the path to the highest goal

To prepare a vegetarian sandwich 268.5 m long, students from the Hungarian city of Tata took: 330 kg of black bread, 600 heads of lettuce, 500 bunches of radishes, 320 kg of cucumbers, 150 kg of tomatoes and 150 bunches of wild garlic (Photo: AP )

“Vegetarianism is the path to the highest goal” is one of the slogans of the Russian Vegetarian Society. And a very correct slogan. I will even add that this is one of the easiest and, I am not afraid to say, most pleasant paths to the highest goal. Moreover, such goals can be different, and everyone has their own.

For example, refusing a medium-rare steak can immediately make you feel like a humanitarian. About the same as Count Leo Tolstoy, who argued that by killing animals for food, “a person suppresses the highest spiritual feelings in himself - compassion and pity for other living beings like him - and, by overstepping himself, hardens his heart.” . And for our food, one and a half billion cows, sheep and pigs and 22.5 billion birds are now killed annually. The amount of fish caught every year is in the trillions. Aren't all those who devour it monsters? Contrast yourself with them and it will become easier for you. No matter what shameful thing you do during the day, vegetarianism will console you. It’s enough just to go to the meat counter in the evening, look with sadness at the people picking out parts of the bodies of our murdered little brothers, and remember Mahatma Gandhi, who used to say: “I am convinced that if we strive for spiritual improvement, we must stop killing our little brothers for the sake of satisfy your physical needs." That's it, you can move away from the counter - you're already a little Gandhi.

Or you can, when eating weed, feel like an anti-humanist, like vegetarian Hitler. Or use vegetarianism to cultivate sarcasm and malice, as did the vegetarian gentlemen Voltaire and Bernard Shaw. Or to awaken poetic inspiration - like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Rabindranath Tagore, and picturesque - like Leonardo da Vinci. Finally, who came up with brilliant ideas, who made great scientific discoveries? Vegetarians: Sir Isaac Newton and simply Albert Einstein. So go ahead and become a vegetarian and wait for the apple to fall on you. By the way, the most vegetarian fruit there is.

Another desired highest goal is immortality. Any more or less savvy vegetarian will explain to you that it is eating meat that leads to cancer, atherosclerosis and heart attack. And the cholesterol buried in meat is to blame for everything. So spit on both of them. Sprinkle hot sugar potatoes with dill, sprinkle with corn oil, snack on pickles - and think about eternity.

And if, based on world experience, you doubt the possibility of physical immortality, think about spiritual growth. There is no religion that does not limit, at least periodically, the meat diet. Pythagoras also said: “My brothers, do not defile your body with sinful food. We have wheat, we have apples, under the weight of which the branches of apple trees bend, and grapes, pouring on the vines. There are fragrant herbs and vegetables that can be cooked on fire , we are not denied milk and honey, smelling of thyme. The earth generously gives us its treasures, providing pure food, and invites us to a feast that is not overshadowed by bloodshed; only animals satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not all of them, because horses, cows and sheep feed on grass." Why look for difficult-to-understand spiritual feats, when it is enough to become a vegetarian, and then consider yourself whatever you want - even an Orthodox Christian, a devout Mohammedan, a faithful Jew or a Buddhist. When cutting yourself a vegetable salad, you can be sure that you will not harm, for example, your great-grandmother, who, as a result of reincarnation, is now a sheep (although if you are a Hindu, then be careful with the salad - it may turn out to be your grandfather).

What is not the highest goal is perfection. The shortest path to it is self-restraint. Vegetarianism will help with this too. Imagine a kebab of young lamb roasted over grapevine coals. Or freshly smoked eel. Or a Kyiv cutlet splattered with hot butter - and deny yourself this. Just let the pasta cook (not forgetting, however, to add a little olive oil to the water). At the same time, fry the garlic, lemon seeds and rosemary in olive oil in a frying pan until golden brown. Add zucchini. Add tomatoes and capers. Pour in lemon juice with seasonings. In another (preferably Teflon) frying pan, heat the nut oil and fry the bread crumbs until brown. Once the pasta is cooked, top with cooked vegetables and bread crumbs. You will get vegetarian spaghetti. Eat before it gets cold and feel like an ascetic.

Of course, in Soviet times, when in the “Vegetables and Fruits” stores there was almost nothing except the persistent smell of rotten potatoes and sour cabbage, either an ascetic or a very rich person who fed from collective farm markets, where in winter everything was more expensive than store-bought, could be a vegetarian times ten. But today we have the real fruits of democracy, which has protected the rights of the vegetarian minority. Now prices in stores are higher than in the market. What a choice! In addition to vegetable departments, greengrocers have appeared and sell all year round. There, at least three or four types of lettuce alone are sold at a time. And the nuts! Multi-story transparent structures filled with all sorts of nutty delights have appeared in almost every store and convenience store. And the counters with Korean salads that occupied everything - from markets to supermarkets! What is done with fruits: we select oranges by variety. We argue which is better: grapefruit or pomelo, lemon or lime, peach or nectarine. People haven’t yet learned how to cope with asparagus, spinach, mangoes and avocados, but here all sorts of kumquats, physalis, lychees, jaboticabas, carambolas, durians, atemoyas and longans piled up. Who else but vegetarians should master all this?

Enlightenment is also the highest goal. And vegetarianism serves him well. Every decent city in the world has vegetarian restaurants that bring the culture of plant-based food consumption to the masses. Not to mention Paris, where there are about a hundred of them, let’s mention Moscow, where there are also several of them. What they don’t serve there: gratin with Jerusalem artichoke and asparagus, figs with cardamom cream, caponata with broccoli, corn fritters with peppers, carrot puree with ginger, eggplant soup with garlic, tofu with leeks and mushrooms. Yes, yes, mushrooms are very vegetarian. And salted, and pickled, and boiled, and fried. Here Russian vegetarians will give the whole world a head start. So much for your contribution to world civilization.

By the way, about world civilization. Aren’t vegetarians heartbroken for her troubles?! Environmental, for example. Environmentalist Georg Borgström argues that wastewater from livestock farms pollutes the environment ten times more than city sewers and three times more than industrial wastewater. Vegetarians cannot calmly look at starving people either. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 90 percent of all grain produced in America goes to feed the livestock and poultry that end up on the dinner table. At the same time, according to nutritionist Jean Mayer of Harvard, reducing meat production by just 10 percent would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people. True, bloodthirsty meat-eaters claim that grain alone will not satisfy you, that meat production (including the field farming necessary for it), as well as poultry farming and fishing, provide work for millions of people. These are all excuses.

Vegetarian! Don't listen to the cynics. Go towards your highest goal. If you want to think that you are serving goodness, peace and humanity, think. If you want to be a vegetarian, be one.

INSTRUCTION: DOSSIER

The vegetarian society was created back in Soviet times in 1989. The main goal of the organization is considered to be “promoting the moral and physical improvement of man, the humanization of his relationships with the outside world.” True, a lack of funds (the society exists on grants from the International Vegetarian Union) does not allow the movement to actively implement its ideas. His activities come down to two areas that are far from vegetarianism.

The first is carried out through the Center for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and is not much different from the Animal Welfare Society. The same protests with slogans like “Down with meat” and “You kill animals every day”, sterilization of stray dogs and dissatisfaction with the use of animals for scientific work.

The second is medical, with the main goal of improving people’s health. The work is carried out in hospitals, sanatoriums, and rest homes, where people are offered to eat according to a certain system. “Since 1995, only 700 people have passed through us. Unfortunately, we do not have a club, so people who participated in our programs rarely maintain relationships with us,” says nutritionist Larisa Mosyakina.