Jain Spirit 2005 09 No23

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 77

flesh of animals for sustenance.
Vegetarianism and other health related teachings of the Adventists are largely due to the efforts of Ellen White, one of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Underlining the words of Genesis, she preached that 'the eating of flesh is unnatural', noting that in the Garden of Eden 'one animal was not to destroy another animal for food'. She decried meat eating because of the diseases animals carried and because it unnaturally ripped animals from their intended environments. White described the experiences of many animals before their slaughter, lamenting: "Taken from green pastures and travelling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads or crowded into filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death." It was not merely for the physical health of people and animals that White feared, however. Noting apostle Paul's words that the body is a temple of God, she warned followers that eating meat would destroy more than merely the body, preaching:
"The moral evils of a flesh diet are
regard those creatures of God!" White thus believed that eating meat harmed people's relationship with their Creator and damaged their minds and souls. Through her activism and conviction, Seventh Day Adventists accepted her call to vegetarianism.
not less marked than are the physical ills. Flesh food is injurious to health and whatever the affects, the body has a corresponding effect on the mind and the soul. Think of the cruelty to animals meat-eating involves and its effect on those who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should
The Church currently promotes lacto-ovo vegetarianism, stressing that the choice of diet is a personal matter and recommending that vegans supplement their diets with foods containing B12. Melissa Harris, associate director of the Adventists' health ministries for the church in the South Pacific, is careful to note that "Adventists encourage rational and responsible decision making about what foods to eat." The Adventist Church owns and operates 25 healthfood industries around the world; Kellogg's cereal production was also inspired by the Adventist health message in the late 1890s.
Seventh Day Adventists are the subjects of several health studies because of their homogeneity in lifestyle. In fact, the Adventist Health Study recently found that Seventh Day Adventists live longer than any other formally studied
VEGETARIANISM IS SEEN AS GOD'S NATURAL PLAN BECAUSE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, NOT ONLY WERE ADAM AND EVE VEGETARIAN BUT SO WAS ALL OF GOD'S CREATION.
population in the world, with an average life span of 78.5 years for men and 82.3 for women. While several studies have attempted to determine the health effects of a vegetarian lifestyle in members of this religious group, their results must be balanced with the acknowledgement that other lifestyle choices, such as Adventists' avoidance of tobacco and alcohol, make it hard to isolate whether all findings are diet related. That being said, in 1989 a study of 14,000 Seventh Day Adventists concluded that consuming animal products increased the risk of colon, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer. An earlier study in 1975 included 23,000 largely vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists and determined that cancer mortality rates for this group were 50-75% lower than that of the general population for
INTERFAITH
several cancer sites unrelated to smoking or alcohol.
The only major ongoing study on the health and mortality of vegetarians in the United States was conducted during the years 1976-1988. The study focused on 341,932 members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, 29% of whom were vegetarian, with 7-10% of the vegetarians being vegan. Compared to those who ate meat, the vegetarians had roughly half of the high blood pressure and diabetes cases, half of the colon cancer, twothirds of the rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer, and a lower incidence of breast, lung and uterine cancers.
Thus Seventh Day Adventists strive to prove that avoiding meat is not only good for the soul but for the physical body as well. Members therefore have more than one reason motivating them to proclaim, in the words of Ellen White, "No thank you; I do not eat meat. I have conscientious scruples against eating the flesh of dead animals."
Kirstin Odegaard is a high school English teacher at Pittsburg High School in California. She practises Christianity and has been vegetarian for the last two and a half years.
www.vegetarian-diet.info/health-benefits-vegetarian-diet.htm http://adventist.org.au/about_adventists/misconceptions For more information, please visit the following sites: www.ivu. rg/history/adventists/white.html
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www.jainelibrary.ord
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