"Non-vegetarian food improves the body, not mind"

Question: Is it true that in olden days, the sages used to eat meat? There is an incident of Agasthya Muni eating meat in the "Vathapi - Ilvala" story.

Yes, we can see some mention about such things in very old stories. We need to understand clearly why and under what circumstances they used to consume meat. Firstly, they used to take meat, but not as their regular food. The animal would be offered to 'yajna', the sacred fire, and then the sages, having very high yogic power, would consume the meat as a prasada of the yajna. Due to this auspicious activity (of yajna), the animal would go to the heavens. In the story of Agasthya Muni, when he said ' vathapi jirno bhava', he was digested immediately. Such was the power of the sages in those days.

First we need to understand why we consume food. It is to have good health. Health means not only the physical health, but the mental health also plays a very important role. That's why in Sanskrit it is known as "swasthya", which means mental peace, purity and health. Meat or non-vegetarian food improves the body, but not the mind. So for those people who need to have physical strength, like soldiers, meat is not prohibited. Soldiers do not need to have as much thinking power. They have to fight like machines. But for people such as the priests (or the brahmins in general), mental power is the more important. We need to have peace and purity of mind, stability and concentration of mind. For such people meat is prohibited. If we start consuming meat, slowly we will loose these good qualities. We will not see these negative changes overnight. It takes time but we will see the changes clearly in the later generation.

Source: indiadivine.org