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72
THE TRUTH
Page 270 : “One day Ba collected a quantity of ginger roots from Mrs. Gool's basket and placed them in our room. I was struck with horror" to see them....How could one eat ginger ? This thing, a single joint of which proliferated into so many shoots, must indeed be full of lives. Moreover, to eat fresh shoots was as good as killing delicate bodies. I felt extremely disgusted with myself. L resolved that I would never eat ginger, not in this life.”
What is true of killing animals applies to eating of eggs. We destroy the means of reproduction of birds and a mother can very well understand what it means if her child is destroyed even before it is born. Birds are intelligent creatures and feel sorrows and pleasures. like us. The fact that we have unfertilized eggs makes no difference to the hen and she is doubly in agony for having been kept away from the cock and having lost her eggs. .It is a common knowledge that animal food very often gives. rise to other bad habits like drinking, smoking etc., and further lowers a man's moral status.
Health : There is a certain misconception that animal food is essential and superior for proper health, because it contains more proteins and in a form easily digestible by the body. While it may be partially true, but more of it has been publicised by those who have been eating flesh for sensual pleasures, and wish to justify their actions or it may be through ignorance alone. According to a Govt. of India publication, the protein contents of various foods are given below :
Vegetable food ... Food wheat pulses soyabean ground nut milk powder :: % protein 12.1 22 to 43.2 31.5
38
24
Non-Veg Food
Food Egg % protein 13.3
.
Meat 18.5
Fish 22.6
Thus the facts are otherwise than the misconception.
. Dr. Bircher Benner of Germany, a famous dietician writes in his book Food Science for all that human beings fed on egg alone or with a diet with chief constituent as egg will get their kidneys inflamed and excrete albumen and may ultimately die... He says
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