For Those Who Love Animals
| If Americans were to reduce our meat consumption by only 10 percent, it would free land and resources to grow over twelve million tons of grain annually for human consumption, more than enough to adequately feed every one of the forty to sixty million human beings who will starve to death on the planet this year. --John Robbins |
| To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars -- we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one. ---Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| Human mother's milk provides 5 percent of its calories as protein. Nature seems to be telling us that little babies, whose bodies are growing the fastest they will ever grow in their lives, and whose protein needs are maximum, are best served when 5 percent of their food calories come as protein. How hard is it to get 5 percent of your calories from protein? Not hard at all,.... If we ate nothing but wheat, (16 percent protein), or oatmeal (15 percent) , or even pumpkin (12 percent protein), we would easily be getting more than enough protein. In fact, if we ate nothing but the common potato (11 percent protein) we would still be getting enough protein. There have been circumstances when people have been forced to satisfy their entire nutritional needs with potatoes and water alone. Individuals who have lived for lengthy periods of time under those conditions showed no signs whatsoever of protein deficiency. This fact does not mean potatoes are a particularly high source of protein. They are not. But what it does show is the contrast between how low our protein needs really are, and how exaggerated are the beliefs most of us have come to accept about them. ---John Robbins |
| Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day. --(Institute for Food and Development Policy |
| Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty... Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. --Albert Einstein |
| Photo by Tom Gallier |
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promotes eating vegetarian foods as one way of promotes eating vegetarian foods as one way of taking proper care of one's body, the temple of the Holy Spirit) have found that vegetarians have lower risks of heart attacks, strokes and other types of circulatory illnesses. Even better, a low-fat vegetarian diet can actually reverse heart disease, Dean Ornish showed in his ground-breaking work. A decade ago, the medical community thought reversing heart disease was absolutely impossible.... reversing heart disease was absolutely impossible....
and prostate cancer reflects total fat intake, including saturated fats like butter and unsaturated fats like vegetable oil....
have confirmed an interesting finding: The number of calories you eat is not the only factor in keeping trim. What also matters is their source -- fat, protein or carbohydrate. And as you may have guessed, fat calories are the most fattening of all. This fact showed up in several studies conducted in the past few years, including Campbell's Chinese Health Project. "Our information indicates that the Chinese consume more calories than Americans do, but aren't as fat," he says. The Chinese, on average, take in only 15 percent of calories from fat and eat about a fifth more total calories than Americans.... Obesity can lead to a host of health problems, including adult onset diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and cancer....
focus on calcium rich foods and exercise....
Adventists several years ago, researchers found that vegetarians had significantly less risk of diabetes than the general population....
in alleviating other conditions, including arthritis and anemia.... More Reasons to Go Vegetarian:
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| "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." (Genesis 1:29, King James Version) |
| It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. --Jiddu Krishnamurti |
(More to come) |
| Bookshelf |
| Did You Know That . . . ? |
| . . . if you drink milk produced by the dairy industry, you may be supporting the Veal Industry? It is a biproduct of the dairy industry. To extract milk from cows, the industry must make female cows give birth. Half of the calves are born female; some of the females replace older cows in the milking herd. Most of the males are used for veal, taken away within a day after birth, denied colostrum, sold at auction after handling and transportation stresses, shocked and kicked. If they are injured so badly that they cannot walk (called "downer calves"), they are pulled and dragged by their ears or legs. The calves "raised" for veal are confined to crates just two-feet wide, chained by the neck, unable to turn around, stretch, or lie down comfortably. They suffer from musculoskeletal problems, suffer from chronic stress, exhibit abnormal coping behaviors, painful leg and joint problems, and impaired walking ability. In order to obtain the prized pale-colored flesh, the calves must be deprived of iron and fiber, and are fed a deficient liquid diet that causes gastrointestinal upset, and diarrhea. When they reach 18 to 20 weeks, these gentle beings are slaughtered, along with some calves that are a few weeks to a few hours old. "Stunning methods used on calves and cattle are typically inadequate and the animals, who are supposed to be stunned and rendered unconscious prior to slaughter, often regain consciousness before and during bleeding. Industry researchers note that at calf slaughterhouses in the U.S., calves have been hoisted by one leg into the air, kicking and screaming, their throats slit while still alive." (Summarized and quoted from "The Truth About Veal," pamphlet of the Farm Sanctuary, PO Box 150, Watkins Glen, NY 14891, www.farmsanctuary.org ) |
| Just because you don't want to know, doesn't mean it's not happening! |
| "Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power." --Cardinal John Henry Newman |
| To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. --Mahatma Gandhi |
| "My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, from greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension." Benjamin Franklin |
| "All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?" -- Buddha |
| "Every day forty thousand children die in the world for lack of food. We who overeat in the West, who are feeding grains to animals to make meat, are eating the flesh of these children." --ThichNhat Hanh |
| "There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep" -- Bishop Desmond Tutu |
| I'm living proof you don't need animal flesh to be strong. Some of the world's greatest athletes are vegetarians." --Martina Navratilova |
| As long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace." --Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| As we talked of freedom and justice for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought as I took the first bite. And spit it out. --Alice Walker |
| I can't bear the idea of killing things. Fish seem to have as much right to stay alive as mice and warthogs. Never eat things with faces. --Actress Joanna Lumley |
| The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look at the murder of men. --Leonardo da Vinci |
| If you're violent to yourself by putting things into your body that violate its spirit, it will be difficult not to perpetuate that [violence] onto someone else. --Dexter Scott King |
| Now I can look at you in peace. I don't eat you anymore. --Franz Kafka, admiring a fish |
| If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain. -- Paul and Linda McCartney |
| To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. --Mahatma Gandhi |
| I became a vegetarian when I was 22 or 23. It happened when I was in Paris and I was walking through the market district called Halles. There was just row after row of carcasses. . . . and that did it for me. I could never eat meat after that. --Candice Bergen |
| Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. --Thomas Edison |
| Even if some people do not want to save the Earth, even if they regard animals and all other life on Earth as cheap and insignificant, even if they don’t care enough about their own health and quality of life, I would hope that they care about the young of this Earth. By sitting down to meals that are free of animal suffering, made with vegetable protein which has been manufactured to closely approximate the shape, color, taste and texture of animal products, and flavored with the same spices and plant ingredients, they make no sacrifices; they give up nothing. They can sit down to a delicious meal that tastes the same, uses similar recipes, is rich with protein and all the essential nutrients, will not clog arteries, and is truly good for them. That alone should motivate them. But if nothing else appeals to them, I would think that the knowledge that every day they are saving the lives of 40,000 human children, by choosing to not eat misery and death, would change their mind forever. How can we continue to turn a blind eye? --Kathleen M. Walske Gallier |
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| Meat-eaters on this planet justify killing and eating other creatures because they consider those creatures less intelligent. We'd better hope that if we do encounter intelligent life on other planets that they're not meat-eaters like us. ---Tom Gallier--- |
Recommended Websites
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| My Blog: www.veganfortheloveofitall.blogspot.com/ |
| "For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." Pythagoras, mathematician |
| "To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime." Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915 |
| "If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?" George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925 |
| "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, philosopher |
| "In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought." Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978 |
| "I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being." Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President |
| "You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist |
| "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." "What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty." Leo Tolstoy author |
| "While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?" "Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." George Bernard Shaw |
| "I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further." Mark Twain, author |
| "Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." Thomas Edison, inventor |
| If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars. Satish Kumar |
| “In most objects, the [five energy] levels are purely potential, or at best dimly awakened. But in sentient beings, they are all active, though in varying degrees according to the level of evolution. The bodies correspond to atomic, biomagnetic, sensory-mind, intellectual, and will energies or levels (faculties). In the human being these five are alive–but the degree of life also depends on individual evolution. Vegetables possess all levels, mostly in the form of “raw” or unconditioned life energies (prana). Thus they absorb readily into our bodies and the subtle levels of our being, and become conditioned by our thoughts and the present vibratory character of our bodies. This is not true of animals. Rather, all their levels are conditioned and locked into the vibratory patterns proper to their species. Thus, when we eat them we graft the animal bodies into our human bodies and create conflict and havoc, darkening–and distorting–our minds to an incalculable extent. Eating meat is one of the worst things we can do to ourselves, and it renders the practice of yoga and the wakening of higher consciousness virtually impossible.” --- The Atma Jyoti Blog (http://blog.atmajyoti. org/category/vegetarianism/) |