What Are Your Comments
on Vegetarianism Versus Meat-Eating?
Q: Would you
please discuss vegetarianism versus meat eating?
RK: You know
all the good ones.
Q: I am a
little concerned about some of your remarks previously about vegetarianism. I
probably have not heard all of your remarks about the subject. But, people
who do not choose to follow a vegetarian regime—the basic argument is that
they are not getting the proteins that animal substance provides and their
argument is that they do not choose to eat animal substances because of one
of many reasons; either it is the pesticides or the way they are prepared—
RK: How they
were killed—
Q: Killing
animals and things like that. Would you please comment on why vegetarianism,
strict vegetarianism, total vegetarianism, is not
recommended, and that eating meat in moderation is recommended.
RK: Well, I
would say this. If you eat only fruits and vegetables, you are in very
serious problems because you just are spacey. You just do not have enough
oxygen in your brain because your system is so—I am trying to decide how much
in the scientific type of explanation I want to get into this because it can
get quite long. When your blood is very alkaline, then it seems that you do
not have a proper balance of carbon dioxide in your blood stream, in which
event the carotid arteries have a natural valve in there and they tend to
shut down. It just closes off the flow of blood to the brain. Under those circumstances you also get less oxygen to the brain and so
you tend to be very floaty, very spacey, things of
that sort. And, it is hard to live a life in a practical manner under those
circumstances and it is also very difficult to fend off nether entities who
might want to take you over when you are in that floaty
state.
If using a purely
vegetarian diet you have lots of grains and nuts and
things which will acidify them so actually the blood never goes over neutral
but it gets more towards the acid side or more towards the alkaline side. So, if I say acid blood it means that you are much closer
towards the acid side than otherwise. Carbohydrates and proteins tend to
acidify the blood stream and they also tend to give
you more energy and more mental alertness.
Now, human beings were very specifically designed, as I understand
from my Teachers, because it was the only way that people could survive from
year to year in the so-called temperate zones because they did not have
fruits and vegetables available for twelve months out of the year—maybe only
six months or, if it was real nice, like eight months. So, you had to have fresh
food because we were not born with refrigerators. You started out in human
development of the race just having to deal with what was available to you.
As men learned how to become hunters of animals, they were able to move into
the more temperate climates because they were able to get fresh food on the
hoof in those months out of the year when the fresh fruits and vegetables
were not available. So, we were specifically
designed to do that.
Also, it made us much fleeter—we were able to move
around a lot better—otherwise we would be carrying around about the same
amount of gut that gorillas do because they are strictly vegetarian, except
for an accidental insect on occasion. They have to have much larger
processing equipment, in the form of more intestines and a different kind of
digestive system altogether, which, of course, would make all of us very big
around, just like gorillas are if we were to do that.
So, as a design process, they made us able to eat
fruits and vegetables and meat. There are some peoples who survive almost
entirely on a meat diet—Eskimos for instance—and there are some hunting
tribes that do very little scrounging around in the dirt to find what other
kinds of things of vegetable nature to eat.
So, we are designed to be able to do that much like
birds who are strictly grain eaters. For instance, there are many species of
birds which the adults eat nothing but grains. Their infants require a
strictly meat diet in the form of insects, worms and things of that sort, and
at least in the beginning stages while the neurological system is still being
assembled after birth when the chick first comes out of the egg. It is
designed to be as small as possible and to a great extent
it is undeveloped neurologically, even though it might be able to—seem like
it could survive by itself to some extent it really cannot. It is totally dependent upon the mother. Sparrows might be a
good example of that one, for instance, and many of the other birds which come out of the egg virtually without
feathers. They have to have an insect diet. Now, the parents do not eat or
swallow any of the insects, They might grind them up in the crop for
regurgitation into the little one’s mouth and that gives them the kind of
food that is essential for rapid muscle growth and for neurological
development.
Human infants are exactly
the same way. They must have milk or the equivalence in meat type of protein, Most of the people in this room are of a genetic
stock that requires a fair amount of meat products in order to function
properly. And it is not really possible to adopt an
entirely vegetarian diet and get along very well.
Now, there
are many people who augment a vegetarian diet with cheeses, other milk
products, and so those dairy things really do help quite a bit. They
will also eat eggs, for instance—unfertilized eggs because they do not want
to kill anything. Sometimes people carry this idea of not wanting to kill
life to that extent.
And then there are some people in different parts of the
world who feel that they are killing all kinds of invisible life when they
eat carrots and things of that sort. They have to be very careful that they
clean the things off thoroughly so that they are not consuming any of those
creatures that live underground they cannot see. So,
a lot of it gets to be philosophical about being very peaceful and not
wanting to kill anybody or anything. But they are
still murdering carrots.
So, I
guess you have to try to be as logical as you can about it, have some
background into the facts of what the tradeoffs are, and what some of the
risks are and make your own decision from that point on, We have had some
people here who have been very staunch vegetarians but unfortunately they
were also fanatics. I do not
think that the two, that one was caused by the other, they happened to be
just both simultaneously and they never really stayed or worked out very well
and, of course, very frequently they went away saying that we will never make
it to The Nation of God mainly because we are animal murderers. I guess you
have to decide what is real and what is not. So, I
have given you my run down on it and I never did take a stance, or maybe I
did.
|
