If you'll someday find yourself in Jamaica, you’ll come surely into contact with the Rastafarian faith and their reggae music. Rastafarians live according to the commandments of the old testament and they use some other texts as well that are not acknowledged by the Christian church. The Rastafarian community has no official doctrine prescribed by an main church, rather they focus on the individual person. This is why every Rastafarian can personally approach their creeds. There are a number of different streams within the Rastafari faith, all with their own set of rules. The Rastafarians of the Bobo Shanti stream observe for example a fast for 2 days a week and on every 1st day of the month.

An important concept within the Rastafarian faith is the term Ital, which is an abbreviation of the word vital. The basis of this concept is the caring for a pure body and mind. They have a firm belief that everything that is natural is better. The term ‘Ital’ is used to describe the nutritional guidelines of the Rastafarians, but it also includes a spiritual, social and political side.

The proverb ‘you are what you eat’ is often used by the Rasta’s to explain their ideas on nutrition. They believe that you receive the powers of the plants you consume. The Rastafarians generally eat a natural, organic, vegetarian diet. The Rasta’s apply the old testament commandment ‘thou shall not kill’ on all living beings. A good diet is the key to higher state of consciousness. Your body is considered a holy temple and should be treated as such. Most Rasta’s believe that when you eat meat you become irritable and aggressive, and not nice and quiet like when eating plant foods. That man has no nutritional need for eating meat is underlined by the fact that the majority of mankind lived for the greatest time of history on a vegetarian or nearly vegetarian diet.

It takes about 3 to 4 hours to digest fruits and vegetables and about 18 to 24 hours to digest meat. So when you eat meat once a day your digestive tract will be at work all day and won’t get time to rest. A digestive system at rest performs his second task in your body, cleaning and healing the body. Without rest, we get sick. So when you eat meat you become a walking cemetery, as it was nicely described by a Rasta in Jamaica.

Another reason why it’s better for you to stick to plant based foods is that our digestive system is designed for the digestion of plant based foods. Carnivores (meat eaters) have claws, sharp teeth and no teeth for grinding. Carnivores have a short (3 times their body length) and relatively smooth intestine tract so that rotting meat can pass thru quickly. Our intestinal tract is covered with all kinds of structures and has a length of 10 to 12 times our body length. Rotting meat can thus remain stuck in many places in our digestive tract. Our stomach acid is also 20 times weaker than that of carnivores which makes for an incomplete digestion of the meat. And we have digestive enzymes in our mouth to digest plant based foods, something carnivores don’t have. Another characteristic of carnivores is that they sweat through their tongue, and not through their skin like herbivores (plant eaters).

The high amount of pesticide residues found in meat are another reason why you should better not eat too much meat. Meat contains about 14 times as much residues of pesticides than plant foods do.

There is no country in the world where people eat a lot of meat without a high rate of cancer among the population. Meat and dairy contains no fibres, which act like a broom in our digestive tract and help keep everything clean. Plant based foods are a good source of fibres. By our great adaptability we are able to digest meat, but the digestion is far from optimal. You will not die when you eat meat, although it’s better approached as a condiment than as a main course.

Your body is a holy temple and should be treated as such.