Spiderman is a Vegan and practices Yoga

Spiderman, Spiderman,

Does whatever a spider can

Spins a web, any size,

Catches thieves just like flies

Look Out! Here comes the Spiderman.

Every one from a small child to an adult is fond of superheroes and would certainly wish to get some of their powers. Needless to say that 'Spiderman' is one of the favourite superheroes around the world. So this bit of information might inspire a few. The man who played the strong, loveable, caring, protecting Spidey - Tobey Maguire, is certainly one to look up to. He is a vegetarian (vegan to be precise) and practices yoga daily.

Gung-ho about eggs

People who consume dairy products and eggs are called lacto-ovo-vegetarians. Just clearing some issues.......

I have had some people expressing their relief at knowing that by eating eggs they are not killing anything. But I had also mentioned that the source of those eggs has to be examined. Most of the eggs in India are gathered from hens in conditions i had elaborated in previous articles. And if that is the case then it's even worse.

Also, it has been pointed that even by eating plants we are killing living beings. To this i would like to respond by saying that in Jainism, all living beings are classified as those with different no of senses. You can refer to this google book from page 150 onwards. We have 5 senses like animals while the plants have 2. So the pain inflicted when we eat them is much lesser or nil when we consume plants. Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but all personal decisions should be made with awareness and reasoning.

One more question that can be raised here is of whose eggs? I mean all over the world people eat a variety of eggs ranging from those of hens (most widespread), ostrichs etc. Again i dont have any idea as to how the other eggs are obtained. If anyone knows and can send me the information, i'll be happy to publish it here.

Till then this issue is adjourned :-)

Clearing the air on eggs

Hello everybody, i was having a few differing opinions on the article "Do you call yourself an eggitarian?", which prompted me to read a little more to find answers. Here's what i want to say now. My previous thinking that eggs are infertile is right(most of them are). I was wrong the next time. As facts state, the hens do not need a cockerel to produce eggs, they do it naturally after attaining maturity. These eggs are infertile i.e. no living chick would come out of it if it were to hatch. Only the eggs laid after the hens mating with cockerel produces fertile eggs. So i think eggs can be safely had if the moral and ethical issues of sourcing (keeping the hens in good surroundings) are answered!!! Thank you Mayuresh & Abhishek for drawing my attention.

I rest my case here :-)

Vegetarianism & Food scarcity

I always had this question in my mind, that if more than 95% of the people of the world eat non-veg and if a sizable portion of them were to convert into vegetarians, wouldn't that lead to shortage of vegetables and a galloping inflation in their prices. Well here's what i read in the book of vegetarianism by Swami Chidanand Saraswati.

• It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, but takes a pound of grain to produce a pound of bread.
• Everyday 40000 children starve to death. Everyday we produce enough grain to provide every person on earth with more than 2 loaves of bread but it's being fed to livestock instead.
• Across the world, an average of 40% of the grain produced is fed to livestock.
• 1.4 bn people could be fed by the grain which is given to US livestock.
• One acre of fertile land can grow 40000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre can provide only 250 pounds of beef if it is used to grow grain for cattle feed.
• If you take 2.5 acres of land and use it to grow potatoes, you can fulfill the nutritional requirements of 22 people. If you use it to grow rice, you can fulfill the nutritional requirements of 19 people. But if you use it to produce chicken (including the food) you can fulfill nutritional requirements of 2 people. Even worse, if you use it to produce eggs or beef, you meet requirements for just 1 person. Can you imagine the irresponsible usage of the land when so many are starving?
• If meat eaters reduce their intake of meat by only 10 %, we could feed everyone who die of starvation.
• We could feed 10 billion people a year if we were all vegetarians. Much more than the human population.

A Buddhist saying goes thus, "The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives." Aren't we behaving in the same way.

There is much more to write on the issue of vegetarianism including nutritional aspects, ecology, wastage of resources etc. but I'll save that for later.

Famous Vegetarians

Here's a list of famous vegetarians in India & abroad of then and now. Have a look.

India

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (First Home Minister of India) (vegan)
P.V. Narasimha Rao (Prime Minister of India (1991-1996))
Mahatma Gandhi (vegan)
Amitabh Bachchan (actor)
Madhuri Dixit (actor)
John Abraham (actor)
Shahid Kapur (actor)
APJ Abdul Kalam (President - current)
Milind Soman (actor / model)

Indian Film Industry's list of hottest vegetarians

Abroad

George Bernard Shaw - Playwright
Henry Ford - ford motor company
Jude Law - actor
Leo Tolstoy - Russian writer
Leonardo da Vinci - artist
Natalie Portman - Actress
Paul McCartney - Singer/ Activist
Orlando Bloom - actor
Richard Gere - Actor
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poet
Shania Twain - singer(vegan)
Steve Jobs - Apple Computers
Vincent Van Gogh - Painter
Yehudi Menuhin - violinist
Albert Einstein - scientist
Anne Hathaway - actress
Benjamin Franklin - scientist
Bille Jean King - Tennis champion
Bryan Adams - Musician
Dustin Hoffman - Actor
Martin Luther King

This list is only for representation as there are many many more famous personalities who are vegetarians. Some of them I know and some i don't.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein 1879-1955 Physicist, Nobel Prize winner 1921

Do you call yourself an "EGGITARIAN"?

I have heard many people say that they are vegetarians but eat eggs or eggitarians. i was also one of them. I remember as a 12 year old in school, i had gone to my Bengali friend's house to spend the day. She was having an omelet for snacks & offered it to me too. At that time i was quite impressionable and also curious about its taste. So i took a mouthful but before i could chew it down something within me forced me to puke it out. I don't know what that was.

Then as a grown up a few years back i again tasted egg in its form with different seasonings and didn't mind the taste. I didn't know the facts then. I thought that the eggs we take are infertile & wouldn't have lead to a chick anyways. I used to have eggs in desserts, biscuits (any unseen form) without being mindful and i must admit that i do that now also, though less frequently. (after all i too am a slave to my tongue) But after reading this book "Vegetarianism - for your body, your mind, your soul and your planet" by Swami Chidanand Saraswati; my thinking has changed.

The book says, an egg is a chicken about to be born. The condition of egg-laying hen is as despicable as that of chickens as mentioned in the previous article. Naturally in situations like this the hens become frustrated, anxious, panicked. So they peck each other. In order to prevent this, their beaks are cut off which frequently prevents hens from being able to eat. They also have their toes and claws cut off so that these do not become stuck in metal wires of their crates. these crates are piled high on top of each other. In this way they can't more even an inch. Plus when they excrete, it just falls down the crates. The cages are never cleaned.

If the egg production decreases, the hens are forced into molting. i.e. they are starved till they lost weight and feathers for 14 days & no water for 3 days. Those who survive receive a temporary boost up in their egg laying capacity.

Again some eggs have to be hatched to continue the process. Half of then turn out to be roosters which are smothered & mixed in chicken feed. More chicks are killed this way every year in the USA than there are people in the entire country.

Please understand

"Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations as acute as our own...their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their reactions to pain are remarkably similar" - Richard Serjeant, the Spectrum of Pain.

Vegetarianism

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi

"The life of an animal in a factory farm is characterized by acute deprivation, stress and disease. Hundreds of millions of animals are forced to live in cages or crates barely larger then their own bodies. Unable to groom, stretch their legs, or even turn around, the victims of factory farms exist in a relentless state of distress." - Humane Farming Association

One of the most important guiding principles of a moral life is ahimsa or nonviolence. There is hardly anything more violent than taking the life of another for our pleasure. If we can't give life to others (except procreation), we don't have any right to take it. And we are not living in jungles, where survival itself is a big question. Even more violent than their day of death are the numerous days of the lives of these animals which are raised distinctly differently than our pets.

There are innumerable reasons of choosing a vegetarian diet. They range from better health, care of the environment, conservation of resources, spiritual benefits etc etc. Will be creating a whole section of articles under this label but for today let's first start by looking at how chickens are treated?

Chickens have natural territory and space needs that are unmet in chicken "farms". They are packed together as closely as possible such that they can't even move. The department of agriculture recommends that they should have a minimum of 2 square feet in which to live (how horrendous), but the biggest companies provide a more 0.55 sq feet.

Imagine yourself in an elevator, which is so crowded that you cannot even turn around. All the people in the elevator are confused and scared. They do not realize there is no way out. So they cry and bite & kick attempting to free themselves. Imagine still that the elevator is titled so that everyone falls to one side and it is nearly impossible to move back up. The ceiling is so low that your head is pushed down to your shoulders. There is no way to straighten. Also the terror does not end when someone comes to open the door, your life does.

The chickens raised to be eaten are fed extraordinary and unnaturally large amounts of food in order to put on extra weight. In today's chicken farms, most of the chickens are so obese by 6 weeks that they can't even walk, and most of them have a disease called leucosis (chicken cancer)

So think of all this the next time you sit to have chicken........