Category: FOOD

All fruits, the various flesh of animals, were given to him for food, and various drinks were given to him to please his taste—but not to excite his passions, not for his only enjoyment, for the Christian has great, spiritual, Divine enjoyments. Carnal delights must be always made subject to these higher ones; they must be restrained or completely suppressed when they hinder spiritual delights. This signifies that it is not to afflict man that food and drink are temporarily forbidden him by the Church, not to limit his freedom, as worldly people say, but it is done in order to afford him true, lasting, and eternal delights; therefore meat or flesh food, and wine and spirits, are forbidden (during Lent), specially by reason of the fact that man is very dear to God, and in order that his heart should cling to God alone, and not to anything perishable, unworthy of him. But man, perverted by sins, easily attaches himself to earthly pleasures, forgetting that his true enjoyment, his true life, is the eternal God, and not the pleasant excitation of the flesh.

—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

​​There exist certain withdrawal symptoms when beginning a fast, and for this reason, experts in the field recommend a preparatory diet before fasting.[23] This can include eating a whole foods diet or a vegan diet low in salt, oil, and sugar.

Fasting Reconsidered: St. John Chrysostom and Modern Science on Fasting

To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink;

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The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves.

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The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially.

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The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.

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I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.

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The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly . . . and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly” content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid.

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It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal?

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A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well,

Walden
Henry David Thoreau

Likewise, in fasting, do not say: “my health cannot tolerate [it].” Do not say: “I need proteins and primary amino acids.” But say: “God first.”

The Lord’s Place in Your Life — H.E. Metropolitan Arsenius of Minya