Premal, 24th February 2012
Hare Krishna Prabhuji,
All glories to Swami Prabhupada
Please accept my humble obeisances
Are energy drinks like red bull ok?
Is soya ok?
Are carbonated drinks like soda ok?
your servant
Premal
Mahabhagavat Das SDA, 24th February 2012
Dear Bhakta Premal,
Hare Krishna!
Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Gurudeva.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Red Bull contains immense quantities of caffeine and other chemicals, it is an intoxicant… the same goes for other “energy drinks” in that category… basically they give you energy by artificially burning up more of your body’s resources, and many of them cause a crash. That is on the material level. Spiritually speaking, these drinks make you dull and unable to understand spiritual topics, and also cause intense material attachment and illusion. The best energy drink is a glass of nice milk that has been first lovingly offered to Sri Krishna.
Soya – this is a personal choice, ask the local devotees, your counsellors, spiritual master, etc.. Some devotees don’t eat soya, and other devotees love it… there are some different statements by Srila Prabhupada and he did not conclusively prohibit us.
Carbonated drinks, technically speaking, anything that contains bubbles in it is undesirable. As long as the drinks don’t contain caffeine, many devotees accept, for example Thums up and Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola etc., are classified as intoxicants, whereas some drinks don’t contain any caffeine. As far as possible try to avoid – we have some dentists on the group, they can elaborate on the negative health effects including enamel erosion, etc., and of course, nutritionally, they contain way too much sugar.
Other devotees, please add your perspectives too.
Sincerely,
Mahabhagavat Das
Ankit Vora, 24th February 2012
Hare Krishna Premal Prabhu
Please accept my Humble Obeisances
All Glories to Srila Gurudeva
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada
Soya beans although being quite nutritious especially in protein are considered in the mode of passion because of excessive high amount of protein content which is not at all good. This you can also find in our book: The Higher Taste, Chapter 1, Health and Meatless Diet, page 11. You will find a research conducted by Dr. Fred Stare and Mervyn Hoarding article stating that even the vegetarians consume a lot of protein and excessive protein is not good even for the vegetarians and we are not even vegetarians we are vaishnavas, our goal is to please Krishna and his associates and our beloved spiritual master; so we must eat only Krishna Prasadam nothing else, and we cannot even offer such items which are in the mode of passion. One more thing I would like to add, those people who give up meat based diet often consume soy and rice (many people also consider this as vegetarian meat) which actually resemble them the taste quite similar to meat but this can also work other way round, if someone consuming soy and appreciating its taste, by some accident or willingly consumes meat its quite probable that one may stick to that because of the taste of soy quite resembling the meat. So my personal opinion is to avoid the soy based products including tofu and soy sauce which is too bad. And secondly in USA and Canada, 97 % of the soyabean is dangerously genetically modified which is highly dangerous to health. see the below link why GMO food is dangerous and completely developed in the mode of passion and ignorance damaging earth and the soil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnD-DiDRIJA (must watch documentary, I really insist, because these policy and practice are also hampering our farm community projects)
Secondly, these kind of energy drinks contains excessive carbonates which not only have a excessive high level of carbonic acid and phosphoric acid, which is too acidic, its acidity is in the level of ~4-5 pH which is highly acidic and not only its acidic, I have personally seen that people consuming these products have knee and bone weakness, even youngsters of 23-25 years of age due to excessive carbonic content. And secondly they also have appreciable content of caffeine and consuming caffeine is like consuming coffee which is against our regulative principles. And as I stated earlier, these energy drinks have high fructose corn syrup which is another genetically modified product and you won’t consume that. It’s too unhealthy and above all these reasons, they all are in the mode of ignorance and passion.
Instead of that you can consume jaljeera or lime drink made freshly with lime, pepper, honey or jaggery (gur), mint and ginger and offering it to Krishna and tasting this out of the world nectar.
I Hope I have answered your question to some extent.
your servant
Ankit Vora
Harish, 24th February 2012
Hare Krishna
I felt in devotees association that a neophyte devotee or in a starting stage there is no compulsion. Else if on first meeting or first day if we will say these or those things are prohibited, they will run away. As we are regular in associating with devotees, attending Iskcon BG or Bhagavatam classes, chanting, eating prasadam, then desire to eat only Krishna prasadam comes from within and we start eating and drinking only those products which are first offered to Krishna.
Moreover those eatables and drinks, which our tongue cannot avoid and always drag us towards them must be avoided. Tongue should be controlled by chanting and eating Krishna prasadam only.
Dairy products and fruit juices are offerable and healthy too. So why try carbonated drinks. These particular items can be checked from nearest Isckon temple.
Hari Bol
Your insignificant servant
Harish Rana
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