WHY BE A VEGETARIAN
Nutritional Values
Lentils, low-fat dairy products, nuts, seeds and peas rich in protein can be eaten along with common staple foods such as rice, chapattis,bread, greens and corn products. Adequate quantity of this menu would enable your system to get the needed calories to produce the essential amino acids.
Abundant sources of iron can be got through dried beans, spinach, beet greens and dried fruits. Including foods containing vitamin C, such as oranges, sweet lime, tomato or broccoli, will enhance the absorption of iron content of the meal.
Greens, broccoli, turnip greens and Soya milk contain high quantities of calcium.
The requirement of Vitamin B12 is negligible for adults. Though it is primarily from animal-derived foods, vegetarians can look to get this vital nutrient from fortified foods such as certain brands of cereals, nutritional yeast and Soya milk. Sufficient quantities of Vitamin B12 can be obtained from milk, butter and cheese as well.
When a child is born, it is breastfed for the first 4 to 6 months. Later, a lacto-vegetarian diet is introduced. Mashed dhal in milk or canned baby foods provide the nutrition. Certainly no one introduces the infant to non-vegetarian foods during its first year or two. (Then why do we introduce the innocent infant to the debilitating non-vegetarian food and make it acquire a taste for meat?).
This is the stage when children become choosy about what they want to eat. The food should be planned in such a manner as to ensure that the child gets his required quantity of calories with the food of his choice.
Kids in the lower classes, for whom lunch must be prepared and packed by parents, must be given not only tasty, but nutritious food. Older children, if they choose to, can be allowed to prepare their own lunch packs.
Growing children, sportsmen and those engaged in strenuous work should plan their diet. They can seek the help of a qualified dietician, if necessary.
Though vegetarian food is certainly lesser in fat content than meats, it is recommended that they use only half the quantity of oil that they normally do. Avoid fatty substances as much as possible. Dosas or chapattis can be made on the new range of non-stick pans. Even with the conventional tawa, just rub a little oil on the pan with a ladle-edge dipped in oil.
Dairy products and eggs contain cholesterol, which if consumed liberally over a period of time, can cause cardiac disorders. Vegetable products present no such threats. However, coconut and palm oil are high in saturated fats and are likely to raise cholesterol levels in the blood. Hence may be avoided.
Eggs can be replaced with (a) bananas (b) two tablespoons of arrowroot starch and (c) similar products that you can find in Health Food Stores.
Milk, butter and cheese can be substituted with (a) Soya milk (b) Soya margarine and (c) Products found displayed in Health Food Stores.
Meat can be replaced with cultured soybean (meal maker), which has a chewy texture. Health Food Stores can offer you an array of meat substitutes, which are tasty and healthy.
If a vegetarian, you can boast of being in the illustrious company of the legendary ones. Leonardo Da Vinci (the creator of the immortal Mona Lisa), Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein (voted the most intelligent man of the last century), Paul Mc Cartney (the famous Beatle pop singer), Leo Tolstoy, Charles Darwin, Thomas Alwa Edison, Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, Plato, Pythagoras and our own Mahatma Gandhi were all vegetarians.
You can be an ethical vegetarian. Killing of innocent animals to satiate your hunger is cruel. The crime assumes more heinous portions when a more nutritious meal can be obtained through vegetables.
We have a video cassette which has graphically recorded the slaughter of cows at an abattoir. They are beheaded without even being anesthetized; and skinned alive even before life has ebbed away. It cannot be viewed by those with weak hearts; and children will not be allowed to see it. It is so gruesome.
Anything that is disgusting, nasty, unclean and unhygienic is associated with pigs. That, to some of us, is a delicacy known as ‘pork’.
The ‘table birds’, as the butcher calls them, are kept in cramped cages. On your order, the heartless butcher picks the bird, breaks its neck and tosses it into boiling water, pulls it out and plucks the feathers and happily chops it into pieces.
What most may consider nauseating is a ‘delicacy’ to some. These are not the small toads and frogs that we find in our waterways, wells and tanks. They are found in seas and are even culture-grown in farm ponds. There is a huge commercial market abroad.
Once they reach a particular size, they are fished out of the water, their hind legs ripped away (harvested) and the rest of the body with the fore legs is cast back into the water.
Another rich man’s specialty! There are some restaurants which charge from Rs.600 to Rs.1,000 per lobster.
A lobster’s normal life span is 100 years. But most of these poor creatures don’t survive beyond their infant stage of 7 to 8 years. The connoisseurs would rather see them cooked and laid on their tables, rather than enjoy watching them in their natural habitat – the sea.
The closest animals to the human race in the evolutionary cycle, chimpanzees and gorillas are mercilessly hunted and slaughtered and sold as “bush meat” in the markets of certain countries
It was meant to enjoy its life in the vast oceans and rivers. Fishermen catch these fish in their nets and put them in freezers under very unhygienic conditions which can lead to ‘Salmonella” poisoning if not frozen under the right temperature. Would you like to suffer from food poisoning due to unhygienic fish when you can eat healthy vegetarian food.?
This is such a beautiful and dainty animal (a wide-eyed lady is often referred to as ‘doe-eyed’), that it evokes love on mere sight. Some of us are barbarous enough to swallow it as ‘venison’.