Vegetarian Facts and Thoughts

This is a post in response to the comments made by the readers to my previous post Moral Vegetarianism.

In the earlier post I had cited that choice of diet is a personal matter. I might not like eating animals, while others might not mind it. Debating whether meat is healthy or unhealthy is altogether a valid scientific issue. But morality is relative. The morality of Osama Bin Laden is nonsense according to George Bush and vice versa! So let us first agree to disagree over this issue

Now some facts:

One of the readers said that “All the Noble laureates , not even one is vegetarian as far as I know”. I am not sure whether it implied, “Vegetarians cannot be Nobel laureates!”

However, below is a list of some vegetarian nobel laureates (I am not including Einstein’s name in the list because he became a vegetarian only in the latter part of his life!)

Sir C. V. Raman - 1930 Nobel Laureate in Physics
George Wald - 1967 Nobel Laureate in Medicine
Chandrashekar Subrahmanyam- 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physics
Albert Szentgyrgy - 1937 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for discovering vitamin C
Linus Pauling - 1954 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Rabindranath Tagore - 1913 Nobel Laureate in Literature
George Bernard Shaw - 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Albert Schweitzer - 1952 Nobel Laureate in Peace
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1978 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Elie Wiesel - 1986 Nobel Laureate in Peace
Aung San Suu Kyi - 1991 Nobel Laureate in Peace
V. S. Naipaul - 2001 Nobel Laureate in Literature
JM Coetzee - 2003 Nobel Laureate in Literature

Some well known Vegetarian Actors, Singers are
Pamela Anderson, Cameron Diaz, Richard Gere, Demi Moore, Kate Winslet, Dustin Hoffman, Madhuri Dixit, Clint Eastwood, Brad Pitt, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Sara Gilbert, etc

Some other well known vegetarians are -
Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Edward Witten (American mathematical physicist), Brian Greene (One of the world’s foremost string theorists), Jane Goodall (British primatologist), Kalpana Chawla, Steve Jobs (founder and CEO of Apple Computers), Charles Darwin, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Voltaire, Abdul Kalam, Henry Ford, Lakshmi Mittal, Princess Diana, Manmohan Singh etc

For those who say that vegetarians can’t be athletes, here is a list of some vegetarian athletes -
Hank Aaron, Ridgely Abele, Adreas Cahling, James Donaldson, Roy Hilligan, Anton Innauer, Sixto Linares, Robert Parish, Bill Pickering, Stan Price, Murray Rose, Surya Bonaly (Fr) Olympic figure skater, Andreas Cahling (Sw) champion body builder & Olympic gold medalist in the ski jump, Chris Cambell (USA) Olympic wrestler, Desmond Howard (USA) pro football & Heisman trophy winner, Peter Hussing (Gr) boxing champ, Billie Jean King (USA) tennis champ, Carl Lewis (USA) Olympic runner & gold medallist, Ingra Manecke (Gr) discus throw champ, Bill Manetti (USA) power lift champ, Edwin Moses (USA) Olympic gold medallist & world record in track, Martina Navratilova (USA) tennis champ, Paao Nurmi (Fin) runner & Olympic gold medallist and 20 world records, Bill Pearl (USA) 4 time Mr Universe, Dave Scott (USA) 6 time Ironman triathlon champ, etc

See a bigger list here. Also please see this link and also this link related to Cancer prevention.

Next the China Study conducted on over 880 million people for over 20 year quotes “The findings from the China Study indicate that the lower the percentage of animal-based foods that are consumed, the greater the health benefits—even when that percentage declines from 10% to 0% of calories. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that the optimum percentage of animal-based products is zero…“

American Cancer Society’s 1996 guidelines on diet, nutrition and cancer prevention suggests: “Get most of your food from plant sources, and limit high-fat foods — especially those from animals.“

Now some thoughts:

I dont eat non-vegetarian food not because I am afraid of some sort of sin or to claim a moral high ground. I dont eat meat because I dont “like” killing animals for food. This being one of the easily avoidable animal killing. So for me its more of a respect for the lives of other fellow species, than being a moral issue. I am not a vegetarian out of some religious superstition!

I might unknowingly stamp an ant and it might die. I take care to see if there are any ants/insects around when I park my bike. But I might have still killed lots of them when riding the bike! But that doesnt mean that I can use it as a basis to support other avoidable killings! Even when I see any insect that accidentally enters my room, I try to catch it without harming it and then leave it outside. Not a single insect has bit me, except for a scorpion which didn’t trust me! That scorpion bit me on the chest when I was a baby!

Now for me personally, there is no morality in vegetarianism. Its simply I dont like to hurt animals. We humans have courts, friends, supporters, legal systems, media, blogs to express our pain anguish etc. Who or what do the poor dumb animals have?

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I think there should be some difference between other wild animals and humans, for nature having given us something called intelligence. Even wild animals in the forests dont hunt when they are not hungry. Look at humans! The only animal who eats even when he is not hungry!

Nobody can claim that he/she is 100% non-violent, but that doesnt mean that we should become 100% violent either. We can try our bit. Just imagine being born as a chicken! Or just imagine if tigers had evolved as intelligent animals and had started slaughtering us.

A reader said that we eat so many microbes unknowingly everyday, so isnt that killing animals?

My dear friends, microbes don’t get “killed” when we eat them! If that were the case why do we need anti-bacterial water filters? One of the very purpose of boiling/cooking food is to kill the bacteria and other microbes in the food. Why should we do that if we can kill microbes by just eating them?

Okie, now people might get another opportunity here. Isnt boiling/heating food to kill microbes wrong? Well friends, even taking medicine when you are ill will kill microbes. So shall we stop taking medicines? The reason that this is not wrong is because, otherwise you will be killing yourself!

There is a difference between practically possible minimal violence (via eating vegetarian food), and citing other unavoidable circumstances (like medicine/heating food) to support slaughterhouses. Isnt it?

Eating vegetarian or non-vegetarian food is a personal choice. Also I very well understand that I am not 100% non-violent because I also have leather shoes, belts, etc. Again, at the same time I also understand that, these accessories can also be obtained from the remains of animals that die a natural death

Isn’t 80% non violence better than 0%? I cant support eating chicken just because I unknowingly might have stamped and killed an ant! An inevitable smaller mistake cannot be used as a basis to support an avoidable larger mistake!

The same piece of land that supports one person with an animal based diet can feed 17 people eating a plant based diet!

Just because we cannot avoid unknown/unavoidable violence, doesnt mean that we can use it as a basis to support known/avoidable violence.

Some say that to dislike meat, one must have eaten it first! Well, isnt there a difference between disliking the ‘taste’ of meat and disliking the very ‘concept’ of meat? To dislike the concept of meat, is it necessary to eat it first?

I would wonder how humans would react, if tomorrow an alien species invades earth and finds that the human flesh is really very tasty, and starts having human slaughter houses!
Just imagine being packed up together in a small cage like how we pack up chickens today! And just imagine if those aliens start having our chickens as pets. And those chickens will be looking at us and laughing, saying ‘now it’s your turn’

To end on a lighter note, a joke that I modified:

A vegetarian told a small boy who was eating chicken,
“My dear boy, if you stop eating chicken, you will live for a long time!”

The boy replied, “Even my grand father lived for a very long long time!”

The vegetarian asked, “Good. So your grandfather was a pure vegetarian and never ate chicken?”

The boy replied, “No, he minded his own business”