Re: Jain Diet

On 4/3/2025 7:50 PM, Dave Smith wrote:

On 2025-04-03 7:01 p.m., Ed P wrote:

I'm thinking of starting this.  Vegetarian is good, vegan more extreme, but this is over the top. Want to join me?
>
The Jain diet emphasizes a plant-based diet that minimizes harm to living organisms. It is a highly restrictive diet that requires careful planning to ensure adequate nutrient intake
>
Can Jains eat chocolate?
Everything chocolate which contains cocoa powder is non - Jain and forbidden to eat as the process of making cocoa powder from the beans involves heavy fermentation which kills infinite amounts of jeevas.
>
Why don't Jains eat spinach?
The reason Jains do not consume a certain category of vegetables is because each part of such a plant contains infinite lives. This includes not only root vegetables, but also other plants like aloe, spinach, sprouts etc
>
Can Jains have potatoes?
Strict Jains do not eat root vegetables, such as potatoes, onions, roots and tubers, as they are considered ananthkay. Ananthkay means one body, but containing infinite lives. A root vegetable, such as potato, though appearing to be a single object, is said to contain infinite lives.
>
Can Jains bathe?

  One of our wedding guests was a Jain. He was the son of a business associate of my FiL. MiL used to invite him for special dinners like Thanksgiving and she went to great efforts to find things for him to eat that fit with their very restrictive diet.  Despite their very strict prohibition on alcohol his cultural taboo on booze didn't stop him from enjoying enough booze to get absolutely pissed at the reception.
 The poor guy had to make an emergency trip back to India. He had had a telephone call to tell him that his mother was on her death bed. As it turned out, the mother was fine. It was a ruse to get him back home to get married to the wife they had arranged for him to marry.
 

Oh, such a sweet love story.  Mom probably would have died had he not done that. Did she come with a dowry of a goat or pound of gold.