"switching from a standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against climate change than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid."
http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-For-Food/Meat-and-Environment.aspx
Given, this is from PETA's website; an organization which has done much good, and also has many fanatical members who have not helped its cause.
I am curious if there is any existing research into the possible spiritual/psychic effects eating flesh has on the human species. Given, animals consume flesh. But we may be a bit higher up on the evolutionary tree branches than ,say, a lion?
Ancient warriors of widespread tribes and cultures believed eating the flesh of their enemy gave them their enemy's strength. But does it damage the psyche?
I have heard that, when an animal dies violently, toxins are released (from the hypothalamus), permeating the muscles of the body. Upon eating that meat, the consumer takes in those toxins, poisoning its own system.
The experience of other cultures shows that eating meat, depending on how it was killed, may have a great effect on an individual's experience here.
http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/articles/id/spiritualresearch/spiritualscience/veg-or-non-veg
I am curious to see what future scientific discoveries reveal about this issue.
Oh, but where do we begin? The entire reason cows are treated so gently on the killing floor and stunned/killed with a quick blow to the head is so they don't get the chance to toxify their flesh. It makes sense that it's the hypothalamus that does this, but I've never known why other than it's a fear response. And that fear is contagious, by the way, so they (slaughterers) need to keep everyone calm as their being led to their deaths. Charming.
ReplyDeleteI was a vegetarian for 20+ years and don't feel totally happy as part of the meat-eating crowd. The problem to me is the imbalance at which we humans consume other animals. Yes, they do eat each other, but they don't have massive feedlots or chicken farms, nor have they overfished the oceans, lakes, and streams. In fact, the gross majority of the time they're in imbalance with their environment is when we humans have created the possibility for imbalance. Chew on that.