Lit Jedi diet -- How you get so big eating food of this kind?

Who said anything about sentience? I'm talking about the difference between plants and animals.

The Jedi -> eastern religion comparison is generally good, but if fails in this regard. Vegetarianism tends to come from a belief in reincarnation. The Jedi have no such belief.

I'd say a better comparison in this matter would be to Native Americans. All life is sacred, but we gotta eat, so we'll respect what we kill.

 

A Jedi diet consists mainly of Pure Intergalactic Justice.

 

Luke eats meat a lot in the EU- "ribenes".

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Karkan_ribene

I've noticed that "not drinking alcohol" sometimes gets brought up though - Wild Space, Crosscurrent.

 

They also had (IIRC) 'Nerf Paste' aboard the Shadow in DNT.

 

Isn't there a WEG story snippet where he drinks a ton of alcohol while coaxing information out of someone in a Cantina and just uses the Force to metabolize it so that he doesn't get drunk?

 

Quite possibly- I have read few WEG sources so can't say for sure.

 

If we were talking about just the human Jedi than I think that it would be consistent with the general Jedi philosophy to have them be vegetarians.

I could see this also as something that individual Jedi come to on their own terms, as an expression of their relationship with the force, it would make sense for some to eschew killing for food. On the other hand, there are so many species that I think having a rule that says "Eat plants unless you cannot" is divisive and could render a situation where some Jedi are considered "more peaceful" than others because they are biologically able to eat only plants.

There is ample mention though in the post ROTJ literature though of Jedi eating nerf steaks and such.

I do recall in one of the later books (FOTJ??) a reporter yelling at Jaina, "If Jedi respect all life, why are you not vegetarians??" I did find that amusing.

 

What styles? I practice Cheng-style Ba Gua Zhang. I agree with the over mystical interpretation of kung fu, but I'm not sure that can't entirely be blamed on "the West." Jin Yong and the Shaw Brothers and Tsui Hark have contributed quite a bit to the mystical/magical martial arts conception in the East and the West with wuxia novels and films.

I think that was mostly apparent in the OT, Obi-Wan is basically a Ronin. However, I think people make more of that philosophically and aesthetically than is necessarily warranted. The unused McQuarrie design for Obi-Wan that is very samurai is interesting... but the actual look of Old Ben Kenobi is far more desert dwelling traditional Arab clothing than it is samurai. From the outer robe that is still worn to this day, exact same cut, in Tunisia and Morocco, to the white/tan under robes. There are paintings of Prophet Muhammad and the Shi'ite Imams that look exactly like Old Ben Kenobi with green or white turbans on.



Ultimately, I think Jedi philosophy more closely resembles Shaolin, Tao and to a certain extent Sufi chivalry than it does Bushido.

*apologies for the size of these pics

 

Maybe this point can be of interest: In the space science-fiction RPG Coriolis they mention that spacers are mostly vegetarians because it is easier to grow plants than to farm animals in deep space. This has made the ethnical groups that are spacers are more or less all vegetarians and find the concept of meat eating disgusting.

 

But then we have Labryrinth of Evil with Anakin and Obi-wan bar hopping and at like the the tenth bar Anakin brings up the fact that Obi-wan has a tendency to cut off peoples arms in bars.

 

I think you generally have that already, what with more predatory species being depicted as more easily and readily angered as Jedi... and yet somehow not having been considered to be treading to close to the dark side. Saba is almost never depicted with any kind of Jedi calm.

Just to sort of make it clear again what I'm after here... what has TCW show regarding Jedi dining? I know the EU has consistently depicted Jedi has not really being particularly discerning about what they eat. I'm not really asking about that. I'm wondering of the EU overlooked a subtle point in the movies, because the 3 instances I can recall of Jedi eating in the films, none of them depict them eating meat.

As I said earlier, I would think that even just logistically for a population the size we are talking about it would be very taxing on resources to be so dependent upon livestock for meat. I would think in-vitro meat would make much more sense logistically than it would to have entire planets full of ranches, factory farms and slaughterhouses. We are talking about a galaxy that can clone soldiers, body parts, has a bacta that can heal damn near anything...

 

In the 'Enemy Lines' duology (NJO) the poor of the Galaxy ate something called 'Grayweave' - processed from single-celled organisms in a 'Grayweave Generator'.

And then there are fish.... European Monks ate quite a number of those; 'stew ponds' were often attached to Monasteries - some exist (with fish in them) to this day.

 

I really don't understand this notion that "vegetarian = peaceful = Jedi respect all life"

plants are lifeforms--you are still eating something alive. And what would sentient plants think about Jedi eating them? Does T'ra Saa ever even question this when Jedi eat plants?

IMO the bigger question that is not being addressed in SW is, "where is the food coming from?" If Jedi respect life, vegetarian or not, they should be concerned how their food is harvested, where it comes from, and if they eat meat, how the animals are treated. There is a garden in the Jedi Temple which might indicate Jedi actually grow their own food.

 

Is it the Jedi though? I seem to recall that Darth Plagueis, in the eponymous novel, looked on meat and meat eaters with quite the disdain.

 

Still eats it though:

"We're not living in an age of giants, Sidious. But to succeed we must become as beasts."
Taking a bite from the warrior's heart, he passed the blood-filled organ to his apprentice.

 

That's really ironic...didn't he respect and collect information about Rakata? and they are carnivores.

 

And then he ate some dude's heart out of his chest.

Reading DP a second time, it seemed the Muuns in general were vegetarians, which sort of goes against Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds that had established their society was originally based on fishing (hence the teeth) and Jedi Trial that had the whole stoner blood tea thing going on.

 

Well Jedi are given some credits by the Order but I doubt there were any restaurants nearby on the world. They were probably blown to bits or the owners/cooks were all probably scared away due to the battle.

 

They consume 'Bush Tucker' as one of the tests on 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!' And if you're hungry enough....

 

I'm sure sentient plants, like Neti, make the same observations any sapient creature makes about non-sentient plant-life.

The single weakest argument anyone ever uses when it comes to vegetarianism is "plants are alive too." It's a weak moral argument, and you know it is a weak moral argument, because you recognize, inherently, the drastic differences between plant lives and animal lives. Moreover, it's built into Star Wars that sentience makes a difference in terms of the sorts of disturbances felt in the Force when things die. The higher up the consciousness chain it is, the more of a disturbance it makes. So billions of nerfs being slaughtered is going to have less of a disturbing effect on the Force than billions of sapient beings(people, human and non-human), likewise, billions of (non-sentient)plants being harvested creates much less of a disturbance in the Force.

This is a galaxy where there are sentient, sapient, crystals. Obviously sentience is the deciding factor here. If you don't make that distinction, then the argument can obviously be made in the opposite direction you're intending here. Sure, plants are alive, as are animals; and as another pointed out above the Force flows through both equally. If you're not going to make the distinction between sentience and non-sentience with plants an animals,and thus argue there is no potential for moral or ethical "betterment" between choosing the plant rather than the animal... where does the argument end? The logical conclusion is that since there is no moral difference between eating a lettuce leaf and a hamburger, then there is no moral difference between eating a hamburger and a Mon Cal filet or fried Quarren tentacles or even leg of Man.

It's not a question of choosing life instead of death and not accepting that death is part of the natural cycle of life. It's about whether or not it is necessary to cause such a disturbance to the Force to get the nutrition you need to not just survive, but thrive.

Ah, 9 Corellian Hells, folks are obviously not paying attention to my original post and developing from there anyway. We are choosing to ignore the only scenes of Jedi eating in the Films, and the philosophies upon which the Jedi Order is based for tangential arguments and thus not having to address the actual topic i.e. based on the movies themselves that only ever show Jedi characters eating plants and fruits and taking into consideration that there is a heavy Buddhist and Taoist influence on the Jedi Order as monastic swordsmen, did the EU overlook a possible intent for the Jedi to be generally vegetarian?

 

Welcome to my nightmare.

 

It's a difficult question to answer with any certainty. The EU may very well have missed the subtle intent of the films when it comes to Jedi vegetarianism. It certainly wouldn't strain credulity that the Jedi would chose a vegetarian diet due to both the real-world philosophical influences the Order had in its conception, as well as the the broader cultural idea of not wanting to harm animals. At the same time, there may not actually have been any intent at all, and it was merely coincidence that fruit happened to be what the Jedi were munching on when we, as viewers, came to look in on them. Nothing is exactly specified in the films, so we're ultimately left to EU materials. Meat―specifically nuna―never seemed far from the table in TCW, even those Jedi would be eating from, but the one time I specifically remember seeing Jedi actually ingesting in the series, Ahsoka and Barriss were taking on plates of what looked like pasta.

 

From these scenes, would Jedi follow a vegetarian diet? Sure. There might have been reasons why Lucas chose to have fruit on the table, why Yoda was making "rootstew" and not "snakestew"--completely possible. In fact, they might even generally be vegan. So, the scenes suggest a vegetarian diet, but EU doesn't seem to take it further.

 

I can definitely see it being a preference that is abandoned when necessary, or perhaps even expedient. The Jedi take life when necessarily to keep the peace, so I would not see them as staunch vegetarians if their lives depended upon it. Like many things, this is one of those things that's dependent upon where you draw the line -- or you become Darth Nihilus, Lord of Hunger. Luke's Jedi code sorta supports the idea, which shows a lack of cognizance on the part of the authors that depict it otherwise. I would assume that in 99% of situations, there should never be a reason for a Jedi to absolutely have to eat meat, so I wouldn't really buy the explanation that they "have to eat it while respecting it," because they don't.