In my personal opinion "least harm done to the planet" is why people should eat a plant-based (vegan and raw foods diet) instead of an animal-based diet, well, to people who are conscious and care about what's going on ecology-wise.
We can eat all the plants we want to and still will not throw off the Earth's balance; but we just can't say this with consuming animals products whose industries are doing serious harm to Mother Earth.
There's clearly more harm in raising, killing, and eating animals for food than eating plants, or for the technical people, eating air (oxygen). Yes, certain people out there believe that we are killing air molecules by breathing in air. This is their anemic and lethargic defense to justify their eating of poor, innocent sentient beings called animals all because they like the texture and taste of cooked animal carcass and cadaver.
There's a Law of Reciprocity in existence and this is shown via the seed that all fruits of plants (including trees) contain! What is removed is replaced in Nature. When you kill an animal, LIGHTS OUT! That's it! Animals don't contain seeds within them that allow for 100 more creatures to return in their stead.
Plus, raising all these animals for food creates an eco-imbalance and it's all done for profit, not to mention causing world starvation. Consider the following statistics:
1,000 acres of non-GMO soybeans yield 1,124 pounds of usable protein.
1,000 acres of rice yield 938 pounds of usable protein.
1,000 acres of wheat yield 1,042 pounds of usable protein.
Now consider the following:
1,000 acres of non-GMO soybeans, corn, rice or wheat, when fed to a steer, will yield only about 125 pounds of usable protein. These and other findings point to a disturbing conclusion: meat eating is directly related to world hunger (starvation).
"Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them, the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger." - John Denver
If we fed the same supply of grain and soy supply to the poor and starving people of the world that we feed to livestock, we could wipe out world starvation in no time at all.
So what's more important: solving world starvation or satisfying our palate by eating what we don't have to eat? After all, think about it - we don't have to eat animals and can live without eating animals:
"I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat." The Dalai Lama
All diets beneath the solar-tarian (or breatharian) diet, are degenerate, being technical, but you would think people would want to evolve, rise, progress, advance, e.g. eating meat (carnivore), then eating plants/grass (herbivore), then eating fruits (frugavore), then consuming water (hydro-tarian), and then eating oxygen (oxygenarian) and solar energy, right?
If we agree, being technical (as many meat-eaters like to get in defense of eating meat) that all things have life and we are harming other "living" things to sustain ourselves and to survive, then the only intelligent and compassionate point left would be "do the least amount of harm as you work your way back up to a state of originality (solar-tarian)."
Life on Earth suggests ADVANCEMENT and EVOLUTION, but however we do have free will on Earth to agree to not advance and evolve as meat and dairy eaters display (you are not advancing or evolving when you consciously harm that which sustains you - The Earth, it's suicide, and there is convincing and compelling proof and evidence that show how meat and dairy production are very injurious to the Earth in addition to animals).
Clearly, faux foods (mock meat and dairy products) are better than meats, eggs, and dairy because their vibration is higher because they are processed from foods with a higher vibration and their existence and production doesn't harm the planet - the Great Mother, like meat and dairy does. You see, if both cooked meats and faux foods are processed, both are not providing nutrition, so we can 86 (eliminate, terminate) the argument of nutrition; but then we have to deal with the question of ecological homeostasis and by growing and eating fruits and plants, we are not throwing off the balance of the Great Mother (Earth). But can we say this about the mass commercial production of animals and their excreta?
Yes, and true, many processed vegan foods contain junk and harmful chemicals, but not to the degree of processed meats and dairy which also contain the very same harmful chemicals (e.g. MSG, citric acid, BHT, of processed soy, wheat gluten (seitan) of many processed vegan products, but in addition to SODIUM NITRATE (a known carcinogen), DDT, ARSENIC (used in cattle feed as a growth stimulant), SODIUM SULFATE (used to give meat that "fresh" red color), DES (a synthetic hormone and known carcinogen), BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE, CEMENT, SODIUM BICARBONATE, ROAD-KILL, ANTIBIOTICS, etc.
Yes, antibiotics! Folks, you get your antibiotics from your doctor, not your meat!
I was recently told: "If you don't want to harm any living thing at all, then no diet would be your choice. Even in breathing air we break down and destroy the structure of the air molecules."
My retort to this person (a professed omnivore) was: "Okay, and um, please explain to me how this (breathing air) is doing harm to oxygen molecules, the planet, animals, humans, etc." Sometimes being too technical can make us go against reason and logic.
If eating air molecules (via breathing) is harmful, then the basis of human existence itself is harmful as oxygen is the #1 fuel for the human brain and body. If breathing is so harmful, why do we need to breathe? I too am of the notion that meat-consumption impairs the mind and thus gradually impairs the ability to reason in many persons.
There is no human life absent oxygen! But is there no human life absent meat consumption or dairy and egg consumption? This attempted argument is so elementary, but requires and deserves the response that comes from myself.
Many pro-meat eaters, e.g. followers of the Weston A. Price Foundation/Organization, conveniently (for themselves, of course) make it a situation of "diet" (which is too radical and technical) and not one of "harm."
We all have to eat something (be it air, water, plants, fruits), but it is a question of harm (least amount of harm in hopes of getting to no harm at all, if possible; but we must be aiming for progress and not stagnation or devolution and clearly eating plants and fruits is progression and evolving whereas eating meat is regression and devolution).
It's a no win situation (meat-eating position of pro-meat eaters) despite the valiant efforts espoused by a few.
Compassion, intelligence, and homeostasis are going to win in the long run. What leads to homeostasis of the Great Mother (Earth) is going to win in the long run. We are becoming more conscious on the Earth and the little children (Komasan, Sirian, Crystal, Rainbow, Ruby children, etc.) are showing this (higher consciousness) as little children are born rejecting animal flesh. Just check their auras with Kirlian photography and you will witness with your own eyes how pure these children are. These children are born with compassion in general and that compassion is automatically relayed and conveyed to animals.
Children, especially those named above, are born pure and so they gravitate to that which is pure, including diet (plant and fruit-based diet).
Yes, plants have consciousness as evidenced in many great works, e.g. The Secret Life of Plants by Michael Tierra, but we err when we equate consciousness with pain.
As humans, we don't feel because we are conscious. We feel simply because we have a central nervous system and plants just don't have a nervous system so they don't feel pain. It's really a moot argument that meat eaters present pertaining to plants feeling pain when we consider the following:
"...David R. Boldt, who wrote the editorial mentioned above, raised what seems to be an equally reasonable objection: 'My own excuse for eating meat is that plants, research has shown, have feelings, just like animals. Why choose between them? Before considering the fate of the steer, imagine the dread and horror that spreads across a wheat field when the thresher starts work." Boldt's challenge is misleading, if also held by many. He refers to documentation that plants have feelings - and while even the work of Jagdish Chandra Bhosh, from the nineteenth century, will attest to the fact that plants do indeed have feelings, such rudimentary sensations are clearly distinguishable from the pain of a steer going to slaughter. We all know this. Our stomachs react considerably less is we observe the threshing of a wheat field than if we observe the grisly work in a slaughterhouse. Moreover, as Keith Akers writes in The Vegetarian Sourcebook, "Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals ... is not particularly difficult. Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system. Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive. Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not. Clearly, if one does not want to become a fruitarian, waiting only for certain fruits to naturally drop from a tree, vegetarianism is a practical alternative. And even if one believes that plants have feelings much like humans and animals (despite evidence to the contrary), it still does not follow that vegetarianism is hypocritical: if plants can suffer, but we need to eat them to survive, it makes sense to eat as few as possible. In other words, if we have to eat plants, a fact upon which all biologists and nutritionists agree, we ought to destroy as few plants as possible. But by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animal we eat than if we merely ate the plants directly. So vegetarianism causes the least amount of harm to sentient beings, and one who thinks deeply about all of the issues involved will surely see the sense of the vegetarian alternative." Steve Rosen
Clearly, plants are conscious but they do not feel pain (as they are not sentient beings). Even if the argument becomes "do the least harm" why would a person not want to do the least amount of harm (to an animal) and the least amount of damage to the planet that sustains all life? It very well may be a case of unconscious (or perhaps conscious) sadism which denotes a deep-rooted and seated imbalance.
If we bring it down to health, eating animals clearly cause health problems whereas eating plants and fruits do not, especially if they are untampered with.
Eating plants reverse the harm of eating meat and the more we eat plants the more conscious we become and actually can begin to even think about not eating plants and becoming solar-tarian. It's a short distance from plant-eater to solar-tarian than from meat-eater to solar-tarian.
The law of Earth is growth. Remove (pick) a flower and it returns. Pick an apple it returns! Kill a cow and that's it. It's dead and gone forever!
If an apple contains multiple seeds within it, the question must be asked, "Why are seeds in the midst of an apple?" Can we say REPRODUCTION?
Seed. seed |sēd| noun. 1 a flowering plant's unit of reproduction, capable of developing into another such plant.
There is a Law of Recycling and a Law of Reproduction on planet Earth, in addition to a law of growth (denoted by the existence of seeds). From "seed" we get "germinate" and from "germinate" we get "growth" which takes us back to the Law of Growth.
Germinate |ˈjərməˌnāt| verb [ intrans. ] (of a seed or spore) begin to grow and put out shoots after a period of dormancy.
And if we take matters to the point of karma and reincarnation, meat-eaters lose because the animal is sentient.
sentient |ˈsen ch (ē)ənt| adjective | able to perceive or feel things.
"Worshippers of Kali were obliged to chant the Sanskrit word for meat (mamsa) into the goat's ear before slitting its throat. The word carries deep meaning. Etymologically, mamsa is broken down into mam ("me") and sa ("he"). According to traditional Indian philology, the implication is as follows: "As I eat him now, so will he eat me in the future." This is an example of the law of karma: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Steven Rosen
And we can't forget poison! Oh no, no, no! Is it intelligent to willfully poison one's self if he or she can help it?
Okay, let's see now: when an animal is slaughtered, poisons are produced and released in the soon-to-be meat (someone's dinner). Meat-eaters absorb into their own bodies the toxic wastes that would otherwise have been expelled from the animal's body as urine. When steak is boiled, waste appears as soluble extracts in the form of beef tea - which closely resembles urine when chemically analyzed.
To eat meat is to consume poison which is just not an intelligent thing to do!
"Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed" of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, far, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness - all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat - that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous, then those poisons are carried in your body." Osho
And,
"Protein obtained from nuts, pulses, grains, and even dairy products is said to be relatively pure compared with beef - which has a fifty-six percent impure water content. Such impurity affects not only the heart, but the whole human organism." Steven Rosen (quoting Encyclopedia Britannica)
I just can't see any logical defense in meat consumption. I just can't! It's actually 'carrion' but there is so much covering up of slaughtered animals. Dead pig is called pork. Dead cow is called beef. Dead chicken and turkey is called poultry.
Now matter how you slice it, meat is dead carcass. If you don't trust me, then I'm sure you'll trust your government:
"A poultry product is defined as "any poultry carcass or part thereof; or any product which is made wholly or in part from any poultry carcass part thereof." Code of Federal Regulation 2007f
I find it very interesting as well that government defines meant with the term "postmortem", e.g.:
"In a practical sense, meat can be defined as "the edible postmortem component originating from live animals." Ingredients in Meat Products, Chapter 7, p. 145
So, again, dead pig is called pork. Dead cow is called beef. Dead chicken and turkey is called poultry.
However, an apple picked is still an apple. A picked plum is still a plum! A fruit is a fruit is a fruit! And a dead cow is a dead cow is a dead cow!!!
A.C. Grayling said it best pertaining to meat:
"We do not eat 'fresh' meat, we eat carrion, for the former would be stiff with rigor mortis, and meat only becomes soft enough to cook and eat once it has begun to rot. We like our game especially rotten, which is why we leave it hanging for days so that the microbes swarming in it can do their work. Microbes are the meat-eater's friend; without them there could be no tender steak, no juicy roast, no tasty chop or rib."
So even when a meat eater eats their beloved meat, they are eating something unnaturally processed. If we eat an apple straight from the tree, at least we are eating that which is not processed, still alive (if you're going to eat a living thing, it's best to eat it alive rather than dead), and does not poison the body.
Once you remove the argument of "killing living things" (being technical), you're left with PROGRESSION, ADVANCEMENT, REGENERATION, COMPASSION, and INTELLIGENCE!
People who attempt to justify eating meat products for nutritional purposes are just so far removed from naturalness when you really assess them. Take fish oil (for Vitamin D) for example. Consider the following:
So much unnaturality goes into attempting to derive things from animals.
Lastly, eating plants raises our consciousness but eating animal flesh lowers our consciousness:
"And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal's body. You are on a higher plane than the animal's consciousness, and when you eat the animal's meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises." Osho
We think it pure folly to believe man/woman need meat for survival purposes. The whole notion of meat consumption goes against the law of Human Biology:
Plainly put, killing animals for meat is unnecessary because man can live without meat in his present state:
"I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat." The Dalai Lama
It's amazing how a dead animal in one place is carrion and when in another, is food:
"A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of a carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher's stall passes as food." J.H. Kellogg
Man is delusional and is ever conniving to conjure up reasons to justify eating meat:
"For the sake of love of purity, the bodhisattva ("enlightened soul") should refrain from eating flesh, which is born from semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh ... It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was specifically meant for him ... Again, there may be some people in the future who ... being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways many sophisticated arguments to defend meat-eating ... But ... meat-eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited ... Meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit." - Buddha
I am simply of the opinion that meat eating numbs one's wit:
SIR ANDREW:
"I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit. SIR TOBY:
"No question!"
From: William Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene III
And further,
"The root word for "vegetarian" is NOT vegetable, it is the Latin "vegetus," meaning "FULL of LIFE!" "Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food."
Henry David Thoreau
When it comes down to what we eat, "what is it that should trace the insuperable line? ... The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?" Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
I concur with Buddha that a plant-based diet leads to higher consciousness, enlightenment, and peace:
"To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana." - Buddha
In the end, and considering all the facts and circumstances of the matter (much of which was covered within this article), the verdict is in that vegans and raw foodists are not causing plants pain by eating them. This is just an anemic and lethargic excuse espoused by meat-eaters to lesson their sense of guilt from eating poor, innocent, hapless and helpless animals.
Thank you for reading!
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