Food as a Medium of Love

For example, Thanksgiving in the US takes the lives of some 50 million turkeys in one day! It does not have to be that way, but due to ignorance, misinformation or just plain lust, people choose to eat dead carcasses on these joyous occasions.

I remember the first time I attended a Christmas party with friends in Sydney, Australia, after turning vegetarian and how shocked I was to see a pig’s leg on the table. I asked my friend, “Do you know there is a corpse on your table?” He looked at me incredulously and said, “Oh come on, it’s just a leg of ham!” Exactly. What gives us the right to eat another living being’s leg when there are so many other options?

Look at any supermarket aisle; there are literally thousands of non-violent foods to choose from. In fact, food technology has advanced so much over the last two decades that mock meats and mock dairy products fill entire sections of the supermarket, from “fish fillets,” to “steaks,” “hot dogs,” and melting “cheeses” all made with non-animal ingredients, but so authentic that they can fool even a hard-core carnivore. However, a recent investigation in Los Angeles revealed that many mock meats coming out of Taiwan actually contained animal extracts.2 If you want to eat an entirely plant-based diet, therefore, with no chance of contamination by animal-derived ingredients, the only solution is to grow your own food and prepare it at home, seed to plate.