🌿 Most people say they love animals. Some are indifferent, and a few admit they don’t like them but don’t hate them either. But when asked if they would intentionally hurt an animal, the overwhelming response is a strong “No.”
And yet, many of us eat the flesh of chickens, goats, fish, cows, buffaloes, pigs, and other animals every day. Why this contradiction?
🐾 Why Eating Animals Contradicts Our Nature
When people are asked if they would personally kill an animal to eat, 99.9% say they cannot. The sight of an animal struggling, suffering, and dying is unbearable.
👉 Why? Because compassion and justice are innate to us.
No one teaches us to feel empathy. It’s natural. Small children instinctively want to play with animals, not eat them.
If given a cucumber and a lamb, a child would eat the cucumber and cuddle the lamb.
🦁 But What About Carnivorous Animals?
Lions, tigers, and other predators don’t feel bad when they kill. They can’t afford to because it’s their only food source. For them, eating flesh is survival.
Humans, however, feel bad when animals are killed. That’s nature’s way of telling us animals are not our food.
We thrive on:
- Fruits 🍎
- Vegetables 🥦
- Pulses & grains 🌾
- Nuts & seeds
Most of our traditional Indian meals are originally vegan and varied, providing all the nutrition we need.
Remember: cutting an apple or pumpkin doesn’t distress us, but killing an animal does.
🏛️ Laws, Culture, and Conditioning
Why then do we eat some animals and not others? Because human-made laws permit it.
But these laws weren’t created by compassionate people who cared about animals. They were shaped by those who prioritized profit and power over kindness.
Over time, this normalized animal consumption, embedding it into culture and tradition.
👉 Many children stop eating meat once they witness an animal being slaughtered. Yet, society pressures them to ignore their natural compassion. This is the start of their cognitive dissonance.
⚖️ The Hidden Atrocity Against Humans
When we pay someone to kill animals, we don’t just harm animals; we also harm humans.
Butchers and fishermen are not heartless people. They have to suppress their natural compassion, numb their feelings and act against their core values daily to survive… and it’s our money that induces them to do so.
By forcing them into this cycle, we condition them to distort their thoughts in order to destroy their core values of peace and justice.
⚠️ In essence, society turns compassionate humans into instruments of killing… into monsters that no one would choose to be.
🌱 Choosing True Food
Fruits, vegetables, pulses, grains, millets, nuts, and seeds provide all the nutrients we need, including protein.
After all, where do goats, cows, and chickens get their protein from? From plants.
We obsess over protein because we’ve been conditioned to, ignoring the importance of fibre and other vital nutrients.
No other animal thinks about nutrition. They instinctively eat what they’re meant to eat.
💡 A Choice We Can Make
As Dr. Melanie Joy explains in her TED Talk “Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices”:
“Carnism (eating animals) is an invisible ideology that conditions us to eat certain animals.
It’s a dominant ideology, violent by nature.
But we do have a choice. We can choose not to engage in this behaviour.”
🌿 Conclusion
We are born with compassion. Society may manipulate us to ignore it, but deep down, our hearts know the truth: animals are not our food.
By embracing plant-based eating, we not only free animals from suffering but also free ourselves from contradictions that burden our conscience. We break the shackles of cognitive dissonance.
🌱 Call to Action
You now know that compassion is our true nature—and that animals were never meant to be our food. The good news is, you don’t have to walk this path alone.
✨ Explore hundreds of delicious, traditional, plant-based recipes in our Indian Vegan Cookbook and see how easy it is to make kinder and healthier choices every day.
🍎 Join the Eat Fruits and Heal community on Facebook and other social media platforms. Attend their free daily Zoom calls to learn why eating fruits, our natural food, is so vital for health, energy, and inner peace. Get answers to basic questions about a Fruit Diet in English and in Hindi here.
💚 Both of these are free resources, created to help you live with compassion, health, and joy.
👉 Take the first step today: Choose plants, not pain. 🌱