By Madhavendu das
I am submitting this article as a follow up on the article by Antony Brennan title “Indian Ghee contaminated with animal fat.”
Dear Maharajas, Prabhus and Matajis, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
I am extremely grateful to HH Bhakti Raghav Swami and Antony Brennan for their kind research on the Ghee. I hope this time it will better inform devotees and bring auspiciousness for the whole society. The degradation of general mass has no limit in this present age. Everyone is just mad after sense enjoyment and they don’t mind to make money by doing any nonsense activity.
Mix or impure Ghee is not a recent problem. It was there also, when Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada was present. Through his letter he instructed what is to be offer to the Lord. The following are the excerpts from his letters:
“Bilati Sugar (imported sugar/ white sugar) and mixed Ghee are impure. Desi (native) real sugar and unmixed Ghee is pure. (Patravali, Part one, page-3)
Pure and impure things both are material truth, but in relation to serve the Lord one must reject impure ingredients. In the mode of goodness pure things and in the mode of passion and ignorance the impurity besieged and enclosed. By sattva-guna one must have to forlorn the rajah and tamah gunas means being fixed in visuddha-sattva and knowing that visuddha- sattva is pure and serve the Lord with those ingredients. In the impure conscience means the ingredients which possessed rajah and tamah qualities cannot be offered to the Lord. Purity must always be taken into strict consideration. (Patravali, Part one, page-5)
About this two definition of “pure” and “impure”, whatever karmis thinks is pure, may not be so for the devotees, also according to karmi’s consciousness of impure things is pure for the devotees. If the term apavitra (impure) indicate amedya-uneatable then no one can never ever offer it to the Lord. Without Sattvik, Rajahsik and tamasik things can not be offer to the Lord. If some one bring some impure things and tell that this is offered to the Lord-we should never accept it. Anything which is not accepted by the Lord, are rejected by the devotees. There will be no offenses to rejecting those things. Even if it is announced that the pure Sattvik ingredients is offered to the Lord but by non- devotees, we should reject knowing well that Lord does not accept them. (Patravali, Part one, page-8, 9)”
Regarding Sugar: Sugar is one of the main ingredients in so many sweet preparations. But unfortunately no one concerned about its purity. The sugar we use is white sugar which is bleached over animal bones. Refiners use blood (bullocks, buffalos, pigs etc) and bone black frequently to refine Sugar. It is poisonous in certain cases. “The world is enamored and deceived merely by the outward beauty which is nothing but the trap of Maya” Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur The brown Sugar is much sweeter, more wholesome and more digestible than white Sugar. The brown coloring matter is the very essence of Sugar, its very life. Here at the Krishna Balaram Mandir we have 5 senior Brhmacaris who obstain and decline to accept and eat foodstuff containing white Sugar. They consider that sugar is untouchable and also unhealthy.
In the Kartik I have spoke to HG Harisuri Prabhu about the white sugar. He told me that we should not use the white sugar. Refiners are using horrible chemicals now days. Prabhupada instructed us to organize our own production, like farm houses etc.
My humble suggestion on the matter, is to have somebody organize our own production or cottage industry. If any wealthy Vaisnava can take inspiration and come forward to pick up this urgency and pressing- need in our ISKCON society; he will very much please and satisfy the Lord and His dear devotees.
Hare Krishna Vaisnava dasanudas Madhavendu das
Very intersting.
White sugar has previously been given the name ‘white death’ and its addictive value has been widely discussed.
White sugar is not natural, it is the residue of a long refining process that removes all the nurtition and calories from the initial product.
In his book “The Sugar Blues” Richard Duffy says: “Refined sugar is lethal when ingested by humans because it provides only that which nutritionists describe as “empty” calories. In addition, sugar is worse than nothing because it drains and leaches the body of precious vitamins and minerals through the demand its digestion, detoxification and elimination make upon one’s entire system.”
I try to eat as little sugar and possible of any type. Sugar is known to cause acidosis, the ever acidity of the body which many believe is the root condition that produces a variety of diseases.
Actually when you take a deep look at your food you find that this source of our bodily sustenance has become a market commodity, and all decisions about it are made in regard to the market. The market has truly taken our food to a dark place.
Hare Krishna. I don’t dispute the fact that sugar is deathly and is refined using chemicals. However, concerning using bones in the process I would be grateful if devotees could obtain concrete information about this. Here, in Mauritius ( a world exporter of sugar) queries from the factories have met the response that refining white sugar using animal bones is archaic. It has been stopped here many years ago. Furthermore, I was also informed by the factories that most brown sugar is indeed white sugar that has been coloured with molasses!
On the same note I just found out that many brands of pasta which list their ingredients as only containing dhurum wheat….are made in factories also using eggs and the pasta may be contaminated. San Remo pasta has just started writing “may contain traces of eggs” on their packets. Panzanni pasta should have an M after the lot no. if it is to be considered uncontaminated by eggs (an N or no letter means it has been made in the same machines as egg pasta is made).
After so much research I also found out that almost all milk powder contains 0.2% of fish lecithin! In Mauritius we cannot find uncontaminated milk powder and because fresh milk is so rare the devotees are “forced” to use the contaminated milk powder.
It would be really helpful if we (someone from ISKCON) could have different brands of ghee tested for animal contamination so that we could know exactly which brands are safe to use or not.
Thank you. Karunika dasi
Sorry – not fish lecithin but fish gelatin
Thank you, Maharaja for taking the time to do this research about modern ghee. Hopefully this will encourage leadership to revisit the roots on KC movement and strive once more to achieve self sufficiency.
We cannot trust anyone that produces food solely for profit and greed.
It amazes me that in 2008, ISKCON devotees are even discussing the harmful effects and impurity of white sugar. It is well documented. There is absolutely no excuse to use white sugar anymore when there are so many natural and pure alternatives.
Giridhari is right about the process of using animal bone charcoal filters as archaic. Very few do this. Most sugar companies today use beets to filter the sugar. However, it still does not minimize the fact that white sugar has zero nutrition and is dangerous for one’s health. And yes, brown sugar is really just white sugar colored with molasses. However, I know that Bhaktisiddhanta Maharaja was referring to Gor, which is very nutritious and pure, and not modern day brown sugar.
As for Giridhari prabhu’s comment about milk powder, I am wondering why you think it is necessary to use contaminated milk powder in replace of contaminated liquid milk? Replacing one contaminated product with another will certainly not solve the problem and most certainly not please Krishna. It is better to go without if you cannot find a clean source. Krishna wants our love and not any particular food item. Of course, it is best if we can have our own cows and get pure milk, but if the temple is not able to or willing to do that, then you have no moral choice really but to go without. But typically this never happens and we compromise.
I am very confident that if Prabhupada was here to observe what is happening in modern day factory farming, something which practically didn’t exist when he was physically here, then he would encourage us even more to be independent of this profit driven, greedy, and contaminated economic system created by the West.
Using and kind of impure food in our offerings to the deities is ludicrous. Radha and Krishna should ONLY be offered the very best available. One would think that after 40 years of trying, ISKCON should know very well what the “very best” is. If we were really honest, as a society, and acted in the best interest of Krishna’s pleasure, these articles would have little relevance to our daily lives. We would truly be independent and unaffected by whatever was happening in these kali yuga food factories.