The Dharma

We Are What We Eat

Our anger, our frustration, our despair, have much to do with our bodies and the food we eat. We must work out a strategy of eating, of consuming to protect ourselves from anger and violence. Eating is an aspect of civilization. The way we grow our food, the kind of food we eat, and the way we eat it have much to do with civilization because the choices we make can bring about peace and relieve suffering.

The food we eat can play a very important role in our anger. Our food may contain anger. When we eat the flesh of an animal with mad cow disease, anger is there in the meat. But we must also look at the other kinds of food we eat. When we eat an egg or a chicken, we know that the egg or chicken can contain a lot of anger. We are eating anger, and therefore we express anger.

Nowadays, chickens are raised in large-scale modern farms where they cannot walk, run, or seek food in the soil. They are solely fed by humans. They are kept in small cages and cannot move at all. Day and night, they have to stand. Imagine that you have no right to walk or to run. Imagine that you have to stay day and night in just one place. You would become mad. So the chickens become mad.

In order for the chickens to produce more eggs, the farmers create artificial days and nights. They use indoor lighting to create a shorter day and night so that the chickens believe that 24 hours have passed, and then they produce more eggs. There is a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, and much suffering in the chickens. They express their anger and frustration by attacking the other chickens next to them. They use heir beaks to peck and wound each other. They cause each other to bleed, to suffer and to die. That is why farmers now cut the beaks off all the chickens... So when you eat the flesh or egg of such a chicken, you are eating anger and frustration. So be aware.

-A Lifetime of Peace : Essential Writings By & About TNH (Thich Nhat Hanh)

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