why it is important to be vegetarian?

Question: Could you tell us why it is important to be vegetarian? Thank you..

Guruji (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) : One reason I would say our system is made up for vegetarian food, is that we don't have the type of teeth which carnivorous animals have. We have the same type of teeth that herbivorous animals have. And our immediate ancestor, monkey, is a vegetarian. Elephant is a vegetarian.Horse is a vegetarian. Cow is a vegetarian. Sheep is a vegetarian.

Animals with that habitat, they are all vegetarians. Horse. You know, we say horse power. So, looking at all this in our system, if you look at it, it is best suitable for vegetarian food. There is a substance called talon that's in the saliva, it's present only in the animals which are vegetarian.
And it is present in our saliva also, human saliva.

And second thing is the human intestine is so long, it takes a long intestine to digest the vegetarian food. So even in that angle, you see we have longest intestine. Six feet or more. So that also indicates our system is made for vegetarian. Second thing, vegetarian food you can digest in two-three hours. Non-vegetarian food takes eight hours to digest. Sometimes even longer.

So there are so many various such reasons. Also, combination of food is important. Even among
vegetarian, certain foods can make you a little dull. Here, to have more clear experience, we recommend vegetarian food. Because if you have non-vegetarian food, you may fall asleep, you will feel dull.


Because so much time and energy is consumed just to digest that food. So, in all these various angles, if you see vegetarian food is the best suitable for our system.

Easily digestible and quickly you can digest the food and be ready for the next meal. Otherwise, you eat breakfast and till dinner it is still digesting. And then we stuff more. It's no good.

Some combination of, even among vegetarian food, some combinations makes it hard to digest. The carbohydrate and milk products, sometimes can take a little longer to digest the food.