Mr. Lee Yong-Jung, Secretary-General of the People’s Coalition for Children’s Health, former head of the policy research team for children’s health on the Presidential Commission for Sustainable Development: I have been listening with interest to Your discussion, which I think could be summed in the three words: spirituality, vegetarian diet, and co-existence. I want to raise several issues that are related to foods and a sustainable society. We are surrounded by foods that are poisonous to our bodies. When we are exposed to these kinds of foods, the balance of micro-organisms in our body will be broken and we might have to fight a war with these micro-organisms that make up half the world’s organisms. The diseases that we might end up getting will be atopy, splenitis, asthma, and ADHD, which have tripled compared to 20 years ago. High blood pressure, cancer, and diabetes have also tripled. Problems that manifested in Korea include avian flu, noro virus, and antibiotics microbes, all due to poisonous foods.

There is a need to examine these poisonous foods. The first one is chemical additives in processed foods and food packaging. The second one is the overdose of antibiotics that are pumped into livestock in factory farming. The third is the overuse of pesticides. The fourth one is genetically modified foods and mad cow disease-affected beef. This problem is serious when we consider our dependency on foreign foods, which is about 75%, compared to 25% of our domestically grown foods. When investigating them, these food problems are interwoven with global warming, methane gas, and carbon dioxide issues, which lead to children’s health problems, as well as the survival of humanity. You have summed up these complex issues into one simple issue, which is vegetarianism. Although I understand, I wonder whether we do not need more comprehensive approaches. For example, we have to practice sustainable agricultural approaches and we have to change our patterns of thinking. We have to change our food paradigms. We need to educate people that through our food choices we can save ourselves and humanity as a whole in a more concrete educational system. That’s what I think.

M: It seems not that easy to tackle, but it’s actually very easy. If you have a child and you know what is good for him, then you definitely want to give it to him. And if you know what is bad or poisonous for your child, you will take it away from him at all costs. So, it’s just the habit thinking of humankind, the feeling that this is not do-able, but it is. Just take away that piece of meat, and replace it with protein from the vegetable kingdom. Nowadays, we have vegetarian food available everywhere; it’s very simple. Even if we don’t have available food, all kinds of beans, rice, lentils are packed full of vegetarian protein, and they will make your life much, much more comfortable, healthy and wise and are very, very spiritually elevating. I don’t understand why it is so difficult for the government or for any parent, or anyone who is responsible in this matter, not to change the habit of giving the children what is healthy for them. You want your children to be healthy, yes? And so, we do the research, we know what is the up-to-date best for the children. Vegetarian diet, without milk or dairy products even, is the best diet thereof for everybody at all ages. So why don’t we give them the best?

For me, it’s simple. Just give them the best food, and then everything else will come along. You will see the benefit. And if it doesn’t benefit, you can always change back to the meat diet. But I’m sure you - I mean the parents and the teachers, the ones who are responsible for children’s health - will like the vegetarian diet. You will see their improvements in all aspects of life, not just health but in intelligence, vitality and the peacefulness of their character. You’ll have less to worry about with your children’s violent behavior. Thank you for being concerned about the children. They are our future. Thank you, Mr. Lee Yong-Jung. The people have to do it. The government can do or not do it; this is up to the parents to choose.

Conscience and Compassion in Society

Mrs. Lee Hui-Jung, Secretary-General of the Korean Parents Association for Correct Education: Right now in Seoul, in front of the Cheonggye River, students are participating in a candlelight vigil gathering. This is to protest against importing meats that may have mad cow disease. This meat could be used in their school meals. So students are protesting because they don’t have any choice in uniformed school meals. That’s why they are having a candlelight demonstration at the Cheonggye River, because they do not want to eat “mad cows” meat. Their parents are protesting as well, because they do not want to have this beef in their children’s school meals. The protest shows that students are seriously concerned about the current educational environment and the problems of the current school meal system. I think children generally have more sympathy compared to adults, and that’s why they have come out to the streets to protest. They saw some clips on the internet about how animals weren’t treated humanely and from that they felt that animals were like them because their educational environment is not so desirable. It’s so competitive; they have to study till midnight or in the early morning in their school rooms. It’s like they are in a cage, a little cage without having much choice, so I feel that our students empathize with those confined animals. 

Although their sympathy becomes dull as they grow in this kind of educational environment, they are still pure enough to feel this pain, so they have compassion towards these animals. Unfortunately, the more we are educated under these kinds of circumstances, the more we lose our sense of consideration for our co-inhabitants. Our school environments should be set up so that our children can spend time in nature, where they can be near animals. However, our children are confined in terms of space and time in the current educational system. They are forced to complete their curriculum.

Our educational environment should cultivate children’s compassion for the needy and the weak, including animals and the suffering of confined livestock. Our educational system needs to be designed to encourage concern towards our planet and our co-inhabitants, and to promote solutions to our current planetary problems through education. But in reality, it is not designed that way. My question for Supreme Master Ching Hai is: We are forcing our children to become desensitized from their own empathy for our planet by putting them in this kind of educational environment in the name of competition. What can we do in order to encourage their ecological empathy? So, I would like to ask You about these matters.

M:: Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Lee. And by the way, I would like to convey also my sympathy and my gratefulness to the students who are expressing their opinion right now in Seoul concerning the beef imports, and concerning their love and care for the animals. I am very impressed by their attitude, because as students they are quite busy and it’s not like the curriculum in the school would have informed them or taught them anything about animal cruelty or how to be kind to animals. But they do know about it; they do research about it, and they do take action about it, and I’m very glad. I do hope this will even spread further into other schools and whole nations and keep people aware of the harmful effects of animal products as well as the unkind treatment that we humans measure upon them, the poor innocent defenseless brothers and sisters.

So, I thank you and I thank them on the animals’ behalf. Concerning your question about how to raise children rightly, this is a very, very important question and the parents and the teachers should get together to discuss this. And the leader of this movement for the teachers and the parents should be more equipped with all the concrete scientific and convincing evidence of the better diet for the children, meaning the animal-free diet, absolutely free from animal traces. Even eggs and milk are harmful because they’re derived from animals. The animals have been fed with chemical substances, all kinds of hormones, which drive the children crazy. So, if your children’s behaviors are not according to your liking, please do not blame them alone. They are born nice, innocent and sweet. They have been brought up by us and we have not given them the due goodness, due care or the due best standard that they so deserve, because we also, as parents, have not been fed this due attention that we also need. So, now we have to change the course of history. We have to research; we have to know for sure that the vegetarian diet is really absolutely healthy, the best in all aspects for our children. Get the evidence. Get all the studies necessary, all the scientific and convincing evidence, and get together to spread this information.

And decide together that we have to change the diet of the children. When you change the diet everything else will change. Their behavior will change, their intelligence will improve, and you will be a happy parent and they will be happy children. You want the best for your children, and that is the best for them. The vegetarian diet, you must give them that, and then everything else will come along. Believe me; trust me; you try and you tell me. It will do no harm. It just helps you to save more money on groceries. You go straight to the vegetarian section; you don’t need to go anywhere else. Vegetarian diet and no alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs also.

For Optimal Health, Choose Natural and Fresh

And by the way, a message to the vegetarian-producing people. Even with vegetarian food, we have to also be careful we don’t put additives, too many preservatives into it; we don’t put any harmful substance into vegetarian food. And we don’t put too much glutamate or too much salt. Those things are also not very good for health. So, the vegetarian diet should be fresh from the local market. That would be the best for your children - local market, and the fresher the better. Not just vegetarian but the fresher the better, and the healthy vegetarian products. To all the producers of vegetarian food, please be aware of this.

Thank you for your question. Your question is of paramount importance because it’s concerning the children and the society at large. Thank you, Madam. I wish you all the success. I wish the children’s movement that you mentioned just now, the students’ movement, will spread all over your country and into the world, and that all the students will follow suit. Everyone will heed their cry for help for a better life that they deserve. Thank you so much. Heaven bless you and bless their movement.

Mrs. Park Kyung-Yong, Head of the Korean Association for School Meals: I am in charge of preparation of school meals for students. My question is related to earlier questions. The government has made a regulation that 30% of school meals have to be animal source protein. In order to keep the regulation, we provide beef, chicken or pork every day for school meals. If we add up the amount of consumed beef and other meat that is served for school meals around the country, it would be a staggering amount. It means the number of animals slaughtered for these meals is huge as well. I have never considered this a serious issue as a worker, but after attending this seminar I think that I need to reconsider the meat consumption in our school meals. In addition, I think we need to set new government policies and regulations. I think we need to use protein product alternatives to animal fat and protein such as soy, since as everyone knows it provides such high-quality protein. We are currently including more vegetarian choices for our school meals. But, I thought we might need to take meat consumption more seriously as an issue to discuss and develop menus that use alternative protein sources. I realize that we needed to provide greener meals, vegetarian menus for school meals. Since You are vegetarian, I wonder whether You could provide some vegetarian menus and recipes for school meals. And if You have any advice on alternative school meals, I would like to refer to that when we design our school meals.

M: Oh, wow! Very good question, Mrs. Park. Very good endeavor. Thank you so much. You see, this is a very good start. First of all, in my humble opinion, you will be blessed by wanting to do this, and then you will continue to have strength to do it. You have to inform the facts to the parents’ association, and to all the parents that you can. You can give leaflets to each of the students to bring home or to the school board and ask permission to distribute it to the children. Get all the facts about how good the vegetarian diet is and all the facts about how bad the meat diet is. And then get their support. Inform your students. Inform everyone that you know in your society, in your world, in your school. And then, get them all the materials necessary so that they understand what you are talking about and support your ideas. We have to give them the facts, we cannot just tell people, “Okay, be vegetarian. It’s good for you.” We have to evoke their intelligence and curiosity; we have to provide them with all the materials that are convincing and truthful, and then they can decide together, “Okay, we choose this diet.” The majority of them will choose it. I do hope they do, after you diligently inform them of all the facts about how good the vegetarian diet is from the scientific point of view, because people only believe in science.

And then comes the moral issue. You can show them some of the cruel pictures, cruel videos about how the animals are being treated, being slaughtered, and ask them a question, “How would you feel if it were you?” If people see the evidence and are faced with the cruelty of how the animal has been treated, I’m sure that they will decide to get a vegetarian diet. Right now, it’s a worldwide trend that everyone knows the vegetarian diet is good and the meat diet is very harmful. They recalled millions of kilograms, millions of units of meat because of the harmful effect, everywhere in the world. Up to date, there are many countries in the world that do that. So, get all this evidence and show it to them. You never know what you’re eating. It’s better to choose the healthy diet. You see, importing meat and all that, you never know if they’re good. The government cannot control every piece of beef for you, actually. There are loopholes everywhere. There are also lobbies; people will turn a blind eye and all that or take it for granted that the meat is safe. We’re talking about health standpoint only, not to talk about the moral obligation to our weaker, smaller, defenseless brother and sister co-inhabitants. We cannot be cruel. We have to be kind. We have to be loving and compassionate because we are human. Every time you see someone treat someone nice or do something good, you say, “That’s very human, that is humane treatment.” You see? Because we are human, we have to give every other being human treatment, including our own neighbors. Okay, so, because we are human, we have to be kind, we have to be compassionate because that’s our nature. Don’t let anything else make us forget that. Thank you for your question and I wish you all the luck and blessing from Heaven. And I love you for doing this. Thank you.

By the way, in SupremeMasterTV.com we have all kinds of free to download international cooking recipes for you. It costs you nothing if you want to download and use them. Or, you can contact our Centers in Korea to ask for free recipes. Also, SupremeMasterTV.com provides in this matter all scientific and convincing information and evidence for you to download if you need to use them to inform other people and to convince them about the idea of changing the diet for the children in school.

Of All the Ways to Save the Planet,
the Animal-free Lifestyle Is Best

Host: There are many ways to cope with global warming and climate change. Supreme Master Ching Hai, You have suggested the most efficient and effective ways, including using sustainable energy, planting more trees, saving energy wherever we can in our daily lives, and perhaps most importantly, using products that are animal free. Using animal free products also includes adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet. Could You please share with us more details about these solutions?

M: We have covered the moral, ethical, scientific and physical benefits of a vegetarian diet. Not only because of moral or ethical or physical benefit, but because this is the easiest way for every one of us to contribute to saving the planet. Before the governments even do anything, before the technical developments are being offered, we already stop global warming if we forsake that piece of meat and replace it with a piece of vegetarian protein, which looks similar, tastes similar, and is even better in every way -- for our health, for our spirit, for our intelligence and for our next life in Heaven. We will be blessed right now even, not to talk about the afterlife. So, I guess everyone should join in and be vegetarian; that’s all I am saying, because it’s the best and the fastest way to save the planet, and everyone can do it. There’s no need even for technique, new energy or for the governments yet. We do it; we do our part. That’s why I emphasize the vegetarian diet. And if the governments join in and help us to promote more, wow! Thank you so much. If they have developed better technology and produce it fast enough for us to use, thank you ever so much. But the vegetarian diet, we must start right now. That’s the best way, the fastest and the safest way for us and for our children. If you love your children, try the vegetarian diet. Thank you.

To watch the Supreme Master Television coverage of the “SOS! International Seminar on Global Warming,” please visit the following link: http://video.Godsdirectcontact.net/magazine/WOW624s.php

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