Vegan Or Not?
Hey folks!
I'm a vegetarian and I don't judge meat eaters. But recently, I've been seeing some arguments and jokes put forward by meat eaters to justify eating meat and also to ridicule vegetarianism. So I thought I'd put out the reasons why most of the vegans (or at least I) don't eat meat.
1. Because its not your primary food!
If you research this topic, you'll find tons of articles against and also, in favour of it.
Some say we're naturally carnivores, some say we're naturally herbivores and most of them say we're omnivores. All bull crap in the first order. So what is the truth? What is our natural food?
To find this out, you don't have to listen to those nutritionists, scientists & doctors. You don't need to cut open a torso and measure the human intestine length or measure your teeth sizes. All you need is some COMMON SENSE.
Here's an analogy : Say you have a plate of raw meat, another one of raw vegetables & a plate of fruits on your dinner table. Which one would you choose to eat?
You cannot digest raw meat so you'll ignore the meat. You cannot digest raw vegetables (except a few who has some fruit-like properties) so, you'll ignore the vegetables, too, and will turn to the fruits because it's the ONLY FOOD you can digest when eaten raw.
Hence, FRUITS are your natural food. It's the food nature CHOSE for you.
Think about it! Your own senses will tell you the truth! Smell a piece of raw meat, it smells unpleasant to you but a carnivore like a dog or a cat would go crazy at the meat's smell. You smell raw vegetables and they're not appealing t you as they are to a goat or a rabbit. But then you smell a ripen mango, it smells good! Your mouth becomes watery! This means, you're biologically designed to eat fruits. I can go on and on with this but I guess you get my point.
2. Because it's unhealthy for you!
Let me make one thing clear : Nature, is FOOLPROOF. Nature is feeding tens and thousands of plant & animal species on this planet for millions of years. And ALL of them, except humans, eat only the food that nature chose for them and they eat it raw. This is why you don't see obese & overweight lions or antelopes in the wild. NONE of them have malnutrition or protein deficiency! They don't have eating disorders, overweight problems, food allergies, NOTHING! They DO JUST FINE.
But on the other hand, take a look at us! The pinnacle of evolution! Humans! We do just the opposite. We eat anything that moves. We can't eat them raw, so we kill em, cook em, fry em, bake em, toss em, and eat & sh*t em. And what's the price we pay?
Diseases, deficiencies, disorders, allergies and thanks to the bad science, corporate greed and our willful ignorance, we will never accept this fact.
3. Because it's cruel!
I'm not a typical PETA animal activist hypocrite.
According to me, a species killing another species for food is NOT cruel. That's how nature works. Every living thing on this planet preys on another living thing in one way or the other. BUT! ENSLAVING & TORTURING an animal for food is CRUEL.
If you go kill an animal in the wild for food, I see nothing wrong in it. I mean, it lived it's life free, not locked up in a cage. You have every right to kill for food. But you have NO RIGHT to take away the freedom from another living being and control it's life from birth to death. Even carnivores don't do that.
You ENSLAVE an animal, you deny it's BASIC rights, you take away it's freedom, exploit it's mental and physical health (with steroids, antibiotics, etc), treat it like a commodity and call this process, some how 'natural'?!
4. Because killing animals is not the same as killing plants!
"Plants feel pain too! Plant life matters!" is an idiotic argument put forward by few meat eating trolls against vegetarians. Yes, plant life matters too. Like I've mentioned above, killing a plant or an animal is okay as long as you do it to feed your hunger. But most of us eat meat not for hunger but simply to satisfy our taste buds. And there's a big difference between the way we raise plants for our food vs the way we raise animals. First of all, plants do NOT feel 'pain'. Plants do feel & react to certain stimulus and to their environment, not because they feel 'pain' but because they are A LIVING ORGANISM!
Now, let's understand why we (animals) feel pain. Unlike plants, animals cannot easily regrow a lost organ. You can cut down a tree in half (with it's leaves still with it) and few months later, it'll come back to life. So plants can afford to lose their body parts and grow it back. Like Deadpool! But we animals cannot grow back our lost body parts (except a few). If we lose a body part, we will not be able to grow it back and we'll also die because of a huge amount of blood loss.
So, 'pain' was put in place to make sure that we won't hurt our body lethally. Even in our own body, the body parts we can afford to lose & grow back, like hair & nails, DON'T FEEL PAIN. Same applies to plants. They do feel but what they feel is NOT pain because there's no evolutionary reason for them to feel pain. If they did, then they would've started locomotion. Besides, humans are frugivorous in nature. So you don't even have to hurt the plant. You can simply eat the fruits it PRODUCES FOR YOU!
5. Because meat is not the only protein source!
The largest & strongest land animals are herbivores. Elephants, Rhinos, Bulls, you name it! If you want to become as strong as an ox, you shouldn't eat the ox. You should eat what the ox eats.
A healthy vegetarian diet can make you stronger. During the vedic era, the warrior clans who were at least 10 times stronger than us, were pure vegetarians. Even the traditional wrestlers of India still follow a strict vegetarian diet. And they are frigging strong alright.
6. It's bad for the environment!
* Cows must consume 16 pounds of vegetation in order to convert them into 1 pound of flesh. Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all water used in the U.S. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.
* Producing just one hamburger uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 20 miles. Of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S., more than one-third are devoted to raising animals for food.
* A typical pig factory generates the same amount of raw waste as a city of 12,000 people. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, raising animals for food is the number-one source of water pollution.
* Of all agricultural land in the U.S., 87 percent is used to raise animals for food. That’s 45 percent of the total land mass in the U.S. About 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to produce feed for animals raised for food. The meat industry is directly responsible for 85 percent of all soil erosion in the U.S.
* More than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of the oats are fed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “Roughly 2 of every 5 tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry, or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially of beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land.”
7. Because karma is a b*tch!
What goes around, comes around. Science calls it 'the third law of motion' and we Hindus call it 'Karma'. I'm not saying if you kill a chicken then the chicken will kill you in your next birth. In fact that's not how karma or the third law of motion works. If you throw a ball at the wall using your hands, the wall doesn't catch it with a hand and throw it back.. but nevertheless, the balls comes back at you. There will be an 'equal' opposite reaction and not an 'exact' opposite reaction.
This universe is an equilibrium. You inflict pain on others, the same amount of pain will find it's way back to you, sooner or later. When you whack a mosquito or step on an ant and kill it, the amount of pain you have inflicted is very low. So when it comes back to you in one way or another, you will be able to bear it. But when you kill a cow, goat or a chicken, you inflict immense amount of pain, which you wont be able to bear when it comes back at you!
So, think before you decide!
Peace!
- Janani Vivek Pillai
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