Christian Vegetarian Association Blog - Honoring God by Honoring Our Bodies


	CVA BLOG

Honoring God by Honoring Our Bodies
May 21, 2012

Welcome to the weekly CVA blog! In it you will find famous quotes, news and commentaries.

Why Do Some People Go Back to Eating Animals?

Famous Quote: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Newsweek interview (October 16, 1978) after winning the Nobel Prize in literature

Pink Slime and Mad Cow Disease in a Nutshell

Bible verse: 1 Corinthians 4:2

Olympic Athletes Turn Vegetarian

This Week’s Video: Dr. McDougall

1. Why Do Some People Go Back to Eating Animals?

Farm Sanctuary's Compassionate Community Campaigns addresses the many reasons why former vegan and vegetarians decide to go back to meat-eating. The reasons are varied but in general they can be rounded down to: taste, health, inconvenience, motivation, identity, the switch and support. This article sheds light into these reasons and gives us tips on how to help vegan and vegetarians to stay on track.

Please visit Former vegetarians: who they are and why we lost them:
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/CompassionateCommunities/?p=605&fb_source=message

I believe that if we realize that we are ultimately all connected through God's essence of love, we would find it very hard to go back to our old ways of causing much suffering to other beings by eating them.

2. This Week’s Famous Quote

“The same questions are bothering me today as they did fifty years ago. Why is one born? Why does one suffer? In my case, the suffering of animals also makes me very sad. I’m a vegetarian, you know. When I see how little attention people pay to animals, and how easily they make peace with man being allowed to do with animals whatever he wants because he keeps a knife or a gun, it gives me a feeling of misery and sometimes anger with the Almighty. I say ‘Do you need your glory to be connected with so much suffering of creatures without glory, just innocent creatures who would like to pass a few years in peace?’ I feel that animals are as bewildered as we are except that they have no words for it. I would say that all life is asking: ‘What am I doing here?’”

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, Newsweek interview (October 16, 1978) after winning the Nobel Prize in literature

3. Pink Slime and Mad Cow Disease in a Nutshell

John Robbins, best-seller and author of "Diet for a New America, wrote an excellent piece about pink slime and Mad Cow Disease. Robbins lifts up the curtain behind which factory farms hide and exposes their rotten business that not only does it put people's lives are risk but that also deceives the public in ways that are actually amazingly hard to image.

See Pink Slime and Mad Cow Disease: Coming to a Burger Near You:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/pink-slime-mad-cow_b_1455656.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false&fb_source=message#sb=1034623,b=facebook

Factory farming is an industry driven by greed, apathy toward sentient beings, power, merciless, fear and deceit. Otherwise, how else does it stay in business? Fortunately, the truth always is known, soon or later, and it seems that the time has come for the animal agriculture industry. I hope that Christians become the leaders of the movement that chooses compassion, joy, celebration and love: the vegan movement.

4. This Week’s Bible Verse

(RSV) 1 Corinthians 4:2

Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.

Are we being trustworthy stewards of God’s Creation by causing environmental devastation on Earth as well as so much pain, misery and death to our fellow beings? I think it’s time to assume our roles as stewards of God’s Creation in a loving, joyful and responsible way. That is, taking care of the Earth and its inhabitants as if it were God doing it: lovingly, joyfully and compassionately.

5. Olympic Athletes Turn Vegetarian

Seemingly, beef is not healthy for Chinese Olympic athletes because it might contain clenbuterol or ractopamine, used to make beef leaner. The fear is that these substances might get athletes disqualified by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Yang Hongbo, head of catering for 700 high-performance athletes at the Jiangsu Sports Training Centre said, “No company dares to sign a contract promising their meat does not contain clenbuterol or ractopamine.”

Please visit Chinese athletes turn vegetarian ahead of Olympics:
http://www.firstpost.com/sports/chinese-athletes-turn-vegetarian-ahead-of-olympics-301668.html

Surely, beef might contain lots of additives that are very harmful for our health. But it is also laden with saturated fat and cholesterol, both unhealthy for our bodies. And as if all this weren't enough, beef is tainted with suffering, pain and death. The flesh of God's animals on our plates only causes devastation: spiritual, environmental, physical, psychological and even sociological. Those who truly want to be good stewards of God's Creation should not support or tolerate the animal agriculture industry.

6. This Week’s Video: Dr. McDougall

Dr. John McDougall began his medical career as a plantation doctor for Dole Foods in Hawaii, almost 40 years ago. There he saw generations of families who had emigrated mostly from Asia to work in the sugar fields. He noticed the older workers were in better health than each subsequent generation. Dr. McDougall discovered that it was the type of food they ate that accounted for the quality of each generation's health.

He describes the devastating effects of the standard American diet in this short excerpt from the award-winning documentary, Processed People: How I Learned Diet Kills and Cures -- Dr. McDougall (VIDEO):
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/09/why-people-get-sick----mcdougall-video.html

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