Every movement we make, every thought we think, every heartthrob, involves waste and the expenditure of energy. There is a constant breaking down of our tissues; and the food ingested is the source of the material for repair. By this digestion, assimilation, and oxidation, energy is liberated for life’s varied activities.
The idea has long been current that superior qualities of body and mind come from eating flesh food; but the verdict of science, after long observation and careful investigation and various experiments, is rapidly reversing this opinion. The experiments of Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, president of the American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, are convincing. His elaborate investigations, extending over long periods of time, prove that persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, occupation and constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical vigor while subsisting upon a diet containing but one half the usual amount of protein, and in which the flesh is reduced to a minimum or is entirely absent.
The subjects of the first experiment were three physicians, three professors, and a clerkmen of sedentary and chiefly of mental occupation. For a period of six months they were required to reduce the amount of meat and other protein foods by one half. “Their weight remained stationary; but they improved in general health, and experienced a quite remarkable increase of mental clearness and energy.”
For his next experiment, Professor Chittenden used a detachment of twenty soldiers from the hospital corps of the United States Army, “representing a great variety of types of different ages, nationality, temperament, and degrees of intelligence.” For a period of six months, these men lived upon a ration in which the protein was reduced to one third the usual amount, and the flesh to five sixths of an ounce daily.
There was a slight gain in weight, “the general health was well maintained, and with suggestions of improvement that were frequently so marked as to challenge attention.” “Most conspicuous, however,” remarks Professor Chittenden, “was the effect observed on the muscular strength of the various subjects. . . . Without exception, we note a phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation.” There was an average gain in strength for each subject of about 50 percent. For the third experiment Professor Chittenden secured as subjects a group of eight leading athletes at Yale, all in training trim. For five months they subsisted upon a diet comprised of one half to one third of the quantity of protein food they had been in the habit of eating. “Gymnasium tests showed in every man a truly remarkable gain in strength and endurance.”
Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy at Yale University, concluded a series of experiments testing the endurance of forty-nine persons, about thirty of the number being flesh abstainers. The first endurance test was that of “holding the arms horizontally.” The flesh eaters averaged ten minutes. The flesh abstainers averaged forty-nine minutes. The longest time for a flesh eater was twenty-two minutes. The maximum time for a flesh abstainer was two hundred minutes. The second endurance test was that of “deep knee bending.” The flesh eaters averaged 383 times, the flesh abstainers 833. Professor Fisher explains the results on the basis that “flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue poisons produced in the body.”
Professor Fisher remarks: “These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne; Metchnikoff and Tisier of Paris; as well as Herter and others in the United States, seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion.” Professor Rubner, of Berlin, “one of the world’s foremost students of hygiene,” read a paper before the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography on the “Nutrition of the People,” saying: “It is a fact that the diet of the well-to-do is not in itself physiologically justified; it is not even healthful; for on account of the false notions of the strengthening effects of meat, too much meat is used by young and old, and this is harmful.”
In the long-distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have invariably been easy victors. Upon this point, Professor von Norden, in his monumental work on “Metabolism and Practical Medicine,” says: “In Germany, at least, in these competitive races, the vegetarian is ahead of the meat eater. The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long-distance walks. The vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats.”
The Strength Delusion
As in the heat engine, energy for light, heat, or power does not come from burning copper, lead, or iron filings, but from carbonaceous materials, like coal, coke, fuel oils, etc.; so, in the human body, energy for warmth and muscular effort comes, not from oxidizing the metal repair foods, the proteins, but from those foods which are rich in carbonthe starches and the sugars, called the carbohydrates.
Whence, then, come these “illusions,” these “false notions of the strengthening effect of meat?” They come from the fact that foods of this class are stimulating. A stimulant is a counterfeit for strength. It is a physical deceiver. It makes a person believe he is strong because he “feels” strong, when it is not true at all. That which is interpreted as strength is only nervous excitement. A stimulant never builds up; it only stirs up. While pretending to contribute energy, it actually robs the body of strength.
Every animal organism is constantly throwing off poisons, such as urea, uric acid, and creatinine. The kidneys have no other function than the removal of poisons. If an animal is deprived of the use of its kidneys, it will die of self-poisoning in a few days. When an animal is slaughtered and the blood ceases to circulate, this stream of urinary products on its way to the kidneys for excretion stops in the tissues, and is devoured by the consumer with the flesh.
Friedenwald and Ruhrah, in their book, Diet in Health and Disease, say:
“The [meat] extractives are probably of no value either as a source of energy or in the formation of tissues. They act as stimulants and appetizers, and it has been stated that the craving some individuals have for meat is in reality a desire for the extractives.”
Armand Gautier, the eminent French dietitian, says on this point: “Like the opium smoker, the individual who accustoms himself to meat, feels that he misses it when he does not take the usual excess.”
Poisons Contained in a Meat Diet
The seeds of death and decay are in every animal organism; and just as soon as the heart ceases to throb, the arteries cease to pulsate, and the spark of life leaves the animal, decomposition begins. These putrefactive changes often result in the formation of violent poisons, called ptomaines. The word “ptomaine” comes from a Greek word meaning carcass, or cadaver; and the poisons are variously called putrefactive alkaloid, animal alkaloid, etc. The presence of fatal amounts of these poisons in the flesh may not be betrayed by any change in appearance, odor, or taste. The common practice of keeping meat until it becomes tender, or “ripens,” is simply waiting for decomposition to advance until the meat fibre is softened by the process of decay. Canned meats are especially liable to contain the poisonous ptomaine.
Should we take an excess of starches or sugars, provision has been made for storing a certain amount in the form of fat, or as glycogen, in the liver and the muscles; but no provision is found for storing an excess of protein, as excess of this food element is of particular injury to the body. The extensive experiments of Professors Chittenden, Fisher and other scientific workers, have shown that for efficient nutrition we require that only one tenth of the daily intake of food should be of the structure-building, tissue-repairing protein. In the laboratory of nature, the food elements have been so combined by the plants, that the protein element is very low; and thus a diet selected from the natural products of the earth is not only free from uric acid and other waste products, but is already balanced. The addition to the menu of flesh food, which does not contain any starch, at once raises the protein constituent too high.
Disease Prone Diet
The waste products in the blood, arising from excess protein, are a leading cause of Bright’s disease, auto-intoxication, arteriosclerosis, and high blood pressure. These maladies are often associated in the same individual, and frequently have a common origin. Sir William Osler, in his Principles and Practice of Medicine, writes:
“I am more and more impressed with the part played by overeating in inducing arteriosclerosis. There are many cases in which there is no other factor.”
Dr. Alexander Haig, of London, states that uric acid makes the blood “collemic,” or viscous, and then the heart has difficulty pumping it through the capillaries. Hence the blood pressure increases.
Issac Ott, in his textbook on physiology, says on this point: “Burton-Opitz has shown that hunger reduces viscosity, and a meat diet raises it to a great height, while carbohydrates and a fat diet give average values to it.”
In the colon, flesh foods rapidly undergo decomposition, giving rise to numerous poisons, which are absorbed into the blood, and are toxic to the nervous system, and cast an additional burden upon liver and kidneys. Bouchard found that the fecal and urinary excrement of carnivorous animals is twice as poisonous as that from an herbivorous animal. The former also emits a strong odor, and the fecal discharges are offensively repulsive. Doctor Haig, before quoted, also asserts that “Bright’s disease is the result of our meat-eating and tea-drinking habits; and as these habits are common, so also is the disease.”
While it is true that tuberculosis is more frequently contracted through the use of tuberculous milk than from tuberculous meat, the latter source of infection cannot be ignored. Numerous cases of tuberculosis have been reported where the infection could be directly traced to the flesh of tuberculous animals.
Dr. E. C. Shroeder, of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture, says:
“That 10 percent of the dairy cattle in the United States are affected with tuberculosis impresses me as a very conservative estimate. In New York State, about 33 percent of all cattle tested were found to be tuberculous.”
In one year in the United States, the entire carcasses of 35,103 cattle were condemned because of generalized tuberculosis. In the same year a portion of the carcasses of 99,739 more were rejected because of local tuberculosis.
Prof. M. C. Ravenel, of the University of Wisconsin, says that of the thirty-five million hogs killed for food annually in the United States, seven million are found to be infected with tuberculosis.
Ulcer of the stomach is one of our most common diseases. Leading surgeons have shown that it is ten times as frequent as was formerly supposed. It is clearly of dietetic origin, and is usually associated with a too high consumption of protein, and especially meat. Starches, sugars, and fats are not digested within the stomach, and require no acid. Proteins, on the other hand, are digested within the stomach, and require for their digestion a high percentage of hydrochloric acid. The excessive production of acid within the stomach, stimulated by too much protein, is probably the chief cause of the formation of ulcers.
Dr. Fenton B. Turck, of Chicago, said before the American Medical Association: “Ulcer of the stomach is not found in those countries where the inhabitants eat rice. It is evidently a meat eater’s disease. The zone of ulcer is in the meat eater’s zone.”
Cancer is a disease of modern civilization. It is the one major unsolved problem in the field of medical science today. In the Medical Record, Dr. W. J. Mayo is quoted as saying: “Cancer of the stomach forms nearly one third of all cancers of the human body. . . . Is it not possible that there is something in the habits of civilized man, in the cooking or other preparation of his food, which acts to produce the precancerous condition?. . . Within the last one hundred years, four times as much meat has been taken than before that time. If flesh foods are not fully broken up, decomposition results, and active poisons are thrown into an organ not intended for their reception, and which has not had time to adapt itself to the new function.”
One is hardly up-to-date who does not present an abdominal scar caused by an offending appendix. At the fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography held in Washington, D. C., Dr. G. N. Henning contributed a paper dealing with “statistics upon the increase of appendicitis and its causes.” He said: “A meat diet is of great influence in the development of appendicitis. This diet leads to constipation. In most instances, too long retention of intestinal contents in the caecum causes slight inflammation, the results of which are to weaken the appendix, and to render it non-resistant against later infection.”
When Dr. A. Lorenz, the celebrated Vienna surgeon, was in the United States, he called attention to the relatively greater prevalence of appendicitis in this country as compared with Europe, and attributed it to the greater consumption of cold-storage meats here, which he said rendered Americans unduly septic, and especially prone to infection of the appendix.
Nicholas Senn was told by the hospital surgeons in Africa that they had never seen a case of appendicitis in a vegetable-eating African.
The trichina is a small, worm-like parasite found in the flesh of “measly po rk,” which, when eaten, burrows into the muscles of the human being, producing an extremely painful and often fatal affection.
Practically speaking, the human being becomes the host of a tapeworm only by eating underdone flesh containing the larva of the parasite. The ox, the hog, and the fish frequently harbor the larvae of tapeworms.
Poor Economy
In these days when there is increased destruction and decreased production of foods, it is of great importance to know how to secure a maximum amount of nutrition from a minimum expenditure of money.
In view of this fact, it is well to remember that flesh is the most costly source of food. Sixty-two percent of the beefsteak is water. Flesh foods contain but 25 percent nourishment, and 75 percent waste matter. The grain contain 75 percent nourishment, and but 25 percent waste. Now it does not require a knowledge of higher mathematics to determine that since ten pounds of grain, when fed to an animal, make but one pound of flesh, the latter becomes a very costly source of food supply.
Anatomy and Physiology
Even a kindergarten study of the structure of the body reveals the fact that man was not intended to be a carnivorous creature. He does not possess the rough, raspy tongue of the cat family, the long, pointed canine teeth of the lion, the sharp claws of the tiger, or the talons and hooked beak of the eagle. In the carnivore, the alimentary canal is very short, being only three times the length of the body. In herbivore, as in sheep, it is thirty times the length of the body. In frugivora, such as apes, monkeys, and man, it is twelve times the body length. Baron Cuvier, a famous anatomist, writes:
“The natural food of man, judging from his structure, appears to consist principally of the fruits, roots, and other succulent parts of vegetables.”
Let us divide the animal kingdom on the basis of diet and disposition. On the one hand, we have the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the bear, the leopard, the panther, etc., all these are vicious, snarly, crabbed, ferocious beasts. Of what does their diet consist? We call them “beasts of prey.” They feast upon the raw, bloody flesh of their victims. On the other hand, we might mention the horse, the ox, the deer, the sheep, the elephant. Think of their dispositionscalm, quiet, pacific, easily domesticated. May it not be that their diet of cereals and herbs contributes to their peaceful temperament?
Gautier said on this point: “The vegetarian regime has great advantage. It adds to the alkalinity of the blood, accelerates oxidation, diminishes organic wastes and toxins. It exposes one much less likely than the ordinary regime to skin maladies, or arthritis, to congestions of internal organs. This regime tends to make us pacific beings, and not aggressive and violent.”
(Dr. A. W. Truman was a member of the American Medical Association and a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons. He occupied the position of medical superintendent of several sanitariums. Doctor Truman was a close student of dietetics for many years.)
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