Vegetarianism
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
What is a vegetarian? Well, there are several categories of vegetarians, all of whom avoid meat and/or animal products. A strict vegetarian diet is one wholly lacking in animal products of any kind, including fish, poultry, dairy products, and eggs. This is referred to as the vegan diet and includes only food from plants: fruits/nuts, vegetables, legumes, seeds, and the like. The lacto-vegetarian diet includes plant foods plus cheese and other dairy products. The ovolacto-vegetarian diet also includes eggs. Today, it is becoming more common to hear of people being part-time vegetarians, those who eat fish and chicken occasionally, but maybe don’t eat any red meat and also consume a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. Some only eat meat if they hunt it and process the meat themselves or raise their own farm animals to eat.
Reasons For Being Vegetarian
Why become a vegetarian? Well, there are multitudes of reasons why people decide to quit eating meat. Some of those reasons are based on health, religion, or philosophy. In looking at the health benefits of eating a vegetarian diet, it can be helpful to assess whether or not our bodies are designed to eat meat in the first place. Richard Anderson, N.D., states in Cleanse & Purify Thyself (1998), “The digestive system of the meat-eating animal is completely different from that of a human being. Its entire digestive tract is only twelve feet long compared to almost 30 feet in a human being. The meat eater’s digestion requires ten times more hydrochloric acid than can be provided by the human body, and most people today are unable to produce even normal levels of hydrochloric acid.” Our bodies, according to Anderson, are therefore not designed to eat meat. For us, meat consumption is not digested properly and leads to unhealthy intestines, which greatly effects the health of one’s entire body.
Alma Guiness, the author of Reader’s Digest Family Guide To Natural Medicine (1993), says that because our bodies are designed to digest food slowly, meat, which can be high in saturated fat, stays in the intestinal tract too long. Further, Guiness says, “The toxins produced there may be related to our high rates of colon and rectal cancer.” He goes on to cite that many early cultures, including the Essene Hebrews, Buddhists, and some groups of Hindus, were vegetarian. He also cites a verse from the Bible that comes from St. Paul, Romans 14:21, which reads, “It is good not to eat flesh.”
Judith Brown, in her book Everywoman’s Guide To Nutrition (1991) backs this historic reasoning for being vegetarian, saying, “Vegetarian diets have been practiced by people in some religious groups for centuries, bearing testimony to the general safety of well-established vegetarian eating patterns.” Richard Anderson poses the question of why we should settle for the used protein coming from cows (who are strict vegetarians) when we can get our protein straight from the vegetable kingdom too like the cows do.
The hormones that animals are injected with, and the chemicals that they eat which are sprayed on their food, are then stored in the tissues of the animals. According to Gabriel Cousens in Spiritual Nutrition (2005), “Flesh food, being at the top of the food chain, has about fifteen times more pesticides and herbicides than vegetable food.” (256)
Numerous studies and personal experiences have shown that people who eat vegetarian diets are healthier than those who eat meat. Richard Anderson cites a study done in 1961 by the Journal Of The American Medical Association that reported that a vegetarian diet can prevent 90-97% of heart diseases. In this day and age where obesity and heart problems are huge issues in society, any steps towards preventing heart disease seems to be practical. Gabriel Cousens notes in Spiritual Nutrition (2005), “Not only do vegetarians live longer and actually have (according to at least ten research reports) more endurance than meat eaters, they are less subject to the health problems that meat eaters experience.” (258)
Meat also affects our emotions, states of mind, and spiritual connections. Although people may like the way meat tastes, they are also ingesting the energies of death and fear including the adrenaline released upon the fear of death that the animal goes through before it is killed. Cows are often lined up for their deaths and sensing what is before them, they become very fearful. Even milk is tainted with trauma and fear chemicals. Baby cows, especially males, are immediately killed for meat. In turn, the mother cows go through a great deal of anguish at having their babies killed and their anguish causes toxins to be secreted in their milk.
The affect of meat on one’s spiritual health is explained by the Enlightened Being Swami Prakashanada Saraswati in 1986 (as found in Spiritual Nutrition, 2005), “Every animal that is slaughtered for human consumption brings the pain of death into your body. Think about it. The animal is killed with violence. That violence causes the animal to experience very intense pain as it dies. That pain remains in the meat even after you’ve prepared and cooked it. When you eat the meat, then you eat pain. That pain becomes lodged in your body, heart, and mind. That violence and pain which you consume will also eat you. It consumes you so that you must experience the same pain in your life also.” (259)
Plants, on the other hand, absorb the energy of sunlight as opposed to the hormones and pesticides animals are exposed to. Gabriel Cousens tells us in Spiritual Nutrition (2005), “Taken into our systems, plants stimulate a resonant response from the Inner Light of our higher spiritual subtle bodies, which directly receive the pranic transfer of the stored sunlight.” (262) We take in this energy and live more harmoniously with the earth.
There are health benefits to us individually from eating a vegetarian diet, but the benefits of this type of eating touch much more than our own bodies. The conditions that animals go through make meat eating a very different practice from hunting. Animals today are given injections of hormones, sprayed with chemicals, fed parts of their own species, and forced to live in tiny confinements. They are not happy. The aspect of thanking the life of the animal and treating it with respect and dignity is no longer present in the meat industry today. Animals are not treated as fellow beings that have awareness and feeling. They are used and mistreated for our pleasure.
The earth is also being hurt by meat consumption. Gabriel Cousens states, “In this age of overpopulation, meat eating is an attack on the entire natural world and one of the main causes of environmental degradation and destruction.” (264) Much land is being used to grow grain to feed livestock. Eighty percent of the total land used to grow grains is grown for livestock. About half of the water used by the United States is for livestock. The continual need for more land for livestock to live on is resulting in the destruction of the rainforest. Gabriel Cousens states, “An article in the Vegetarian Times estimates that current rainforest destruction causes the extinction of approximately 1,000 species per year. For each fast-food quarter-pound hamburger, 55 square feet of the rainforest are destroyed.” (264)
When many people in the world are dying from malnourishment, land could be used to grow grains for human consumption instead of livestock. In 2005, the United Nations estimated that half of the world’s population suffers from malnutrition (http://www.unescap.org). The lack of food that our own species is experiencing could come to an end if meat consumption diminished.
The B12 Question
Are vegetarians able to get enough vitamin B12 in their diets without eating meat? This is one of he biggest questions that comes about when talking about he health of the vegetarian diet. As always, there are awide range of opinions from nutritionist and authors of health books about whether this is possible or whether vegetarians should be taking supplemental B12. In Annemarie Colbin's Food And Health 1986 we find her take on it. "A vegetarian diet based on substantial amounts of raw fruit and salads, nuts and seeds, cooked vegetables and potatoes, and only occasional grain, will indeed be deficient in this vitamin; and such was the diet of European vegetarians early in this century." She goes on to say, however, "When the vegetarian diet is based on whole grains and beans as staple foods, B12 is supplied in sufficient amounts." In the research that Gabriel Cousens, M.D., has done on B12, he has found the people on vegan and live-food diets have he highest frequency of B12 deficiency. Vegetarians receive B12 in dairy products. Gabriel Cousens strongly recommends that people on vegan and live-food diets supplement B12.