Indian School Textbook on Vegetarian Health Benefits Wrongly Slammed

A textbook which has been used in Indian schools since 2008 says that meat-eaters lie, cheat, don't keep promises, steal, commit sex crimes and violence.

The book in question, New Healthway: Health, Hygiene, Physiology, Safety, Sex Education, Games and Exercises by David S. Poddar, is aimed at Class 6 pupils (11 and 12 year-olds), and printed by S Chand, a reputed publishing company which prints books used in hundreds of schools in India.

On page 56 the book says about non-vegetarians: "They easily cheat, tell lies, they forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes."

New Healthway also highlights the health benefits of a meatless and vegetable-based diet.

Although inaccurately describing the fish-eating Japanese as vegetarian, it says about them something that is correct about vegetarian or even mostly vegetarian nutrition: "They are vegetarians and live longer than most other peoples. The generous use of green leafy vegetables, soya beans and grams has helped the people to maintain vigour, strength and endurance throughout the centuries".

Epidemiological studies within the same country and across countries do show that vegetarians live longer and are less vulnerable to major killers like cancer and cardio-vascular diseases than meat-eaters.

New Healthway has received very harsh criticism and raised concerns in India about control over school textbooks.

"This is poisonous for children," Janaki Rajan of the Faculty of Education at Jamia Millia University in Delhi, who was part of the committee that prepared a report raising concerns about textbooks printed by private publishers, told the BBC.

The book has also been attacked by some self-appointed "guardians of science" against the dark forces of superstition, in a post which is full of inaccuracies itself. The article author has relied on the BBC report and has never consulted the original Indian source of the news, otherwise he (or it coud be she) would not write that "It’s not know [sic] whether any schools have bought the book, but those that do will have some ‘splaining to do", because he would know that the book has been in use in several schools since 2008.

For someone who respects the rules of science, sloppy and superficial research is not a good starting point.

The reason why the activist atheist site in question, called Why Evolution Is True (like a book by Jerry Coyne which in fact I have), even covers the topic of this Indian textbook lies in its Christain connection: "The strongest argument that meat is not essential food is the fact that the Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables," reads a chapter entitled Do We Need Flesh Food?".

This is similar to the basis on which the vegetarianism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination, is founded.

The irony is that, as far as health is concerned, science is on the side of this textbook's argument, however badly presented and stimulated by whatever inspiration, Christian in this case.

A book that promotes vegetarianism for ethical and medical reasons is a good thing, even if the style, admittedly, could have been more refined.

In fact, I would say that this book is very welcome and, despite its limitations, even necessary, if you consider this:

Despite a strong culture of vegetarianism and a religious taboo over beef-eating, Indians are consuming more and more meat as the country’s economy grows and consumers become better-travelled.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization last year said Indians’ per capita consumption of meat was running at 5.0 to 5.5 kilograms (11 to 12 pounds) a year, the highest since it began compiling records.

In short, India seems to be going the same way as China. Since we're on the subject, did you know that the much-vituperated McDonald's has announced that it will open two vegetarian restaurants in India next year, the first such outlets globally for the world’s biggest restaurant chain? McDonald's is trying to grow in India where it is still a relatively small presence and so is bowing to local demand.

Once McDonald’s has its first vegetarian restaurants in place in India, why not put pressure on the hamburger chain to open them elsewhere, indeed everywhere else?


Another assertion in the textbook that has given rise to controversy is in its life lessons, where it advocates marriage for girls between 18 to 25, adding: "To get married without a bad name is a dream of every young girl."

People could do much worse than follow advice of that kind. Again this book is attacked for the style and form in which it presents its arguments, rather than being analyzed for the substance of its content.

Unless, of course, someone thinks that it's preferable to have a high rate of teenage pregnancy, illegitimate births, fatherless families, sexually transmitted diseases, in short all the consequences of not stopping to consider whether sexual promiscuity is indeed the way forward.

Great News: Los Angeles Adopts Meatless Monday

It may have done it partly for the wrong reasons (combat climate change) but partly, and importantly, for the right reasons (animal welfare and also human health).

It is great that on October 24 this resolution was adopted: "the Council of the City of Los Angeles hereby declares all Mondays as 'Meatless Mondays' in support of comprehensive sustainability efforts as well as to further encourage residents to eat a more varied plant-based diet to protect their health and
protect animals."

It is very, very good that, before this declaration, several Californian and US colleges and universities had added Meatless Monday menus in their cafeterias; in Maryland the Baltimore City Public School System had become the first US school district to adopt a 100% Meatless Monday policy in 2009, followed by other school districts in the States; the Council of the District of Columbia had designated Mondays as "Meat Free Mondays"; the City of San Francisco had designated every Monday as "Veg Day"; the Green Cincinnati Plan had recommended going meatless one day a week; and a growing number of American cities had passed "resolutions encouraging residents to explore vegetarian eating to help
protect their health, the environment, and animals".

Los Angeles has now become the largest city in the US to sign a Meatless Monday resolution.

The U.S. Meatless Monday campaign was launched in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Now the "cut out meat one day a week" program is active in 24 countries and growing.

A great number of celebrities are participating in the Meatless Mondays campaign: the picture above shows a collage of some of them.

To start Meatless Monday in your city, download the free Meatless Monday Community Toolkit.

Catholics already have a meatless day, Friday, and have been abstaining from meat on that day for centuries. This is to commemorate the day of the Crucifixion of Our Lord.

Some Catholics, like the blog Maxine, have proposed that the meatless day should be changed to Friday. I understand the rationale behind Meatless Monday: it is the beginning of the week, so we want to start it well, on the right foot. But I also understand the Catholics who say that they

believe it would be a nice gesture (changing Meatless Monday to Meatless Friday) that would allow our society to be on the same page - even if we are doing much of the same thing for different reasons.

It would be a good thing, bringing together people from different viewpoints, making Catholics nearer vegetarianism and vegetarians nearer Catholicism: both good perspectives on life.

Don't forget that Jesus banned animal sacrifices and Christianity is one of the very few religions that do not practice animal sacrifices.

Similarity between Animal Sacrifices and Animal Experiments

I have written many times on this blog and on my site Human Health and Animal Ethics that animal experiments in biomedicine do not help human health: the method is scientifically wrong and, because of its lack of predictive ability and consequent unreliability, it can do great harm to humans as well as not doing good.

So animal testing is not only useless, it is dangerous because misleading.

I have explained at length the reasons why this is the case, and you can read them there.

As far as drugs are concerned, an important part of the solution to the problem of possible unwanted side effects is better control of the effects of medicines after they have been marketed.

“We need to encourage doctors and drug companies to watch for, report and take note of side effects in order to protect patients properly. If proper drug surveillance techniques had been available in the 1960s the thalidomide problem would have been picked up much earlier. We still don't have proper post marketing trials in place.”

Testing on humans is unavoidable whether or not you have experimented on animals first, because any new drug which is marketed is an unknown, due to the unreliability of previous animal testing.

There are cases where there is a correspondence between human and non-human animals. But how do we know that? Because we transferred the results of animal testing on humans. That is, for all practical purposes, we tested them on humans.

As I said, I have already extensively written on this. Now I want to make a connection.

Three days ago, on 26 October, was the Islamic festival of Eid-ul-Adha, which Muslims "celebrate" by sacrificing animals.

Eid al-Adha, in Arabic "feast of sacrifice", is celebrated in honour of Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son Ishmael to show his obedience to God, before God stopped him and offered him a sheep to sacrifice instead of his son.

Almost all religions, from Islam to Judaism, from paganism to Hinduism, sacrifice animals to gods.

Nepal's Gadhimai Festival in Hinduism, a religion generally believed to be benign to animals,

calls for a mass animal sacrifice which is considered to be the world's goriest mass killing of animals.

A few hundred thousands buffaloes, pigs, goats, pigeons, rabbits and chickens are killed as part of the blood-soaked festival held every five years (November 24, 25) to honor the Hindu goddess of power.

...Animal sacrifice is an everyday occurrence in Nepal. One could visit one of the countless temples and suddenly find oneself witnessing the beheading of a goat, a chicken, a duck, or even a young buffalo. The visitor might catch the last sounds of a dying animal or find oneself wading through a stream of blood.

Christianity and Buddhism are the exceptions.

Jesus Christ banned the Jewish practice of animal sacrifices. Here, as in many other crucial areas, Christianity demonstrates once again its considerable enlightenment and progress in comparison to other religions. Christianity, along with Greco-Roman civilization, is what has made the West and its immensurable achievements over the rest of the world possible.

People have been sacrificing animals to their gods in the hope that the sacrifices would deliver them from evils.

Our culture is not so barbaric, but the hope that sacrificing somebody else, someone who cannot defend himself (or herself), will save us is still present.

God offering Abraham a sheep to sacrifice instead of his son Ishmael reminds me of the way animals are used in biomedical experiments to make them suffer and die instead of humans.

Animal experimentation is the heir to the ritual sacrifice, the modern-day equivalent of the hope that a "scapegoat" will take from us all the bad things and dangers and free us.

And it is just as irrational.