Why Be A Vegetarian?

What is a vegetarian? Someone who eats no mammals, birds (chickens, turkeys, pheasant), or fishes. A vegan in addition eats no dairy products or eggs. A fruitarian wishes not to kill plants and eats the fruits of plants, trees, and vines. There are many reasons people make a gradual or immediate transition to meatlessness.

Nonviolence, Reverence For Life
Spiritual or religious belief
Health
Environmental protection
Energy conservation
Provision of food for the hungry
Esthetics
Human Rights
Public Safety
Fire Prevention
Consciousness

I. Nonviolence Or Reverence For Life Or Ahimsa (Sanskrit for nonviolence)

The desire not to cause suffering, not to be involved in slaughter of innocent creatures, is the cause of the meatlessness of Buddha, of Hindus such as Mahatma Gandhi, of Susan B Anthony, Harriet Beecher Stowe, DaVinci, G B Shaw, and many others.

Slaughterhouse suffering has been documented in many books such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Mammals do not happily give up their lives when forced. When one person decides to become vegetarian, he or she saves the lives of thousands of fishes and chickens and many mammals.

Electric shocking rods are often used to goad unwilling animals into slaughterhouse chutes. Conditions of death by thirst have been documented in hearings before Senator Lowell Weicker. Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society of the United States has spoken of the 4D animals which arrive at the abbatoir. 4D means dead, diseased, dying, debilitated. The average egg represents, says Art Margolis, 32 hours a chicken was confined to a cage which is 3 ft. by l ft. Willie Nelson and Farm Aid have criticized new plans to make Ohio a factory farm state.

II. Spirituality

There are hundreds of millions who are vegetarian because of religious belief.

Hindus, Buddhists And Jains

The Hindus, Buddhists and Jains of the East are known to be flesh abstainers. The word Hindu is an over 20,000 year old Sanskrit word meaning away from violence. Buddha's prayer was "May all that have life be delivered from suffering." The Jains desire to live without causing harm to any living creature. The Sanskrit term phalahari means a fruitarian. It is considered that fruitarians cause the least suffering since they kill fewer plants, whose consciousness has been documented by the laboratory research of Dr. Chandra Bose, Clive Baxter, Luther Burbank and others. Dr. Bose invented a crescograph which studied plant feelings. For this research he was knighted by Queen Victoria.

Moslem

The Moslem Druses of Lebanon have long been vegetarian. Many Sufis are vegetarian. Sufism is a mystical Moselm religion. (Casey Kasem, a Moslem Druse and therefore a vegetarian, has been a cosponsor of the Great American Meatout which offers free information to anyone calling 1 800 MEATOUT). It is said that Mohammed once cut a portion of his cloak away so that he would not disturb a cat sleeping on the remaining cloth. Moslems do not eat pork.

Jewish

The Jewish Vegetarian Society 855 Finchley Rd. London Nw11 England or Box 1463 Balt Md 21203 includes hundreds of thousands. Kosher slaughter was originally intended to reduce suffering to the animal. Former Chief Rabbi of Ireland David Rosen, Dr. Alex Hershaft, coordinator of the Vegetarian Information Service, Mark Braunstein, Piers Anthony, and Vic Sussman, and Raymond Avrutis are Jewish vegetarian authors.

Yehudi Menuhin, CHAI (Committee Helping Animals In Israel) are actively promoting the ancient Jewish love of animals and of the earth. Dr. Richard Schwartz and Louis Berman have written two of many books on Jewish vegetarianism. Dr. Alex Hershaft, concentration camp survivor, has used German reparations money to advance a meatless world.

Genesis 1:29, Behold I have given you herb yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat.

Ezekiel 3 and 4: My body has never been defiled by animal flesh.

Isaiah 65: The wolf shall lie down with the lamb.. they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. (many other passages of Isaiah speak of nonviolence to animals)

Proverbs: The wise man is concerned for his beast. Isaiah: He that slayeth an ox is as he that slayeth a man. Daniel l: Daniel was put in prison by Nebuchadnezzar. He ate only pulses (beans) for 10 days while others ate flesh. Nebuchadnezzar noticed that he fared better than the others.

Methusaleh: This longest lived of Biblical heroes is said to have been a vegetarian. (Jeremiah: The Lord offends the mind to reveal the heart)

The Biblical command "Thou Shalt Not KIll" which J J Price cites as a reason to change diet.. is not asterisked "to include humans only". The wisdom of the Jewish dietary laws is upheld as shellfish cause hepatitis and food poisoning, the trichinella worm remains in pork not totally cooked, and the mixing of dairy products with meat multiplies the chances of food poisoning.

Christian

Many Biblical scholars believe that Jesus was a vegetarian and that the incident of his temple temper was created by the slaughter of animals there.

Catholic

The vegetarianism of Francis of Asissi, of St. Martin de Porres, of St. John Chrysostom is written of by biographers. Vegetarian Catholic orders include the original Benedictines, Cistercians, Trappists, Franciscans whose founder believed that plants too have feelings. The meatless Friday was the last vestige of early Christian vegetarianism. George Cornell, Associated Press religion writer, wrote that pretzels were originally a symbol of arms folded in prayer.. and like Lenten lentils.. were meatless alternatives. Fr. Ron Lengwin, a Catholic priest who has a talk show on KDKA, postulates that the apple Adam and Eve ate was actually the 1st heart of a slaughtered animal in violation of Genesis 1:29. Fr. Ron Pickarsky, a vegetarian chef, works toward institutional diet change.

Protestant

Protestant vegetarian sect founders or promoters include John Wesley, the first Methodist, Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventists, General Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army, and Mary Baker Eddy of the Christian Scientists. John Wesley, considered the founder of modern Pentecostalism, wrote in v 6 of his collected writings about the advantages of the vegetarian diet he practiced. Ellen White, the prophet originator of the Seventh Day Adventist movement, has created a church whose followers today are 15% to 50% vegetarian. General Bramwell Booth published as head of the Salvation Army a pamphlet on 19 reasons to be vegetarian. This pamphlet is published by the London Vegetarian Society. Mary Baker Eddy wrote "The Deity is not carnivorous".

Modern Christian Groups

The Edenite Society of Imlaystown NJ publishes a book entitled was the master a vegetarian?

The Trinity Broadcast Network has several Christian vegetarian programs.

The Dominican nuns at Crown Pt. in Akron have disseminated vegetarian information.

Ken Hamm's ministry in Florence Kentucky.

Peter Marshall, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate, subject of A MAN CALLED PETER, was instrumental in swinging a U.S. Senate vote on a key environmental protection issue, which he considered to be part of the Genesis ministry. Revelation speaks of the 5th angel who protects all green living things. Romans: If meat offends your brother, do not eat it.

III. Health

A. Life Expectancy

Would you like to add 7 years or longer to your life? A government study comparing the nondrinking nonsmoking Mormons to nondrinking nonsmoking vegetarian Adventists was done over many years. The Adventists lived on the average 7 years longer. The National Geographic reported that the 3 longest lived tribes in the world were centenarian vegetarians. They are the Hunzas of Tibet, the Azerbaijans of the Caucusus and the Villcabamba of Ecuador.

B. Heart

What is the heart beat of a vegetarian? An average 20 beats per minute less than that of a nonvegetarian. The vegetarian heart pumps the same amount of blood with 20,000 fewer beats per day. What is uric acid? It is the pre-urine present in the muscle cells of animals. It is the poison which would have been excreted had the animal lived. Uric acid, like caffeine, is an oxypurin correlated to arthritic deposits, to quickened heartbeat.

C. Immunity

What is the relationship between immunity and diet? Just as having more than one sex partner places additional stress on the immune system, in the same way one must adapt to the immune system of each animal he or she eats. Leukemia is called leukosis if a chicken has it. Yet it is the same cancer. The USDA allows cancers the size of grapefruits to be cut out of cows and allows the rest of the carcass to be passed.

D. Bacteria Prevention

What about food poisoning? 97% of all food poisoning fatalities, as reported in a Knight Ridder wire story, were caused by animal products. Those who eat frozen meat are trusting to proper freezing at the slaughterhouse, in transportation trucks, warehouses, grocery freezers, and at home. Thermophilic bacteria can survive temperatures of 300 degrees or more. Creiophilic bacteria can survive freezing temperatures in meat.

How many diseases can be transmitted to humans from animals? As early as 1905 the USDA was saying that over 100 diseases could be contacted by humans eating the flesh or products of animals. Now the number is in the thousands. Brucellosis, trichinosis, toxoplasmosis, ptomaine poisoning, E coli bacteria are some of these. Histoplasmosis, present in bird waste, is a special health hazard near factory farms' water supply.

Knock Knock Who's There? San and Ella. Sam and Ella who? Salmonella food poisoning. This St. Elsewhere line refers to a bacteria which can be contacted in restaurants or kitchens in which animal products come into contact with other food.. through human fingers, counter tops, etc. Ohio Wesleyan University has found heightened levels of salmonella bacteria in Southern Ohio near massive factory farm operations. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, MD found that within a few hours of slaughter, the colon bacteria in a carcass have multiplied into the billions per oz. Newsweek Magazine reported that had George Wallace not eaten a hamburger right before he was shot, the bullet would not have spread peritonitis throughout his system. The second cause of hepatitis is the eating of shellfish which eat unprocessed human waste dumped into the Atlantic by New York City, Baltimore, and other communities. Restaurants which throw out fruitarian coffee the afternoon it is made will keep much longer the much mor e perishable meat. Is 'fresh shrimp' an oxymoron?

One case in point is the Mad Cows' Disease created by the feeding of sheep brains to cows in Commonwealth countries. Sixty Minutes did a report on the protein molecules of Mad Cows' Disease cows which are ending up in bone meal and animal feed. These proteins survive even radiation treatment. J Ritchey has spoken of the E Coli bacteria's survival in wet dish rags for several weeks. E Coli bacteria are picked up from counter tops on which animal products have been laid.

Cannibals who eat humans contract a lethal disease known as Kuru. It seems that the more conscious the being, the greater the ill effect from consuming him or her. Mammals are more harmful to eat than birds.. birds more than fishes etc.

E. Weight Loss

What about weight? Dr. Hardinge conducted a Harvard University study and found that the average dairy vegetarian weighs 12 pounds less than the average nonvegetarian. Vegans or nondairy vegetarians weighed an average 22 pounds less.

F. Additives

Insecticides, hormones, antibiotics What kills an insect can kill us. Since a thousand lb. cow has eaten an average 21,000 lbs of food before slaughter, there is a 21 times higher incidence of insecticide in animal flesh than in fruit. Other harmful additives include female hormones, given to animals so that they will gain water weight, which can cause gynecomastia (swelling of male breasts), breast and prostate cancer etc. There is a large bibliography on the problems of antibiotic resistance in animals which is passed onto their human consumers.

G. Cancer Prevention

The McGovern Committee, the American Heart Association, The American Cancer Society, The National Cancer Inst. and others have done studies on the relationship of diet to health. The countries with the most meat consumption have the highest rates of intestinal cancer. These are Australia, Chile, Argentina, Canada, and the U.S. Countries with the highest dairy consumption have the most breast and prostate cancer. These are the Scandinavian countries, Israel, and the U.S. Countries with the highest fish consumption have the highest rates of stomach cancer. These are Korea, Japan, Norway, coastal countries. Life and Health Publishing of Maryland reported that at least two carcinogens are created by the heating of animal flesh over 300 degrees. One is malanaldehyde and one methylcholanthrene. In addition, Dr. Samuel Epstein, formerly of the Cleveland Clinic, reported before Congress on the carcinogenic properties of benzopyrene, created by charcoal broiling steak.

H. Funding

Dr. William Harris, MD, author of SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR VEGETARIANISM, found a relationship between major money interests and nutritional teaching. Nutrition departments in major universities receiving dairy industry funding are more likely to be silent about lactase intolerance and the many other hazards of dairy consumption.

I. Enzyme Protection

New research indicates that one cause of cancer is enzyme exhaustion in the body. The cooking of fruits and vegetables destroys many enzymes. A tomato has one enzyme when green, a second when redgreen, and a third when red. If a tomato, as Dr. Ann Wigmore has said, is cooked and placed in a windowsill it will rot. If it is redgreen and uncooked it will ripen in the sun because of enzymes. The Wigmore Foundation on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston has had as its clients a Prime Minister's wife, former Secy of the Interior Rogers Morton, and many others, and has achieved great success in healing cancer and a host of other diseases through 100% raw or uncooked vegetarian diet. The Hippocrates Health Inst. of W. Palm Beach Fla is another institute doing raw food therapy.

IV. Environmental Protection

Because of deforestation to provide grazing land, meat or the raising of cattle is the most destructive to the environment. Second would be dairy products, then vegetables. The only food group which helps in reforestation of the planet is fruit. Every time you eat an apple or a walnut or an avocado, you are voting for orchards. Slaughterhouses dump billions of gallons of raw sewage and urine into our waterways. The Sahara was originally caused by the destruction of trees and their replacement with grazing animals.

Slaughterhouse Meat Or Orchard Fruit

The sound of screams or silence with occasional birdchirps and beebuzzes

The smell of blood, urine and feces or fragrant peach and pear blossoms

A food yield of 100 to l000 lbs per acre or a food yield of 400,000 lbs. per acre not including trilevel agriculture which multiplies the yield

80 kilowatts of energy per production lb. l kilowatt of energy per production lb.

A final yield of bones a final yield of life containing seeds

Desertification reforestation of the world

Sweat, blood and tears in production dropping a random seed.. watching nature do the work

The most violent food the only food which does not require killing or theft from animals or plants

Wastefully packaged wrapped by Mother Nature in walnut shells, banana peels, coconut husks

Produces human disease produces human health

Fruit has polysaccharides, disaccharides, and monosaccharides. Fruit has time released natural sugar molecules. Fructose bypasses the pancreas and so can be used by diabetics (Marian Burros of the Wash Post and NY Times), whereas sugar in the United States is processed using charcoal bones, which cause cancer (Jay Dinshah American Vegan Society Box H Malaga NJ 08328).

Flood Prevention

Recent 1997 flooding in both Arkansas and Ohio is directly related to massive tree cutting both for the money the wood would bring in and to clear land for intensive poultry and pig farming. Much of the hardwood forest of Arkansas was cleared and sold to a multinational lumber corporation. Each tree which was killed would have provided a root system which could hold several hundred pounds of flooding river water. Bayard Webster of the New York Times has reported that the average tree evaporates 40 gallons of moisture into the atmosphere daily… moisture critical to the creation of rain clouds around the world. Trees prevent both drought and flood. They are nature's air conditioners and weather stabilizers. While lumber companies claim they are creating more forest land, the thousand and three thousand year old trees of the temperate rainforest and tropical rainforest are irreplaceable. Honduras has trees whose trunk diameter covers an 11ft by 11 ft area. The U.S. Forest Service has mad e the United States a land of skinny trees, as compared to the beautiful several hundred year old oak forests protected by the United Kingdom.

V. Energy Conservation

What is the energy ratio of meat to fruit? Dr. Don Meyers found that l pound of meat takes 80 times the production energy of a pound of fruit. Animals are fed, watered, given veterinary care, slaughtered, frozen in warehouses, on transportation trucks, in freezers at grocery stores and in homes. Then animal flesh is cooked at high temperatures. Compare this to a pear from a tree in your front yard, which can grow from a casually tossed seed.

VI. Provision Of Food For The Hungry

The ethical command to feed the hungry given by Jesus, by Krishna, by Buddha, by Mohammed, by Isaiah is not confined to any religious system. What is the food ratio of meat to fruit? According to Dr. Faust, former chief of the Fruit Labs of the USDA, centenarian fruit trees have dropped two tons each of free food. Fruit yields 250,000 to 400,000 lbs. of food per acre as compared to 100 to 1000 lbs. of meat. In between these two extremes are the yields of dairy (10,000 lbs per acre) and vegetables (80,000 lbs per acre). Some international relief scholars feel it is impossible to feed 5 to 6 billion people if many consume meat. It was reported to Dr. Kissinger recently that for China to double its egg production would require the grain of 15 countries.

VII. Esthetics

The butyric acid in animal fat has a distinctive odor, which many find unpleasant. The smell of cooking animal flesh in contrast to the fragrance of apple orchard blooms has made some 'esthetic vegetarians'.

VIII. Human Rights

Ohio Pirg, The Equal Justice Foundation of Toledo and others are involved in a lawsuit against AgriGeneral of S. Ohio, whose owner Anton Pohlmann supplied l/4 of the German egg market and who has been forbidden by the Lower Saxony courts to administer his operation. Workers are subjected to insecticides of nicotine base, which have nearly caused fatalities. Guatemalan, Mexican, and other migrant workers are exempted from 8 hour shift protection. They must work long hours in what some claim is substandard housing.

The Ohio Farmers' Union, Farm Aid (Willie Nelson's group) of Cambridge, Ma, and Consumer Action of Akron have all taken stands against factory form operations' treatment of humans. The Food and Commmercial Workers' Union has picketed the Purdu treatment of workers. Slaughterhouse operations have extremely high turnover labor rates because of

possible injury from terrified animals
injury from the knives and electric shocking rods used on the animals
the ear damage from animals' screams
exposure to freezing temperatures
a revulsion to killing the animals
IX. PUBLIC SAFETY

Research has indicated a relationship between the adrenal poisons secreted by frightened, terrified animals during slaughter and aggressive behavior. Adrenalin is a long protein chain enzyme, some of the links of which are destroyed by cooking. Enough remain intact that humans who eat the animals' flesh are eating the biochemical equivalent of fright and anger. Restaurants which serve a high percentage of meat meals are correlated to crime. Many communities have successfully fought to exclude fast food chains from their communities.

X. Fire Prevention

Animal fat or grease fires are the major cause of restaurant conflagration and can be reduced by using olive and vegetable oils and substituting nonanimal foods.

XI. Consciousness

There is a mysterious link between brain biochemistry and consciousness. Linus Pauling, the only man to win two Nobel Prizes (one for biochemistry one for peace) established The Center For Orthomolecular Research and defined an orthomolecule as a fruitarian or fruit=based molecule. His research on vitamin C established fruit as the best source of vitamin C. Fruitarians have the highest proportion of vitamin C in their diet. Pauling found that fruitarian biochemicals are similar to the neuromolecules in the brain and discovered that vitamin C speeds the flow of thought across the brain's electrical synapses. (It is also the body's bouncer, escorting toxins and free radicals out of the body). Vegetarians report the senses are more acute when there is less animal fat shrouding the nerves.

Lauric acid, an enzyme unique to raw coconut, is helpful in achieving a meditative state, many Hindus believe.

Your Flame Entire Can Enkindle Others' Fire Without Diminishing Your Own

If you stood at Times Square and handed out flyers for the rest of your life, perhaps you would not reach as many people as in spending one day calling national talk shows. You can change the world from the privacy and freedom of your home.

Would you like to organize a vegetarian potluck dinner weekly or monthly? Or write a letter to the editor, call a talk show, tell a grocery store manager items you want him or her to carry, give a guest class at a school, tell your friends you are considering a vegetarian diet? Linden Hill asked his teacher "How can I love God more?" and his teacher replied "Each Is All". Whatever you are doing to make this world a better place, God bless you.

From Other Pens

Leonardo Da Vinci: One day the world will look upon the eating of animals as it now looks upon the eating of humans.

William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night: He is a heavy eater of beef. Methinks it doth harm to his wit.

Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theodore wrote: Since visiting the abbatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.

Mark Braunstein: When one eats cow's tongue, who is tasting whom?

Sherry Kelley: Pray, don't spray.

Syndee Brinkman: I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world.. as compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. I became a vegetarian.

Buddha: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Bhagavad Gita: He is closest to God who harms no living creature.

Isaiah: He that slayeth an ox is as he that slayeth a man.

Edith Bunker: Archie.. do you want eggs for breakfast?

Archie: I'm not going to eat anything that was in a cow's mouth. Fix me eggs, Edith.

Winston Churchill: When I find a ladybug I ask the butler to take it outside instead of killing it. (paraphrased)

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