This writing was prompted by a video that many of my friends forwarded on facebook in the last two days, a conversation with the little one and a recent visit to great america parkway where almost half the people we saw waiting in line for one of the rides were obese. Older people, kids, different races (black, white, hispanic) all struggling to walk or try to fit in the seat on those rides! The thought that kept going through my head was "these rides are all rated based on a safety factor of ? 2x ? and most of them were built 30 years ago? this population is almost 2x heavier than the population 30 years ago. what if the whole thing collapses?
We were on a Wilderness tour bus and the little one looked up to me and said
"Daddy, Sheep are my favorite animal when it comes to materials we use from the animal. Do you want to know why?"
It was a weird statement, so I took my eye off the camera viewfinder and said "why?"
Her response was :
"all the other animals when humans use them, they kill the animal. on a sheep you only have to give it a shave and you get the wool and the sheep grows it back! That is why I like sheep"
I was touched by that and so were San and Jr. who were listening to this. Did't have the mind to tell her that folks eat sheep as well!
Later that night, we had a conversation on why people kill animals as food. Told them that humans evolved from apes and when humans went to places like Alaska where food was hard to find the humans had two choices in winter..
a. Eat a lot of food and hibernate in a cave for 6 months like the bears
b. Find something to eat even in the winter months were plants dont put out anything
and since humans didn't have what it took to hibernate, they chose the second option by eating meat.
Have shown them a video in the past that shows how our teeth compare to herbivores and not carnivores and meat eating is an abberation of sorts that got a lot of focus in history.
Given today's world, the ability of humans to transport grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts there is not a big justification to eat meat. It takes at least 10 times the energy to make a pound of meat than to eat an equivalent portion of grain and that is taking a toll on the planet as more folks in China, India and other emerging countries with big growing "middle class" populations are starting to eat meat!
The average American consumes the equivalent of 1400 lbs of grain (if you take into account the grain it takes to make the meat) to an average Indian at 300 lbs. When you put that in water usage it gets a lot more glaring.
Eating meat is a choice and is also a way of life. If your parents raised you as vegetarian, chances are you will be comfortable with veggies. You know there is a variety of dishes and ways to cook it to know that the lack of meat is not a big deal. If you are raised in a family that eats meat and you are taught that eating your meat is very important for your health, then it is understandable that it gets passed on generation to generation.
There are three things I learned that are worth sharing
1. If you have access to veggie stuff, then you can go easy on the amount of meat and you can make a huge impact to the planet!
2. Not eating meat in almost 80% of human inhabitated land (weather, climate related) where vegetarian options co-exist will not cause a health risk. The Shaolin monks are all vegetarian! All the Spiritual gurus and great Yogis I have seen are vegetarian. So there is no physical risk or mental risk when you don't eat meat.
3. If you eat meat, you have a higher burden of not wasting meat on your plate! Eat up! Throwing meat in the trash can is worse than throwing veggies in the trash. Not that I am encouraging vegetarians to waste food.. wasting is bad (specifially writing this for someone who reads this blog!)
On a personal note, my kids know that I did try eating meat for a few years while in grad school and found out in the process that I was extremely allergic to seafood (stopped eating even Veggie food in seafood places to avoid allergy attacks), could not eat red meat without consequences on my digestive system and the only thing I could eat was chicken. Eating chicken was crossing a psychological barrier than anything else. There was no chicken after marriage and those years of eating chicken occasionally did not make me stronger or improve my appetite or provide me with any extra survival skills. In short, could have comfortably been a veggie all my life and would not have missed anything.
The whole Yoga experience puts things in a new perspective. Doing 90 minutes of exercise that pretty much tests every part of the body and learning that the four things you need for your body and mind to work in concert are oxygen, water, movement and then food in that order, the vegetarian food has not kept me back from improving or being able to do any of these exercises.
Totally understand now how the monks are vegetarian!
