Our newest blogger Peggy Chan explains how her life choices have led her to open Grassroots Pantry

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Samskara is a Sanskrit word that describes subtle imprints left on the subconscious mind through past positive or negative experiences, which build up to determine and condition one’s own state of mind, desires and actions. Unlike karma, where our present choices and actions decipher future karmic events, all living beings may experience negative samskara not by choice, but by the experiences forced upon them.

Animals, whether they are wild, brought up on farms as livestock, or raised as pets, are considered by most humans to be of ‘lower realms’. However, although they may differ to humans in terms of intellectual ability, they are no less capable of experiencing suffering.

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Chickens that are caged and cooped up in A4 sized pens their entire lives; cattle that get pumped with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormones), force fed GM corn and put on antibiotics to hamper unnatural cancer cell growth; livestock animals raised for human consumption that are slaughtered inhumanely, all experience suffering. How an animal is treated and how it feels at the moment of death produce varying stress hormones that are subtly transferred to the eater. Just as one tastes the difference when an angry cook prepares your food, I can almost assure you a cow that died miserably isn’t going to make you a Happy Meal.

The same goes with the frightening amount of GM soy, wheat, cotton and maize crops being flooded on over 70 per cent of shelf spaces in our neighbourhood supermarkets. How our food is grown, and how the land it grows on is treated, means all of its energy – positive or negative – gets transferred to the eater.

I wasn’t born ‘conscious’ of my food choices. It had been slowly instilled into my own five senses, memories and subconscious impressions growing up. My parents made us adventurous guinea pigs with every meal placed in front of us, which included anything from ox tongue to balut, and goose foie gras to sashimi that was sliced so fresh the meat was still squirming. Anything that wasn’t devoured entirely on our plates, ultimately, always led to a lecture on food waste. I made a conscious decision at age 16 to eliminate the consumption of red meat from my diet for health, spiritual and animal welfare reasons. That, and for lack of a better explanation: I love animals.

That is the extent of how I feel spiritually when it comes to my own eating habits, which I very seldom share with others because it’s not a point that most people would find necessary. They might say that my personal beliefs and choices do not make up a convincing enough argument to persuade others to care for our planet and to eat less meat.

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Instead, they more often see the second part of the story. That is, my love for food, the cultures surrounding it, the strong bonds built over community meals and the respect I have for our food’s origin, production, and to those who handle it. All of these elements inspired me to begin a career in food and beverage early on in my late teens. I worked from the lowest end of the French brigade, turning potatoes, scrubbing iron stovetops, spending hours perfecting chives ciselé. After ten years,  I learned how to manage award-winning restaurants in luxury hotels. I worked and studied on the side – everything from food and wine knowledge, hospitality management, events planning, food systems and agriculture, economics, finance, business ethics to nutrition, and I strategically built a path honing my skills in F&B so that I could create an honest and convincing story I knew so well that I couldn’t even doubt it myself.

In year 2009, World Watch Institute published a research article that stated livestock and their byproducts accounted for 51 per cent of annual worldwide greenhouse gases. CO2 derived from oil, natural gas and coal tend to be the major culprits for human-caused carbon emissions, but very little research was done on methane gas emitted through raising livestock, until pretty much then. CH4 (Methane) is scientifically known to be twice as potent as CO2. Anytime a cattle breathes, belches (because of the GM corn its stomach isn’t meant to digest) and flatulates, it emits CH4.

Now imagine the incalculable million tons of methane gas released into the air, everyday, expelled by the hundreds of millions of factory farmed cattle currently raised for human consumption on the planet, hovering over the earth’s atmosphere causing massive ice erosions, monstrous storms, extended droughts and floods. These are cold, hard facts of science very little people know of or remain ignorant about.

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The findings from this research, along with a lengthy list of other such worrying issues, has inspired me to make it a lifelong goal to bring this topic to light using the best way I know how: through my food and my restaurants.

Every dish that we serve, every action we perform and every spoken word is evidence of what we stand for and what we care about. If, by chance, a dining experience at one of my restaurants inspires you to go vegetarian for at least one day out of a week, that’s a pretty good step towards raising awareness within our community. If it doesn’t, I still hope that we’ve left you with positive samskaras derived from the love our organic produces and whole ingredients receive, beginning from farm, to your table.