| ❖ பொருந்தும் உணவும் பொருந்தா உணவும் ❖ |
his happiness, he must totally avoid infringing on the rights of other moving lives and adhere strictly to pure vegetable diet alone.
But it is to be borne in mind that even among the articles of vegetarian diet there are those that contain proportionately a greater quantity of uric acid poison then is found in the meat preparations. Such are tea, coffee, cocoa etc. These and stimulants like alcohol, tobacco, opium and others must be studiously avoided by all who wish to lead a healthy and long life and to produce and perpetuate a long line of descendants strong and sound in both mind and body. Of the substances that compose a wholesome vegetarian meal entirely free from uric acid poison, the following six classes of foodstuffs are mentioned by Dr. A. Haig as sufficient to build up all the constituents of a sound and vigorous human body. They are 1. Milk and its products 2. Bread, cereal foods and gluten 3. Nuts and nut-foods 4. Garden vegetables as potatoes 5. Garden fruits as apples 6. Dried and foreign fruits. In addition to being cheap, these are sweet to taste, sweet to semll, pleasing to mind, harmless and humane and using them as food is in complete harmony with the high ethical station of life to which man has arisen after so many hard and fierce life and death struggles. May it therefore behave every man and every woman to awaken to a sense of the value of their ethical life and lead it so as not to cause any harm either to man or any innocent animal! And be it remembered that there can be no harm greater than that of killing a living being and depriving it of the life given not by man but by providence for the great benefit of improving its understanding by a knowlede and experience of the world!
The above was contributed by me as an article to The Indian Humanitarian magazine conducted by The Bombay Humanitarian League and appeared in the 5th no. of its first volume, in January, 1920. For the benefit of those of our countrymen who wish to read everything in English instead of in their own mothertongue, it is re- published here with many alterations and a few additions. For this
