Discrimination is the better part of valor. Is that not English proverb? So man should have discrimination, and especially for eating. I think George Bernard Shaw wrote one book, You are What You are Eating.
Prabhupāda: Normally a man is called rational animal, so he should advance in rationality. Just for eating, eating is common to the man and to the animal, but man should be advanced, what kind of eating it should be. Not only natural, although natural tendency is... Just like man, some of, not all, some of them want to eat meat. So rationality is that "If I have got better foodstuff, why shall I kill that animal?" This is then rationality. But because he can eat meat, he can kill animal, he should go on killing animal, that is less intelligence. God has given so many nice foodstuff. Take for fruits, there are varieties of fruits Kṛṣṇa has given to the mankind, and we can utilize milk in so many nice preparation. So the fruits are not eaten by the animals. The dogs, cats, they do not eat fruit. It is meant for human being, so similarly there must, discrimination is the better part of valor. Is that not English proverb? So man should have discrimination, and especially for eating. I think George Bernard Shaw wrote one book, You are What You are Eating.
Hayagrīva: You are what you eat.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So the eating, about, there must be rationality, not to be carried by the nature's way. Nature's way, a man can eat anything, and they are eating also at the same time. The other day I saw in the airplane one Marwari gentleman he was eating the intestine of the hog. What is called?
Hayagrīva: The what?
Prabhupāda: Intestine of the hogs.
Devotee: Hogs' intestines.
Prabhupāda: What is that called?
Hayagrīva: Hogs intestines?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: People eat pig's feet also, that's a...
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Hayagrīva: A very favorite, the feet of pigs.
Devotee: Pig's trotters.
Prabhupāda: Feet.
Hayagrīva: Pig's feet.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Hayagrīva: That's considered a delicacy.
Prabhupāda: So this way they have developed their consciousness. So Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura said, nānā yoni brahman kare kadarya bhakṣaṇa kare, this cycle of birth and death is that, that he comes to a species of life, he eats the most abominable food. So that, that is to be prohibited in human life. That is checking the natural instinct and to become rightly rational, what to eat, how to sleep, how to have sex, how to defend. This is also animal propensity. Above that he should search out about the Absolute Truth, then his rationality is properly used. Otherwise he remains animal.