Vegetarianism and vegan diets have become familiar in recent years for many of the benefits that have been confirmed to be beneficial to individuals and society, here are a lot of people choose these meat-free diets for health ,moral, environmental and religious reasons.Animal-friendly Buddhism takes ‘Do Not Kill’ as a very important precept, they advocate people to protect every living creatures in the world.For all above the reasons, some characters choose to become supporters of Buddhist vegetarianism, which is one of the earliest vegetarianism and some branches of it are very close to vegan.
The Chinese Buddhist cuisine includes ‘Su’ and ‘Zhai’ diet, In the Buddhist concept, ‘Su’ diet is very close to vegan. However, Eating ‘Zhai’ not only means people cannot eat meat or other food by killing animals, they can not even eating Onions, garlic, leeks, and other pungent seasoning. Moreover, people who eat ‘Zhai’ could not eat food between each day’s noon and next dawn. It’s worth noticing that with vegetarian diet, most Buddhist have optimistic nutritional status of iron, folate, and vitamin b-12, those nutrients above could be easily obtained in meats but it’s hard to gain them in vegetables.
After ensuring this diet is healthy, people began to focus on whether the Buddhist diet was delicious.This is related to whether beginners can get started as well as happily stick to it. It’s well-known that Temple food is almost entirely plant-based, while the various restrictions of the diet do not prevent Buddhist cuisine performing well in flavors, with a variety of dishes developed using meat substitutes such as tofu or wheat gluten . Because temple food emphasizes the raw taste and flavor of the main ingredients, so according to the feedback of taster, Buddhist food often tastes light and delicious. For example,From the Song Dynasty (tenth to thirteenth centuries)in China, a complex vegetarian cuisine called ‘mock meat’ has developed, catering not least for lay Buddhist pilgrims and other worshippers at Buddhist temples. This dishes both capture the flavour and texture of meats with the use of substitutes such as wheat gluten, soybeans and mushrooms.
If food generally means to sustain life and health, then temple cuisine differs from general concept is that it must also help nurture and train consumers. Buddhism teaches people to cultivate themselves morally or religiously even when making and eating food. As temple cuisine is widely appreciated as food that is good for both physical and mental health as well as tastes delicious.This belief means that temple cuisine is a competitive and alternative healthy food choice for Tourists from all over the world who chasing for relief, food, health and love.