We know that Vegetarian is food is pleasurable and satisfying, and it can be prepared from an almost unlimited variety of ingredients, combinations and tastes.

But is the pleasure of the tongue the only reason to be vegetarian?

Vegetarian Is Healthier

Recent studies have demonstrated that the countries where people traditionally consume more meat and other animal foods have the highest rates of cancers, heart diseases and metabolic disfunctions. Why?

First of all because our human bodies are simply not designed to eat meat.

- Our human intestine is much longer than a carnivorous’ one. A short intestine (3 times the body’s length) allows the stool containing the remants of the quick-putrifying flesh to be expelled as soon as possible, before the toxines created by its decomposition can harm the body. Besides, a carnivorous animal usually eats not only the meat, but every part of its prey: skin or hide, fur, feathers, bones etc. This has the side effect of forcing the meat remnants down the intestine and cleaning it.  Our human intestine is about 12 times our body’s lenght, and sometimes the food may take days before it is expelled from the last part of the intestine, especially when the diet does not contain enough vegetable fibres like vegetables, pulses and nuts, fruits or whole grains.  Meat, fish and eggs do not contain these useful fibres, and thus they often cause constipation. Even without constipation, after a few hours from their consumption, the flesh foods start decomposing inside our stomach and with time, they can cause diverticolitis, colon irritations and infections, digestive disorders and very frequently, bowel cancer (of course cancer is quite slow in its progress, and may manifest clearly many years after its beginning.

- Carnivore livers can eliminate large amounts of cholesterol, while human livers can only eliminate very limited amounts (this also causes liver disorders and other problems in humans). This is why carnivores do not get fatty plaque deposits inside their arteries (called atherosclerosis) from consuming animal fats or products — humans do! This is also causing in the human beings many heart diseases, including heart weakness, failures, attacks and strokes, and brain damage, because so much fat in the blood is not natural and not good for the nice functioning of the whole system. The fatty blood is thicker and the heart has a difficult time pumping it through the body. Sometimes the blood vessels get so clogged that the heart simply doesn’t make it any more. Also, fats are deposited in the cells of the body, by increasing their size thus hampering the correct osmosis of good nutrients (minerals and so on) which are supposed to be constantly supplied to the cells and also the elimination of waste.

Also, excessive fat in the human body in general is not very good for health. A small amount of healthy fat in foods is necessary and healthy, but large amounts of fats (especially from animals’ flesh) can create a very dangerous situation for the body. We should also remember, in this respect, that all animals (including the human beings) use the fat stored in their cells to “hide away” and temporarily neutralize the toxins and poisons in the body. This is why some people, when they go on a weight reducing diet, feel dizzy and their bodies expel lots of dirt and toxins: fats are being demolished and used as a fuel, and the toxins enter again in the blood  to be expelled by sweat, urine and other excretions. But let us think for one moment what happens when a human beings eats the fatty cells of an animal’s body. He eats not only the meat and fat, but also all the toxins that the animal had stored in his fat!  On the contrary, the fat present in milk and in vegetables is not used to isolate toxins, and is much healthier for our diet.

- The amount of chloridric acid produced by the carnivorous’ stomach is about 20 times larger than what our stomachs can produce. This is why carnivorous animals can digest bones, feathers, and other hard parts of their prey’s bodies, even without so much munching. Even the simplest tissues of flesh require a very strong concentration of acid to be dissolved, since chewing is simply not useful. This is why carnivorous animals have very developed and sharp canine teeth, useful to tear apart the flesh, but not molar flat teeth, needed to chew. Dogs and cats, for example, tear apart pieces of food and then simply swallow them, because their teeth are not designed for chewing. When a human being eats meat (especially if his ancestors have been doing that for many generations), his stomach starts producing bigger and bigger quantities of acids to cope with the strange requirements of his digestion. Although this may seem a good thing it is actually very bad, because our delicate stomach tissues get damaged by the very acid produced by them, and there you have ulcers, gastric irritation and infections, and sometimes, after a long time, also stomach cancer. Anyway, the stomach itself finds very difficult to produce so much acid by itself, so it pushes its owner to consume things that, once in the stomach, become very acid or greatly stimulate the production of acids: wine and alcoholics, cigarette smoke, and also great quantities of refined sugars and refined starches. While this helps to digest the difficult tissues of the meat, it causes other serious problems to the body in general. For the same reason, we can see that a drinker and smoker will find much easier to give up his bad habits by becoming strictly vegetarian.

- Other main differences between the carnivorous animals and the human beings are the fact that humans have an alkaline saliva and much ptyalin to pre-digest grain while chewing them, while carnivorous animals have a very acid saliva and no ptyalin. Also, carnivorous have very small salivary glands in the mouth, because they do not need so much moisture to predigest grains and fruits. Carnivorous animals have well developed claws, with large canine teeth for tearing and knife-like incisors for cutting flesh, while humans have soft nails, very well developed salivary glands, and a whole set of teeth comprising many molars, designed to bite, grind and chew fruits, grains, nuts and the like. With his natural “equipment”, a man would never be able to eat a fairly big animal (like a goat or a cow) even if already dead, what to speak of assaulting, preying and killing it! In facts, if the human body  would have been designed to eat flesh, we would be naturally attracted by dead bodies in the street (like dogs or tigers are), and we would take a special pleasure in personally killing our own meals! Instead, we see that anyone will keep away from dead bodies (so much that animals who died on their own are not considered fit to be eaten), and that meat-eaters maintain slaughterhouses (which have no external windows and no advertising sign outside, and no one is allowed to visit or take pictures inside)  and pay butchers to do their dirty job for them, so that they do not need to see any bloodshed or hear any screaming.  Particularly, human children are very impressed by the killing of animals, and usually if a child sees some animal killed, he will refuse to eat it. This would not happen if human children were carnivorous cubs, who are easily seen enjoying killing their small preys like a funny game.  On the contrary, human beings enjoy strolling in the gardens, orchards and fields where their vegetable food grows, admire their colours and smells, and very often, while observing a nice tree laden with ripe and sweet-smelling fruits, we feel the desire to pick one and eat it on the spot.

- Another puzzling difference is the fact that carnivorous animals do not sweat through the pores of the skin. They have no skin pores and they can perspire only through the tongue to cool the body. Humans, like all other plant-eaters, have millions of skin pores and they perspire in the same way as herbivores, grain-eaters and fruit-eaters. Such a major difference in the elimination of toxins and waste materials must surely have an important reason, and future studies may show that some substance (presently still unknown by science) contained in flesh foods should never enter the eater’s blood (to be expelled though skin pores), but should remain in the stomach and be expelled upwards through the mouth like in the carnivores, whose body has been designed to eat flesh.

Because man’s progenitors were vegetarians, many people have become vegetarians to improve their health as they feel they are getting closer to a more natural diet. Someone may say that these may apply to the primitive humans, but that the special intelligence of man enabled him to learn a variety of skills and invented instruments in order to be able to eat anything. This may be true, but technology can make life successful only if it is directed rightly according the natural tendencies, and not to go against nature. For example, for many years now even cows and sheep and horses have been fed with the remnants of the slaughtering of other cows and sheep and horses, transformed in such a way that the poor animals could never guess what they are eating. This product is called “meat flour”. To the farmers, everything seemed OK for some time, but all of a sudden a serious problem arose. The animals who had been fed with this “meat flour” as a protein additive to their normal fodder became gradually “crazy” with no apparent reason. Paralysis, nervous disturbances, loss of control of the body, madness and death in the animals were already a serious problem, but similar symptoms began to manifest in the humans who were eating their meat. After some research, the scientists gave a name to the new disease: spongyform encephalitis (from the fact that at the end the victim’s brain becomes spongy), or mad cow disease. They found that it was caused by a virus which passed unharmed through all the processes of the meat industry and could affect both animals and humans. This unnatural process had gone on for some years before its terrible results could be seen, but we may rest assured that whenever man violates nature’s  laws, he will have its sad results.

Of course there are long lists of viruses and micro-organisms who can easily pass to human beings from a diseased animal, and often a veterinarian can’t see the disease until it is completely manifest, but this does not mean that when the disease is in incubation period, the animal may be considered healthy. Particularly, the virus of salmonella or several diseases now called bird flue can be very resistant and pass through chicken meat or eggs to the human body and even kill a man in few hours. The farmers try to keep these diseases down in their animals by feeding them with large amounts of antibiotics together with their fodder, but this is a very dangerous practice. In facts, much of these antibiotics pass into the body of those who eat the meat, and cause intoxications and a kind of   “addiction” to their effect. Antibiotics are made in such a way that they can fight viruses and kill them before they can harm the body. But viruses, having a very short span of life, can quite easily get accustomed to a certain antibiotic and develop resistance to it, so that the following generations of viruses are no longer harmed bu that kind (or quantity) of antibiotic.  For example, Campylobacter and Salmonella bacteria, which cause diarrheal intestinal infections, and Listeria bacteria which cause infections to the nervous system (like meningitis).

This also means that by introducing large quantities of powerful antibiotics into the body, we are making our personal resistance to diseases weaker and weaker, so much that our whole immune system is endangered. If using antibiotics as a human medecine in very serious and urgent cases may be a right course of action, it is definitely not intelligent to use them as a normal food when not required, because when we will get really sick they will not have any effect. Besides that, the prolonged use of large quantities of antibiotics (taken either directly as medecines or indirectly within the meat or eggs of animals) destroys the friendly bacteria that all humans should have in their intestine and depletes the vitamins in the body, so that many other problems can be expected.

Besides the presence in flesh meat of antibiotics and similar substances, we may note that animal bodies tend to concentrate the waste, toxins and poisons they absorb from their environment and store them into their body cells, especially the fat cells and in the filtering organs, like kidneys, liver, and so on.  Just imagine how much filth there must be in a pig’s fatty cells! By the way, we may mention here that the carnivorous animals’ flesh is generally considered very offensive (due to concentrating many poisons already concentrated in their preys’ bodies) and in no case it should be eaten. If this is true, why should we render our flesh offensive by eating meat? The same applies to stool. It is the excreta of animals who eat flesh that are by far the most dangerous of all. Carnivorous animals, by a natural instinct, scratch holes and bury their excreta immediately because these are already on the verge of septic putrefaction. This should make us think about what may be contained in the remnants of a meat-based diet after only a few hours from their ingestion. Since our human intestines are much longer than the carnivorous animals’ ones, and our food has to stay inside our bodies much longer, what kind of stuff are we keeping in our guts?

Among the toxins and poisons, we may mention the heavy metals contained in very small amounts in plant fodder (and concentrated inside the animal’s body), in the drinking water, and in the air breathed by the animal (especially if he lives near some industrial area or city where many cars and buses are running); residues of chemicals, tranquilizers or other medecines given to the animals etc. To this, we must add the constant stress, the bad living conditions, the lack of natural family and social life, the lack of open air and relaxation - all factors that aggravate the toxic conditions of the body. But for the animal, the most stressful time of all is the day when he or she is slaughtered: this painful and alienating event produces a great amount of chemicals in the animal's body.

Maybe you know that the body of every animal (including humans) produces some special substances, called endorphines, that “transmit” to the nervous system feelings and sensations such as aggressiveness, helplessness, despair, suffering, alienation, madness and so on. These substances are designed to help the body react against the danger by pushing it beyond its normal possibilities. A typical effect of adrenaline, for example, is that it gives a very great strength in case of danger or dangerous challenge. In many cases even normally weak people show a great strength in some very difficult situation, but soon after such dangers are over, the quantity of adrenaline in the blood falls down very quickly, because it is very harmful for the body itself. Actually it is like a drug, because it does not give energy by itself, but rather forces the body to burn its energy for a very short period, thus depleting its stamina. So the after-effects of these adrenaline fits are negative: the body suddenly feels so weak that it is difficult even to stand, the knees bend, the complexion becomes very pale or grey (due to retreat of the blood, while during the peak use of adrenaline the face may be deep red or purple because of the blood being forced into the surface vessels), there is profuse sweat and often a big headache. Also the heart can be affected, not only in this particular moment, but also in the long run. This is why doctors advise heart patients to avoid strong emotions and particularly anger. All this happens to the animals when they are killed. They also produce this adrenaline, but since in the slaughterhouses they are not allowed to run away trying to escape like theywould do in the wild when chased by carnivorous animals, this adrenalne is not consumed and it passes through the blood right into the flesh tissues and there remains, a hidden drug to act on the meat-eater’s  body. This is why some say that eating meat gives a great strength. Actually this is not strength at all: it is the temporary stimulating effect of a toxic drug. And like any drug, it has a down-effect and can cause addiction very easily. Once one begins eating meat, then it becomes difficult to stop.

Save the Environment

The importance of a vegetarian diet, especially in the developing countries, cannot be underestimated, in facts the environmental and economical reasons are some of the most urgent reasons to become vegetarian and demand from everyone else to do so. Countries where people still live on the agricultural fields or take their nourishment and support from the forest products, will easily understand that using the land to cultivate crops for human foods will be more convenient and useful than grow animal fodder or make pasture grounds. Particularly important in this respect is the idea of Permacolture, which stands for Permanent coltures, a new name for a very old idea. Actually Nature itself has organized its own ways around the mutual support of many different plants and living beings, as we may easily see in the forests and jungles. In a forest trees and plants give their fruits and other crops without any intervention from man, and many people can live on the products of the forest, if the balance is respected. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, two Australian researchers, have studied very carefully the economics of the people living inside or near the forests or in primitive areas, and they have produced a whole new science of agriculture based on a natural living and the reproduction of natural forests (which can take care of themselves without so much human intervention) by planting specifically some plants together with others (and choosing them carefully according to the needs of the human community) and encouraging the natural equilibrium of the habitat. Of course, forests and permacoltural projects can easily supply plant food, timber, medecines, fibres for clothes, and much more. These researches were conducted particularly because the Western countries are getting on the verge of environmental destruction (and they are beginning to cause also very serious problems to other countries), due to their foolish habits, one of the most dangerous being the habit of eating meat and other animal foods, mass-produced in factory farms. Intensive factory farms are not only cruel and very dangerous for our health, but they also constitute a real challenge to our planetary environment.

Meat production, especially in factory farms, breeding plants, and so on, is a waste of natural resources, and contributes to pollution and to the “greenhouse effect”. Intensive farms with cows raised for slaughter in the USA, for example, produce 60 million tons of methane released into the atmosphere. Methane gas accounts for 18% of the gases contributing to the greenhouse effect. Fifty percent of all water consumed in industrialized countries is used for livestock production. In USA, for example one billion tons of non-recycled dirty waters are produced by factory farmed livestock each year, resulting in water pollutants including nitrates and phosphates, beside the residues of the many chemicals used as additives in the animals’ diet. The water pollution caused by a factory farm (in which thousands, or hundreds of thousands of animals live in very crowded situations) is comparable to that of a large human city. Water used in meat production in industrialized countries is largely subsidized by taxes and paid by taxpayers, so that the cost of meat on the market can remain lower. This is the result of modernized factory farms. Do we want this to happen in India? Land cleared for livestock in America results in deforestation in the USA and the Rainforests of Central America.

Non-vegetarian consumers in  industrialized countries are eating out the planet, by transforming vegetable food into flesh food for their consumption. Every day enormous plots of land in the rainforests disappear to make pastures for “hambugers and steaks”, or to cultivate grains to feed the animals in the big factory farms. Unfortunately, this is not even lasting very long, because the rainforests’ layer of humus is very thin, and a few years after the de-forestation, the land simply becomes desertic, and without the deep roots of trees the little amount of soil there is washed away by the rains, thus leaving only the rocks and dust. To show the urgency and the importance of the vegetarian diet, we may say that the consumption of resources (vegetable foods like soya, wheat, corn, peanuts, normally given to factory farmed livestock), water, fertilizers, human labour and machinery utilization, fuel etc., all used for the breeding, the transportation, the slaughtering and the “preparation” of meat has a proportion of 10 to 35 times more than what is needed to produce good vegetable food for human beings. This means that a meat-eater, especially in the style of “modern” factory farms, consumes 10 to 35 times more than a vegetarian, for the same quantity of food. If we consider these datas, it is very easy to see the importance of a vegetarian diet in the global planetary economy, and especially in the economy of developing countries. It is complety absurd to encourage any increase in the consumption of flesh products, especially through “modern factory farming”, because this will certainly be a ruin for the economy and for the environment, as well as for the public health. Those countries who want to solve the problem of malnutrition will never do so without encouraging their citizens to decrease or stop their meat consumption, because 20% of the planet population is devouring 80% of the planetary resources. If only the current meat consumption would decrease of 10% in the world in general, the planet could spare food and grains enough to feed all the starving people. But all the best products of the developing countries (peanuts, soya etc.) go to the big western industries and companies, to feed their livestock and factory farms. This is why the vegetarian movements in the West are struggling so hard to convince people to give up their badhabits of eating flesh, although getting so many problems and persecutions from the big meat industries and economical trusts linked with this rich business. Actually, the only people who are getting any benefit from this meat eating are those who sell the meat, but this is a business in which a very small group of people get very rich at the expenses of many. Not only that, but usually the meat industries in the Western countries finds very good allies in the Pharmaceuticals industries, because eating meat will increase the health problems of the public, and the big industrialists, producers of chemical medecines will also become richer and richer. Unfortunately for them, people are beginning to understand the situation, and their fortunes would anyway be taken away by death and karma. It is much better to make money by helping people and the planet to become healthier and cleaner. But unfortunately, the meat industry is also eating up the planet. In USA, approximately 6 billion tons, or 85% of topsoil depletion, is directly related to livestock production. This is because the amount of vegetable food (fodder) required to obtain 1 kg of meat is 10 to 35 times larger. Any animal uses much of his food to maintain his vital functions and energies, and a large part of the food goes wasted as stool. Unfortunately, when these animals are given so many chemicals and medecines, their stool cannot even be used as a fertilizer, because it would pollute the cultivations. Another serious problem is caused by the de-forestation: trees “breathe” oxygen in the air through their leaves, and extract nutritious elements from the deeper layers of soil, because of their large roots. They also suck water from deep layers, thus allowing it to be used on the surface, and attract the rains (especially if they grow in a large number together) besides protecting the surface moisture from evaporating due to the heat of the sun. Their roots and branches also keep the soil and the humus from being washed away by rains, and many other useful living entities can find shelter in them (birds who eat insects and so on). While a meat-eater does not need trees for his diet, and thus tends to cause their destruction, on the contrary, a pure vegetarian diet saves on acres of trees annually, since many vegetable foods for humans may be also grown on trees, like fruits and many vegetables (and thus help to check pollution and soil depletion).

The mass production of non-vegetarian industry steals valuable primary food resources like grains, pulses etc that could be used to feed human beings instead - and with much better results for the health of human beings, too!

Corn, wheat, soya beans, peanuts, are extremely valuable nutritious foods that can easily meet the nutritional requirements of human beings.

To satisfy the demand of non-vegetarians, such precious grains are sent instead to factory farms, where they are very inefficiently used to produce meat.  

It takes from 6 to 20 kgs of vegetable fodder to make 1 kg of meat.

Producing meat consumes at least 10 times more water and 10 to 100 times more fossil fuels than producing grains.

This means that our planet could easily feed 6 to 20 times more people than it does now, simply by our changing a non-vegetarian diet into a vegetarian diet.

Mass production of non-vegetarian foods is the major cause of starvation in the world, especially in poor countries where farmers are forced to grow grains for export instead of using them for local self sufficiency.

Our generous planet can feed everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed. Consuming animal flesh is not a need for human beings: it is mere greed.

From traditional Indian recipes to International cooking, vegetarian foods are always the best for health, taste and consciousness!

Nobody can say that vegetarian food is less nutritious or tasty than non-vegetarian food.

There are thousands of recipes and thousands of different ingredients that can be used in vegetarian cooking, to satisfy every possible taste and requirement.

Vegetarian ingredients can even be prepared to obtain foods that usually require meat.

Animals, too, are living entities who have families, who feel love, fear, happiness, sadness, pain, and despair. Creating unnecessary sufferings to innocent living entities is a great crime.

We have one planet only, and all its creatures are our brothers and sisters!

According to UN estimates, in 2004 a staggering number of 52 billion animals were slaughtered, although in many areas the number of ethical vegetarians has greatly increased.

Only a heartless and cruel person can think of killing an innocent animal to sell his or her flesh or eat it. The name of "butcher" and "butchery" are synonyms with cruelty and violence. 

Our beautiful planet is in serious danger.

Especially in India, deforestation is quickly spreading due to many factors. Even illegal logging goes on practically undisturbed in many areas.

However, one of the main causes for deforestation is uncontrolled grazing of animals that are raised for meat.