Correct Nutrition and Killing Others

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People usually view only spiritual, moral or mental aspects of their development as a self-improvement. It is maybe because of the obvious difficulties of improving the body and physical conditions. You have to work physically for that, and it is harder and harder to do with the age. However, the mind is sound in a sound body and from my point of view the self-improvement should start from physical health. Physical health is based mainly on correct nutrition and reasonable physical activity. Here I want to share some considerations about my principles of correct nutrition, the culture of nutrition in the US, and the morality of killing for food close and distant relatives (since we are mammals).


Culture and nurture affect the perception and everyone is strongly influenced by mass culture and morality. That is why now there is a strong resistance to killing animals for food in a part of humanity. I can partially remove the burden of guilt from many moralists, vegetarians, animal liberation fighters and PETA members.

The vegetarians do not eat meat because they think it is bad to take away animal's lives. However, it would be good to understand first what Life is. The science still can't give a definition to Life and people do not know that all living beings are created in the same way. If do not go into details Life is the result of presence of a soul in a body. In a body of the blade of grass, too. By eating plants vegetarians take away their lives and the fact that plants say nothing and do not twitch from the pain while dying does not mean they do not "feel" their "killing". They just don't move because they are created in that way, being a transitional species from "non-living" or "immobile" entities like stones to "living" or "mobile" ones like animals. That is why all plants seem to bear their death so tolerable - they just do not care like Jesus Christ did, but that doesn't mean they are "non-living". They simply have different bodies and different kind of consciousness.

Thus the vegetarians take the energy from plant's dying bodies for their (vegetarians) living. That's how Life works - to keep living you have to take energy from something/somebody else. For humans that means killing animals and plants for food. From that point of view there is no any difference between taking away life of animal or plant. The truth is that life of any particular human being is maintained by many deaths of plants and animals along the way. To stop killing means to stop eating and how are you going to live then?
Our species naturally subdued the animal's world in the process of evolution just like animals naturally had subdued the plant's world before. Someone's death is always someone else's lunch. The fighters for animal rights appeared only in 20th century (for example, "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals" or PETA in 1980). Before that humans killed and ate everything and everybody (including each other) with no any moral limits for millennia.


Now about the correct eating.
I think that the first and foremost rule here is to listen to your body. What to listen to? Your appetite.
Your body is the one you are going to feed, isn't it? And it's the one which is going to digest the meal and absorb the nutrients, not you, right? So NEVER EAT IF YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY. It's very important.
And the type of food (i.e. meat, fish, cheese, beans, vegetables, fruits, bread, cereal, etc.) is almost not important, the food should be just reasonably fresh. By the sense of a hunger your body tells you: "Let's eat something. I'm ready to digest everything you give me". And if everything is digested, then nothing will go into the fat, so you will stay slim. Unfortunately, humans turned the eating from the necessity into a pleasure and pay the price of obesity for that. The obesity comes when people begin to eat not when their body needs food (appetite), but to accompany somebody, when "it's time to eat" or when they want to indulge themselves with "something tasty".

One of the secondary rules which I personally like is pure moral and challenging one - EAT WITH A DIGNITY. Enjoy the taste of food and wine, not the quantity. This, in particular, should distinguish a human being from an animal.


About the culture of nutrition in the US.
Since the quality of food matters more than the type of food it is much healthier to eat less of natural organic foodstuffs than a lot of inorganic ones, and it is much better to cook at home from natural ingredients than to go to restaurant. The US has enough high-quality organic products which cost 20-30% more than inorganic ones and available in a lot of grocery stores, not just in "Whole Foods". The best thing for me here is the confidence of buying really organic products due to the strict state control.

Unfortunately, since the US is a "work, work, work" country (sorry, but I picked up this expression from the Americans) the nation almost stopped cooking at home. There is no time for that. As far as I understand, it happened around 50-60 years ago - my 75-years-old neighbor told me about his mother's and grandmother's cooking at home. I understood that it was a norm then. His father's salary was sufficient for affording his mother not to work and cook for the family. Now women won the right to work equally with men, mothers and grandmothers worked all days long or spent time in the Internet, so the nation had stopped cooking and gone to "fast foods". Americans are often obese because of the fast food culture and the ignorance of the main rule (the presence of appetite). It had to happen so. This is an evitable reimbursement for the ignorance.

I was brought up in another tradition, my mother cooked great, so I could distinguish between healthy good food and bad one. From my subjective point of view the Americans mostly lost a taste of good food and the propaganda of healthy lifestyle is just misleading. It was always funny to listen to the talks of fat people in line at the cash register about the benefits of fat free products. Fat free products undergo special processing, which kills everything in them, not just fat. As for me the fat free milk is not a milk at all, so we drink the organic whole one in family.


Listen to your body and be open to a new information because you are going to get some. Your body is able to maintain and cure itself without you and your hardest task is not to intrude much. An interesting theory of diagnostics and treatment came from ancient Indian knowledge of Chakras. You should let your body (i.e. without thinking) to choose the right products by color.

For example, if your body wants to take a red tomato you may have problems with Muladhara-chakra which is associated with red color and the processing of the solid food (small and large intestines). If you pick up orange carrots - something may be wrong with your Swadhishthana-chakra and the genitourinary system. If you choose yellow corn - problems might have occurred with Manipura-chakra which was responsible for digestion and body thermoregulation (stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreas). A thirst for green vegetables and fruits shows the lack of energy at the level of Anahata-chakra (heart, lungs and breathing)...


Now a funny thought came to my mind. If you choose all the colors above it means either you have a bunch of problems with all your main systems or you are an absolutely healthy and voracious person. Ok, no, it's not so unambiguous and strict. Your personal experience of picking up the correct food may be based not on Chakra colors (it's just the idea), but for sure on your body's specific reaction.
The most tricky thing here is to hear the voice of your body and not your mind. Usually it happens as follows: you (actually your body) may importunately picture for yourself a view of some kind of the food like green salad or red meat, for example, or just feel a strong attraction to a specific taste like sour lemon or spicy chips and proper view of the respective dish... Sometimes you may see those pictures and feel the taste (usually it is one single taste) randomly for a few days in a row, sometimes you may react immediately to your neighbor's food in a restaurant or to the smell from BBQ party... Just pay attention and give your body what it needs as if you are a pregnant woman.


There is no need to be a doctor or scientist to keep yourself in good health via correct nutrition, just listen to your body. It has everything you need to find the correct food for you. Your moral principles may be confused sometimes though - when your body wants to smoke a little (when it needs some nicotine) or focuses all your thoughts at the roast beef while you are committed vegetarian, for example. Do not be afraid, surprised and be tolerant with those demands - your body just lets you know what it needs now and this has nothing to do with the ethics or your mental decisions. All that is your problem. So watch your "bad" choices (sometimes your biochemistry needs them), do not get carried away with you "good" ones (sometimes they may bring you to the catastrophe like anorexia) and feed your body when it asks with something it asks for and not with what you think is better for both of you.



P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov