauty Without Cruelty”, has its branch in India in Poona and they publish wonderful literature. Every year they give you a list of products which are free from animal products which are free from animal torture. You may buy only such and you need not buy the others. Not only that I would like you to adopt nature cure, I would like you also to join all such humanitarian movements. You can join the Beauty Without Cruelty organization. It is all very necessary. So “Kshama” forgive. Whenever anybody commits a mistake, do not act like a judge and start giving punishment to him. Forgive, teach by all means how to reform. But forgiving is very much needed. You should forgive everybody around you. But at the same time, reform others. Kshama Pushpam Visheshatha Gnanam Pushpam. The supreme knowledge of God by knowing which the man becomes calm. That is the fifth flower. The knowledge of physics, chemistry and science is ‘paravidya’. I am referring to the ‘aparavidya’, which is the divine knowledge and that is the most important. So the fifth flower is gnanam, that is diving knowledge. Dhyanam pushpam. The sixth flower is dhyanam. Do every work with attention. Only two days ago, I pointed out to you that work is a basic need of living. If you do not do your work with the attention it deserves, if you do it superficially, you cannot be healthy.