Why vegetarian food is better than meat

Introduction: Vegetarian diet is considered to be the first choice of healthy diet, why eating vegetarian food is better than meat? Come together to find out!

Vegetarianism has a deep tradition in China. "Mozi" recorded: the ancient people unknown for the diet, vegetarian and divided, the Qing people Sun Yijiang note: vegetarian, said the food grass and trees. Vegetarian food is also known as vegetables, "Ritual" said: mountains, forests, serves, there can take vegetables and food, Zheng Xuan note: the reality of grass and trees for vegetables and food. Vegetarianism has been the dietary tradition of Chinese civilization since ancient times. In China and the whole of East Asia, the diet is based on grains and vegetables, which is different from the meat-based diet of the West. Above the tip of the tongue is the taste for beauty, below the tip of the tongue is the inclination of culture and spirit. Ancient Chinese vegetarian traditions have a profound nationalistic content, full of the spirit of animal care, including love, sympathy and reverence. The spirit of reverence is unique to modern animal ethics.

To be kind to the people, to be kind to the people, and to love things, to regard animals as resources for life, but to take them with love and respect and in a controlled way, were the mainstream ideas of animal care in ancient China. Familiar allusions, such as Cheng Tang net to open a side, Germany to the beasts, the son said fishing and not program, Eagle does not shoot the hosts, etc., advocating the restrained hunting of animals. Another example is that when soft-shelled turtles, fish, soft-shelled turtles and eels are conceived, no poisons are allowed to enter the water ("Xunzi's King's System"), which emphasizes that animals should be taken in accordance with their growth rhythms. All these regulations protected the reproduction of animal resources and had important ecological significance. The Treatise on Salt and Iron, which was the spirit of governance in the Han Dynasty, pointed out that the meat of one hog was the harvest of a middle-aged man, and that fifteen buckets of grain were the food of a young man for half a month. The grain for raising one pig is half a month's food for an adult male, revealing profoundly that the cost of raising animals can feed more people, and that the cost of animal food is much higher than that of plant food. This almost modern economic thinking avoided as much as possible the concentration of plant energy in the form of animal energy for a few people, and in ancient China guaranteed the survival of more people from starvation.

The love of animals is an expression of benevolence, and it has become a Chinese political tradition in later times for politicians to use the love of animals as an expression of benevolence. For example, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty to fifteen, will no longer kill, shooting and hunting are stopped, the Tang Emperor Wenzong under the "ban on hunting Edict" to protect the Waisheng, under the Sui nature of things, and even the Northern Song Dynasty in the first few decades of the frequent issuance, including the "ban on harvesting and arresting Edict", "ban on cattle slaughtering Edict", "release of eagles and dogs Edict" and so on the ten edicts related to the protection of animals. The politicization of animal eco-ethics is an important feature of eco-ethics in ancient China.

From the point of view of the process of human cognition, after recognizing that all things and I are distinct and distinct, then recognizing the original oneness of all things and I is a more profound understanding. Ancient China has long had the philosophical proposition of universal love for all things and the oneness of heaven and earth (Zhuangzi 天下). Deeply from the animal life directly recognize this idea, with compassionate sympathy for animals, "Mencius" initially expressed this idea: the gentleman's in the beasts and animals, also, see its life, can not bear to see its death; hear its voice, can not bear to eat its flesh. Song scholar Cheng Yi denied the idea that animals are born as food: one said that born beasts, originally for human food, this is not. How can anyone be born with ants and lice? ("Henan Cheng's book" Volume VIII) empathy for the pain of animals, Ming Confucian Gao Panlong said: general flesh and skin, general pain, things but can not say ear. I do not know its knife and chopping board, how agonizing, and in the family instructions, for guests do not more dishes, and use vegetarian dishes. Cutting for the life counting, a little can be saved, then save. Save kill a life, in my heart have infinite peace. ("Gao Zi posthumous" Volume 10) in the late Qing Dynasty Kang Youwei in the "Datong book" pointed out that the birds and animals and people with the original and to the relatives, the knowledge of the spirit of the Ming, it is not far away from the human cover, the knowledge of the pain is also very much, advocating abstinence from eating animals, and predicted that the future world must be a vegetarian society.

Compassion for animals, is in the depths of thinking and the body of the body of the silent realization. Only the pain and fear of birds and animals and my pain and fear is the same pain and fear, birds and animals of life and my life is the same life, as the world is not a thing that is not me, there will be from the depths of emotion echo. In this sense, sympathy is a kind of direct cognition beyond language, which is called conscience in Chinese philosophy, i.e. a kind of unthinking goodwill. The Yi Zhuan Zhi Ri Shang (易传系辞上) is the highest affirmation of this spiritual transcendence of empathy: Yi, without thought, without action, silent and motionless, feeling and then trying to communicate with heaven and earth. The world is not the most God, who can be with this!

The moralization of animals in early China not only endowed various animals with specific virtues, but also incorporated animals into a moral spectrum, which was a deep spiritualization of the cosmic picture. There is an ontological genealogy of all things in the Da Dai Li Ji: general animals (hair, feathers, scales) and humans are in the same natural world, and auspicious animals such as lin, phoenix, tortoise, dragon, and so on (referred to as the Four Spirits) are in the higher sacred world with the saints; there is a vertical projection relationship between the parallel two-tiered worlds, with the Four Spirits being the essence of the animals, and the saints being the essence of the human beings. In the philosophical sense, the four spirits symbolize the transcendent virtuous entities abstracted from animals in general, and the saint represents the transcendent perfect personality abstracted from human beings. The Spring and Autumn Annals also recounts the conditions under which the Four Spirits appear: if the ruler loves and favors the animals, the Four Spirits will appear as a revered symbol of good fortune; if the animals are treated cruelly, the Four Spirits will retreat and there will be fearful natural disasters. In this sense, the fear of the four spirits and the love of animals are not two different attitudes towards the two objects, but the internal and external care: the love of animals is the fear of the four spirits; with fear of the heart to carry out the love of the love of the love of the act of fear to express the fear.

Contemporary scholar Qiao Qingju creatively included auspicious animals in the category of animal eco-ethics, pointing out the `ecological significance' of animals as the divine symbols of nature by taking the four spirits as an example. The French sage Schweitzer, who had a deep understanding of Chinese thought, once put forward the ethical idea of reverence for life, believing that all life is sacred, including those that appear to be inferior from the standpoint of human beings. However, the fear of life is realized in animals as sympathy, which is different from the ancient Chinese reverence for auspicious animals. In other words, in Schweitzer's thought, animals are not divine. It is not difficult to understand that in the Western Christian cultural tradition, only God has the only divine personality. In ancient China, on the other hand, the supreme deity emperor was abolished as early as the Zhou Dynasty, and the auspicious animal as the emperor's envoy was a sacred symbol of virtue. In this sense, the real object of reverence is not the four spirits, but the virtue itself, which is represented by the four spirits and carried by natural life.

In modern scholarship, there are two kinds of animal care ideas: animal rights theory and animal welfare theory. The animal rights theory advocates that animals have their irreplaceable inherent value, and should be considered equally and should not be taken; the animal welfare theory is not opposed to the use of animals, but human beings have the obligation to make the animals to avoid pain and create a happy life. Taking the three ethical dimensions of sympathy, love and reverence for animals in ancient China as an example, the motivation of the animal rights theory is comparable to that of sympathy, and the motivation of the animal welfare theory is comparable to that of love and reverence. At present, animal ethics originating from the West has been unremittingly devoted to, and limited to, these two senses of exposition, while the attitude of treating animals with reverence is missing. Awe is the spirit of animal care unique to ancient China.