Here is another part. I think I said in our main lecture that we offer all the food that we eat to the Supreme Lord before we eat. That is the bhakti-yoga system; you see this is again the science of bhakti-yoga.
All food is karmically contaminated. All food, whether that is vegetables that you have grown, or whatever, it is still karmically contaminated because there is killing involved. So Krishna says, “You can offer this food to Me.” and He stipulates, “With love and devotion and if you will do that, I will accept it. Therefore when I accept that food I remove all karma, there is no karma now.” This is the only way you can have karma-free food.
So the raw-eater, the vegan… it doesn’t matter, everybody is eating karma. It is declared right here in the Bhagavad-Gita but of course Krishna has a process where you can get around that which is offering the food to Him, so now the food is karma-free. But even more important than that, the food now has received spiritual potency. So that apple that was just an apple is now a spiritually charged apple, and the name for that is “prasadam”. “Prasadam” means “mercy”. When food is offered to God, then He accepts it and then it becomes His mercy. So we eat that apple and we also get spiritually purified.
All right, now back to the dairy idea. Some people boycott dairy because of the torture of the animal and so on but that doesn’t really help the cow. The cow still is going to suffer whether I drink that milk or not. However if I take that milk from the cow and offer it to Krishna and He accepts it, then not only does the milk take on spiritual purification and spiritual qualities, but the cow that produced that milk also gets the benefit of offering the milk. So the cow gets spiritually benefited, I can help that cow by taking that milk and offering it. You see, my boycotting doesn’t really help the cow, but my offering the milk does.
This is not to say you have to drink milk, you can decide. But we want to make it clear what the position is here. Another problem with people who consume dairy, is that they consume too much, even at best you should consume in small amounts. But if one is using milk, and yogurt, and cheese, and butter, kefir and sour cream, then all of a sudden you have got a huge over balance in your diet. That is not good.
We need to have a little understanding of the subject. You see, everybody has got to eat every day; you should try to do this in a proper way for physical health and spiritual health. So it is important to have that knowledge. Some people have an allergy to milk, so obviously dairy doesn’t work for them.
I personally don’t use much myself, but on occasion a little bit. I understand the whole concept and I wanted to make that clear so people won’t be confused.