Vegetal Food:

We have discussed the period of abstinence and hunger in fasting, and now we should talk about vegetal food in fasts, explain how it is a Godly system, and that it is the original one in nature, since our Father, Adam, was vegetarian, our Mother, Eve, was vegetarian, and so were their offspring up to Noah.

God created man as a vegetarian.

Adam and Eve, in Paradise, ate nothing but plants: beans and fruit. Thus God said to them: “I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:29).

Man also remained vegetarian after his expulsion from Paradise. However, aside from beans and fruit, he was permitted to eat the herbs of the land, i.e. vegetables. Thus, when he sinned, God said to him: “And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. ” (Genesis 3:18).

We have not heard that our Father, Adam, and our Mother, Eve, fell ill because of malnutrition. Conversely, we hear that Adam, a vegetarain, lived to be 930 years old (Genesis 5:5). His sons and grandsons, in those vegetarian epochs, also lived long lives. (Genesis 5)

Man was not permitted to eat meat except after Noah’s Ark. This took place at a dark time when the wickedness of man was great in the earth” to the extent that “the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart” (Genesis 6:5,6) and He inundated the whole world with the flood.

After the Ark had landed, God said to our Father, Noah, and his sons: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” (Genesis 9:3,4).

When God led His people into the wilderness, He fed them vegetable food which was manna “and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.” (Exodus 16:31). “The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.” (Numbers 11:8).

When He allowed them to eat meat, He did it in anger.

This permission was given because of their lust, their grumbling over food, and their tearful request for meat. God gave them what they lusted for, then smote them hard: “And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah (meaning: the grave of lust): because there they buried the people that lusted.” (Numbers 11:33,34).

Vegetables were also the food Daniel and his companions ate.

They ate “pulse” or beans (Daniel 1:12) and were determined in their hearts not to defile themselves with the King’s meat and wine. (Daniel 1:8).

We see the Prophet Daniel say while fasting: “I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.” (Daniel 10:3).

Vegetal food was what Ezekiel ate while fasting.

He did it in obedience to a Godly order, for God said to him: “Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches.” (Ezekiel 4:9).

Vegetal food is light, soft and soothing.

It has nothing of the heaviness of meat and its grease and fat and whatever influence they have on one’s body.

We notice that even among animals the savage of them are carnivorous while the tame ones are herbivorous.

Vegetarians are known to be quieter of nature than meat-eaters. It is to be wondered at that most of the animals we eat, such as cattle, sheep, goats, and fowls, are herbivorous.

These herbivorous animals do to become feeble due to eating such food…

Moreover, we describe a strong man saying that he has the health of a camel or a horse both of which are vegetarian. In the old days, people practised bullfighting to show that, by fighting these powerful animals, which are herbivorous, they themselves were strong. Thus it is then that eating plants does not enfeeble the body.

Vegetarians, including hermits and anchorites, have had longer lives.

Bernard Shaw, the famous writer, was vegetarian, lived for 94 years, and suffered no ailment throughout his life. How many those vegetarians are who have lived long lives. 

Saint Paula, the first of the anchorites, lived as a hermit for eighty years without seeing a man’s face, which means that he actually lived to be a hundred. The majority of anchorites lived long lives. They were not only vegetarians, but lived a life of asceticism and ate little. Nevertheless, they enjoyed good health.

Saint Antonius, the father of all monks, lived to be 105 years old. His life was one of continuous fasting and yet he enjoyed good health and used to walk tens of miles without getting tired…

I do not want to discuss vegetal food from a scientific point of view but from a spiritual one as it has been in the life of humans since Adam…

It is true that the principal amino acids abound more in animal than in vegetal protein. In any case, they do exist in the latter, though at a lesser degree. However, their amount was enough for all those above-mentioned, and for monks and vegetarians to amke them live in good health.

However, we should not forget that the Church allows fish in some fasts. Undoubtedly, it contains animal protein. Moreover, there are long periods of breakfasting.

Therefore, do not be afraid of fasting, for it benefits the body.

My own research on Bernard Shaw:
*Towards the end of the decade, both Shaws began to suffer ill health. Charlotte was increasingly incapacitated by Paget’s disease of bone, and he developed pernicious anaemia. His treatment, involving injections of concentrated animal liver, was successful, but this breach of his vegetarian creed distressed him and brought down condemnation from militant vegetarians.[197]

—H. H. Pope Shenouda III, The Spirituality of Fasting
20- Vegetarian 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