To be Vegetarian, the ancient practice followed in Sanatan Dharma, the way to live the life, where you can find many roots in ancient sacred text about Vegetarianism.
Joaquin Phoenix, a renowned American actor, producer, animal rights activist and winner of Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, 2020 for his role in the movie Joker quotes: “It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.”
As the acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) in computer science and other fields renders that poor quality input will produce faulty output, the same goes for our diet whether healthy or unhealthy it has consistently been associated with the personality. One’s personality traits e.g. physical traits, attitudes, habits and, emotional and psychological characteristics that all are part of one’s personality are nothing but the reflection of our food choices, dietary habits, and patterns of thoughts let it be constructive or destructive, behavior and feelings.
All beings and objects surrounding us possesses 3 Gunas viz. tamas, rajas and sattva. They vary in different amounts and only human have that ability to change the levels of these gunas in our bodies along with minds through our lifestyle practices and thoughts.
Food Types as per the Sanatan Dharma
A sattvic diet consisting of natural foods, whole grains and beans and fresh fruits and vegetables creates a slightly alkaline environment for optimal digestion and health. It will raise our consciousness, inspire us to positive action, deeper meditation and unleash our hidden potential and creativity.
rajasic diet means which is overly spicy or hot, which can destroys the mind-body equilibrium, feeding the body at the expense of the mind.
Tamasic diet consists of dead food such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs of addiction and includes food with onion and garlic. These foods and substances has no use to boost our energy and consciousness; but it pull us downward into laziness and inertia. It is also said if sattvic food can become tamasic when processed, old or fried.
The concept of vegetarianism, non-violence and ahimsa is not only restricted to Hinduism, but also it is perceptible in many faiths across the world.
Types of Diet
In today’s time there exists many types of diet system and even for vegetarian diet also there are several types.
Vegans eat nothing derived from animals even they refuse use of animal by-products such as honey, dairy products including milk and eggs.
Lacto-ovo vegetarians do not eat meat, fish, or poultry, yet they do eat dairy products and eggs.
Lacto-vegetarians do not eat meat, fish, poultry, or eggs, but they eat dairy products in their diet.
Semi-vegetarians, or flexitarians are who occasionally eat meat, fish, or poultry, usually no more than once a week.
Pescatarian uses seafood/fish as the only source of meat in a diet that is otherwise vegetarian.
Today scientists and researchers have analyzed benefits of vegetarian diet on our body, mind, and soul and also from broader perspective at economical and environmental level.
Animal Care Aspect and Immortality in Industries
Let us look into this by considering animal care aspect and humanitarian approach. Male chicks, of course, have no or very little use in the manufacture of eggs.
These days, chickens used for meat are raised to have heavier bodies and those used for eggs to have artificially high egg making, so the chickens used in each industry are physically pretty different. Males born into the egg industry are mostly killed as they are considered unprofitable. The cruelty happen with male babies, sick and weak one in the every big farms should be published and needs some preventive steps to stop this.
Overall if we look at the life for chickens starts and end up with pain. The practice followed in production and identification of gender is very rough which hampers the chicks and also cause problems who consumed eggs. Also the cruel methods are used to kill the male and weak babies. Mechanical incubators are used to hatch eggs instead of natural process.
Even the environment under which chickens are kept is no better than industrial hell and very much painful for them but cost effective for industrialists indulged in poultry farming.
Eggs are Vegetarian? NO
Certain people advocate their egg diet by stating that eggs are vegetarian. On the contrary, eggs are part of reproductive system of hens. Once a hen lays an egg, it is unfertilized. But later on when they are incubated by a hen which shall brood it (sit over egg) it will in turn gives life to pullet (female) or cockerel (male).
Milk is Non – Vegetarian? NO
Eggs are result of reproductive system which if subjected to incubation by hen then later on it will result in living form, on the other hand milk is for nutritional mechanism. And also as stated above egg is a living animal cell and milk is lifeless. Even the comparison between eggs and milk also becomes discrepant.
Advertisement campaigns massively misrepresented and misled data in a way to augment the sale of eggs. Let’s have a look at what they are advertising : the National Egg. Co-ordination Committee advertised that eggs contain more protein than apples and tomatoes. Yes it is correct fact but what Dr.Vasant Jai who has been working as a nutritionist at the Hafkin Institute in Bombay, counters by saying that : "Apples are consumed more for their minerals, vitamins and carbohydrates than for their protein content." He further questions whether the supporters of eggs have ever thought of the vitamin C content of fruits as against eggs? Individual would require 200 eggs to get 100 mg. of vitamin C. While the same quantity of vitamin C can be had from one amla or quarter kg of oranges or tomatoes!
Apart from this protein is not the only macronutrients required for maintaining body functions and carry out daily activities of life and furthermore eggs are not the only source of protein. And terrifying truth which is not advertised during these campaigns is that eggs eaten raw for protein cause health hazards and at the same time when cooked protein gets destroyed. It is what it is!
Further an observation appeared in 1978 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) quotes that : "Those athletes who take a wholesome diet need not take protein-rich items like eggs for muscular growth. They need as much protein as do non-athletes. But protein does not give strength and lots of energy is wasted to digest additional protein intake which also causes dehydration, loss of appetite and diarrhea."
Vegetarian sources of protein
There are plenty of sources rich in protein for lacto-vegetarians such as chickpeas, mung beans, fava(vaal) beans, lima(papdi) beans, green peas.
What if all become vegetarian?
We might have first thought that if all people on earth start following vegetarian diet then how even we will be able to supply required quantities of grains, vegetables, whether land and water for cultivation of cereals and pulses will be sufficient or scarce?
Lot of people die currently of starvation due to non – veg eaters. This seems bit weird. This seems simple math that if all people goes green and follows vegetarian diet then there will be shortage of vegetarian food but it is not correct. One source of energy can’t transfer its one hundred percentage energy to other source in full and certainly there will be loss of some portion of it.
In today’s time the quantity of corn, wheat, soybean etc. produced to feed the animals, which are to be slaughtered at a future, is sufficiently more than enough to easily satisfy the hunger of around 80 crores of people across the globe who suffers from malnutrition and starvation.
In simple terms, let us assume that crop “A” is required for vegetarian diet which can be obtained from 1 acre of land which will be consumed directly by vegans. On the other hand to secure the same level of nutrition, it requires 19.5 acres of land for non – vegetarian diet, in which animals are feed first and later on non – vegetarian products are made by killing these animals.
Apart from this there are plenty of health benefits because vegetarian diet is low in fat and high in fiber and it helps in reducing risk of hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, colorectal, ovarian, and breast cancers, diabetes, obesity.
In order to stop animal abuse we can easily change our dietary habits and make a step towards moral progress.