Indian School Textbook Says Meat-Eaters Lie and Commit Sex Crimes

another random user writes with bad news from the BBC for anybody who enjoys a hamburger now and again: "Meat-eaters 'easily cheat, lie, forget promises and commit sex crimes,' according to a controversial school textbook available in India. New Healthway, a book on hygiene and health aimed at 11 and 12 year-olds, is printed by one of India's leading publishers. 'This is poisonous for children,' Janaki Rajan of the Faculty of Education at Jamia Millia University in Delhi told the BBC. 'The government has the power to take action, but they are washing their hands of it,' she said. '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? The chapter details the 'benefits' of a vegetarian diet and goes on to list 'some of the characteristics' found among non-vegetarians. 'They easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes,' it says."

I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan

[Anonymous Coward]

I chose to do this two years ago after reading a 20 year investigative study on slaughterhouses, factory farms, FDA, etc. (the book is called Slaughterhouse) and after watching the documentary called "Earthlings". I'm not interested in finding "humane farmers", I chose to go vegetarian. People told me that I'd have pale skin, would be sick all the time, low energy, wouldn't have enough this or that, etc. What happened? For the first time in my life I haven't had seasonal allergies, a cold, a flu or been sick since changing my diet. Also for years I had skin problems around my nose, and two doctors told me to wear sunscreen and moisturizing cream to fix it. I didn't do either, I just changed my diet and the skin returned to normal. I've maintained my weight and on most days have high energy levels. I don't credit my previous health problems to meat, I credit it to not eating healthy. When I became a vegetarian I had to learn to cook again (new recipes) and focused on a healthier diet. So, my point is that there is nothing wrong with a vegetarian diet. If you study nutrition and make sure you get everything your body needs, you can live a totally healthy normal life.

I don't expect others to eat differently while dining with me, and don't try to convert them to be a vegetarian. Meat eaters shouldn't try to convince us to go back to eating meat either.

And yes the Indian textbook from the article is poison for the mind. Pure propaganda. Not unlike American mainstream media/Ministry of Truth.

Non-veg

[gQuigs]

I was about to go on a rant about how they wouldn't even be called meat eaters in India. But it's right there in the summary. Non-vegetarians.
Meat is usually called non-veg in India or at least the small parts of it that I have lived in.

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sounds like American textbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the Virgina textbooks where blacks get to score less and still pass and Asians have to score higher to pass. Or college entrances were being an unqualified minority gets you in over a qualified white so that we waste money on people who shouldn't be there paid for by people who were denied access and should have been there.

I think US public education has already surpassed anything another country can do.

Re:PETA agrees!

[__aaltlg1547]

This is a hard sell for the Christians and Muslims. Jesus ate meat and according to the bible, was perfect. Muhammad ate meat and is much revered by Muslims. Surely God would have informed him if eating meat led to sin...

Re:India

[Kjella]

First of all, it has been my experience that, as ESL speakers, Indians are among the most fluent in the world. It seems to me that they take great care to learn and use English well, unlike the stumbling parody you provided. No doubt a consequence of British colonialism, but perhaps a happy one.

There's a huge selection bias that the people you're likely to communicate with in English are those who know it well. Only about 12% [wikipedia.org] of Indians are considered English-speaking, I'm not sure if a person like the grandparent would be counted to the 12% or the 88% but there's extremely many of them. There's a lot of non-English colonies doing more, for example here in Norway some 89% are now English-speaking and it's a compulsory subject from the first school year (age 6), by the time you've finished high school you'll have had 1800-2000 hours in your primary language and 700 hours of English. Also we don't generally don't dub English-speaking TV series and movies except for small children and at least in higher education you're expected to read English textbooks. I think you'll find the average Indian is far from the most fluent in the world.

Re:It's a typesetting error.

[anomaly256]

As a meat eater myself and sibling to a die-hard vegan, I can honestly say non-meat eaters still retain all those characteristics in full effect. And I can tell you now that even with my abnormally high testosterone and sex drive, I'm an honest person and have never sexually assaulted anyone. Unless they explicitly asked me to first. Chemicals may set the stage for our lives but we still choose how they play out. Blaming behavior on diet is just a pathetic excuse to shirk responsibility. No court on earth would buy such an excuse, nor should they. And since this book appears to have a religious slant - remember that Eve allegedly gave in to temptation despite being completely vegan. But what's religion without a bit of self contradiction?