5.
Foods
Civilized Vs. Uncivilized
Civilization is synonymous in every sense with the growth of agriculture. Cultivating crops forms the basis of civilization. The existence in the belief of the power of the fruits or grains has provided the world with many rituals, beliefs and festivals. The festival calendars of antiquity are based on agriculture. Our modern calendar descends from ancient agricultural calendars.
The cultivation of plants for food, as opposed to the use of plants as they grow naturally in the environment, marked the evolution of humanity from a user of food to a producer of food.
All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation.
Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations.
The cultivation of plants for food, as opposed to the use of plants as they grow naturally in the environment, marked the evolution of humanity from a user of food to a producer of food.
All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation.
Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations.
Meat Comes Under Uncivilized Category
According to Webster’s definition, the world civilized means to bring out of a primitive state; to be marked by refinement in taste and manners; to become cultured. According to this definition, killing of billions of animals in most despicable conditions, in spite of availability of so much food can hardly be considered civilized.
George Bernard Shaw rightly put it, “While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?” Also Einstein was right in saying, “Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.”
Uncivilized races living in the jungle and being unqualified to produce food by agriculture may eat animals, but a perfect human society advanced in knowledge must learn how to produce first-class food simply by agriculture and dairy.
Already, as an emerging social trend, the eating of meat is being looked on as uncivilized. As part of the shift away from meat toward fruit, vegetables, and grains, people are becoming more distanced from the production of the meat they eat and less willing to eat as wide a variety of meats.
George Bernard Shaw rightly put it, “While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?” Also Einstein was right in saying, “Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.”
Uncivilized races living in the jungle and being unqualified to produce food by agriculture may eat animals, but a perfect human society advanced in knowledge must learn how to produce first-class food simply by agriculture and dairy.
Already, as an emerging social trend, the eating of meat is being looked on as uncivilized. As part of the shift away from meat toward fruit, vegetables, and grains, people are becoming more distanced from the production of the meat they eat and less willing to eat as wide a variety of meats.
Classification of Foods
The Bhagavad-gita (17.8-10) divides foods into three classes: those of the quality of goodness, those of the quality of passion, and those of the quality of ignorance. The most healthful are the foods of goodness. “Foods of the quality of goodness [milk products, grains, fruits, and vegetables] increase the duration of life; purify one’s existence; and give strength, health, happiness, and satisfaction. Such foods are sweet, juicy, fatty, and palatable.”
Foods that are too bitter, sour, salty, pungent, dry or hot, are of the quality of passion and cause distress. But foods of the quality of ignorance, such as meat, fish, and fowl, described as “putrid, decomposed, and unclean,” produce only pain, disease, and bad karma.
Foods that are too bitter, sour, salty, pungent, dry or hot, are of the quality of passion and cause distress. But foods of the quality of ignorance, such as meat, fish, and fowl, described as “putrid, decomposed, and unclean,” produce only pain, disease, and bad karma.
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”
~ Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1826
In other words, what you eat affects the quality of your life. There is much needless suffering in the world today, because most people have no other criterion for choosing food than price, and sensual desire. The purpose of food, however, is not only to survive, but also to purify the mind and consciousness. As it is said, we should eat to live and not live to eat.
Cruelty Diet Leading To Unprecedented Health Hazards
Plant foods improve human health, while animal ‘foods’ damage it. The most comprehensive study to date regarding the relationship between diet and human health found that the consumption of animal-derived ‘food’ products was linked with “diseases of affluence” such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and cancer. T. Colin Campbell’s landmark research in The China Project found a pure vegetarian diet to be healthiest. Dr. Campbell estimates that “80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age -simply by adopting a plant-based diet.
“Actually, giving up meat-eating is not a question of Krishna consciousness but of civilized human life. God has given human society so many things to eat--nice fruits, vegetables, grain, and first-class milk. From milk one can prepare hundreds of nutritious foods, but no one knows the art. Instead, people maintain big slaughterhouses and |
The meat, poultry, dairy and egg industries employ technological short cuts— as drugs, hormones, and other chemicals — to maximize production. Under these conditions, virulent pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics are emerging. These new ‘supergerms,’ whose evolution is traceable directly to the overuse of antibiotics in factory farming, have the potential to cause yet unknown human suffering and deaths.
Peculiar new diseases have been amplified by aberrant agribusiness practices. For example, “Mad Cow Disease” (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE), a fatal dementia affecting cattle, spread throughout Britain when dead cows were fed to living cows. When people ate cows with “Mad Cow Disease,” they got Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a fatal dementia that afflicts humans. Another farm animal disease beginning to jeopardize human health is avian influenza.
Millions of people are infected, and thousands die every year from contaminated animal ‘food’ products. Despite repeated warnings from consumer advocates, the meat inspection systems everywhere remains grossly inadequate, and consumers are now being told to “expect” animal products to be tainted.
Meanwhile, the agribusiness industry, rather than advising consumers to curtail their intake of animal products, has devised extreme measures (irradiation, antibiotics, etc.) to help consumers circumvent the hazards of animal products and maintain their gross over-consumption of meat and processed dairy.
Peculiar new diseases have been amplified by aberrant agribusiness practices. For example, “Mad Cow Disease” (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE), a fatal dementia affecting cattle, spread throughout Britain when dead cows were fed to living cows. When people ate cows with “Mad Cow Disease,” they got Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a fatal dementia that afflicts humans. Another farm animal disease beginning to jeopardize human health is avian influenza.
Millions of people are infected, and thousands die every year from contaminated animal ‘food’ products. Despite repeated warnings from consumer advocates, the meat inspection systems everywhere remains grossly inadequate, and consumers are now being told to “expect” animal products to be tainted.
Meanwhile, the agribusiness industry, rather than advising consumers to curtail their intake of animal products, has devised extreme measures (irradiation, antibiotics, etc.) to help consumers circumvent the hazards of animal products and maintain their gross over-consumption of meat and processed dairy.
“Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.”
~ Michael Pollan,