$JES 921 Book of Compassion Reverence For All Life Reference Book

Author(s): Pramoda Chitrabhanu, Pravin K Shah
Publisher: JAINA Education Committee

Page 61

11- THE MYTH ABOUT MILK
ability to digest lactose, the carbohydrate found in milk. The results often are in symptoms of persistent diarrhea, gas and stomach cramps. (As far as protein is concerned, milk gives the same amount as most vegetables and less than some vegetables). A human being's total protein requirement is 4-5 percent of this daily calorific intake. Nature has arranged her food in such a manner that even if you live on a diet of chapatti and potatoes, you will still get more than that amount!
The alternative to dairy products is soya milk that contains vitamin and tastes as good (or bad). It makes excellent yogurt, paneer, ice cream, butter, cheese and milk chocolate, vegetable margarine and plain calcium tablets-which cost much less than milk.
Milk is an unnecessary theft. Do you think that a calf would benefit from your mother's milk? No, it wouldn't. So how will you benefit from its mother's milk? Most of Southeast Asia and the Middle East don't touch the stuff and rightly so. All studies have shown that Asians have the highest intolerance to lactose. In India, we have been sold the idea by concentrated western advertising over the last several years. "Nature's most perfect food" is far from that - it is the equivalent of a placebo, and a dangerous one at that. And, more importantly, apart from harming yourself, every glass of milk that you drink, every ice cream, every pat of butter, ensures that enormous cruelty to a gentle animal and its offspring goes on."
Here it seems appropriate to mention one thing more and that is the ignorant practices of using milk and its by-products in the temple ceremonies and rituals. The practices of bathing the statues (Abhishek) with milk, offering sweets to the Gods made of milk as part of the rituals has creeped into temples, polluting the very sanctity of the place and the environment. It is a violent waste to let all this milk go down the drain where it becomes the breeding place of ants and bacteria. These kinds of practices must stop and the original way of bathing (Abhishek) with clean and pure water should be maintained.
THE BOOK OF COMPASSION
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