Why Vegetarian Diet!

People want vegetarian recipes for many reasons. Ayurveda offers reasons that many might not have considered.

 

Vegetarian recipes have always been at the core of the Ayurveda and of the Hindu living principles. Ayurvedic wisdom provides a deeper insight into the reasons why you really should stick to vegetarian recipes, even if the meat-industry would ever get rid of mad cow disease, antibiotics and other horrifying stuff. Take mental health for example…

The nature of meat

Flesh is a dead food, often days old by the time it reaches the supermarket meat counter. Dead food from whatever source is tamasic in nature, removing vital energy from the organism. Fill two glasses with tap water and add a slice of fresh vegetable to one and a bit of steak to the other - keep at room temperature and observe at the end of the third day.

Foods and digestion

Carnivorous animals possess powerful stomachs and short simple intestines, allowing foods to be processed and expelled within a 24-hour cycle. This short digestive cycle minimizes both decay and the absorption of toxic chemicals. Even so, most carnivores sleep for 10 to 24 hours following a full meal, so that all energy may be concentrated on food processing. And most carnivores only eat freshly killed meat. Humans have a very different digestive tract than carnivores.

Anxiety and meat

Animals experience strong states of fear during the process of shipping and slaughter. Such fear will create a dramatic production of stimulating biochemicals such as adrenalin and dopamin within the animals' flesh, that produce similar reactions in human beings. The body of a meat-eating individual is continually in a state of drugged hyper-arousal, creating chronic tension, anxiety and feelings of insecurity and confusion. One simply looses touch with the true inner feelings and urges. Vegetarian recipes are a way out of such madness.

Carnivores and vegetarians

Compare the difference in breath smells of a cow and a cat. This smell is not only produced by residual particles in the mouth, but also by waste products discharged in the lungs.

Cat stool is probably the most unpleasant of its kind. Cow dung has been burned for millennia and forms the basic binding material in most of the forms of incense sold anywhere, also in the West.

The breath rate of carnivores is fast and shallow, a pattern associated in humans with anxiety, tension and pain. Herbivores breath deeply and slowly, breathing peace and relaxation.

Diet and choice

Carnivorous animals, because of their specialization that has ecological origins, have no choice. They must eat flesh or perish. Man however can very well survive without meat. The fact that millions live on vegetarian recipes alone should be ample evidence.

Plants become suitable foods for man in two basic circumstances : at the end of the reproductive cycle or at the end of the life cycle. Plants rely on the consumption of their fruits and seeds for reproduction. Most other vegetable foods are mostly eaten only when ripe, that is at the end of their life cycle.

The source of life

All vital energy on the planet ultimately comes from the sun. Vegetarian recipes provide the most efficient nutriment for the human system, because plants form the basis of the food chain, closest to the source of life itself, which is solar energy. Carnivores rely on second-hand photosynthetic energy, first converted to the flesh of the herbivorous prey. Very few people have tasted the flesh of carnivores because it is tough, stringy and difficult to digest.

What to do ? Fire and digestion

A comparison of the digestive tracts of man and carnivores reveals man to have a considerably longer intestinal system - yet shorter by an almost equal proportion than the viscera of herbivores. The human system is not geared for eating meat, but neither for eating raw fruits and vegetables. Man however has mastered the element of fire, thus reducing the expenditure of energy required by the intestines. One who is seeking to raise his energy level must inevitably conclude that digestion is one of the single greatest demands on the system. That much less energy is available for meditation, concentration and enjoyment. The obvious path of least resistance is well cooked vegetarian recipes.