Mohandas Gandhi: 1869-1948

Adherence to a strict vegetarian diet was the natural complement to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. For the Mahatma, food could never be at the center of a truly simple life. Eschewing tea, coffee and milk in addition to meat, and fasting regularly, Gandhi wrote that "restraint of the sexual and other passions becomes easy" for vegetarians. He is pictured above in 1936 eating a typically frugal meal with an unidentified guest.

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