FLESH FOODS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 4, 1900

FLESH FOODS.

(Concluded.)

FAMILIAR FORMS OF DISEASE FOR WHICH MEAT EATING IS MORE OR LESS RESPONSIBLE.

There are many foods that may ferment in the stomach, and produce annoying gases and distressing acids the very same day they are eaten, and yet they may be comparatively harmless in their effects; while flesh foods, although they do not ferment, readily decay when they remain too long in a disabled stomach. It is because of this that the effects of meat eating are often so deceptive. It is not difficult to convince a man who has a sour stomach of the error of some food combination made at the previous meal. However, it is a difficult matter to convince the average rheumatic, gouty person, or the one suffering with nervous prostration or Bright’s disease, that he is reaping the legitimate harvest of the meat which he ate three months previously, and which produced no distress at the time.

Rheumatism.—Rheumatism may be caused by a failure to properly eliminate the waste products that are naturally being formed within the system. In such a case the malady would certainly be greatly increased by the addition of the waste products of a portion of an animal. Such a person has undertaken a contract which his eliminating organs will not carry out. When a person abuses his stomach to the utmost limit of the law, it sometimes reverses its action, and a severe fit of vomiting is produced. But as the kidneys have no such opportunity, they are forced to continue to submit to all the abuses that are heaped upon them, until finally they give up in utter despair. The result may be some form of Bright’s disease, or at any rate a failure of the kidneys to properly eliminate all the poisons. As these waste substances accumulate in the system, by and by a long train of evils begins to appear.

Four fifths of the cases of nervous trouble undoubtedly arise from dietetic errors of some form. There is little doubt that the foundation for one half the drunkenness in the world is laid at the dining table. When a man begins to break down physically, he will break down in the weakest spot; and what is the weakest spot is largely determined by what he inherited from his parents, and by his surroundings. If the man whose parents were suffering with Bright’s disease before he was born, persists in compelling his kidneys to eliminate not only his own waste products, but large quantities of poisons from tobacco, meat, tea, and coffee, he will almost invariably die from Bright’s disease; when, if he had required his kidneys to perform only a normal amount of work, he might have risen above the law of heredity. See Dr. Haig, on Uric Acid, page 576.

Frequently patients come to our health institutions wildly insane for no other reason than that their chief articles of diet had been meat, beef tea, and similar unnatural foods. A rational change in diet alone, in many such cases, is sufficient to effect, within a few days, a most noticeable change for the better. The same is often true of the worst forms of sleeplessness. The assistant superintendent of a large insane asylum recently made the statement that when a portion of the insane patients were placed upon a rational diet, a noticeable change for the better took place in their condition within a few weeks. It is strange that so many persons have such perverse ideas in reference to the use of flesh foods. A woman in this city was recently advised to eat five pounds of beef daily, to build her up and cure her rheumatism. At the same time she hired a nurse every night to give her massage to secure relief from pain in her joints. The simple philosophy of the whole thing is that the woman was filling her joints with poison, and the nurse was doing her best to rub the poison out.

Diabetes.—Diabetes is another disease that is becoming extremely common. In this disease the starch, after it has been transformed into sugar, instead of being used by the muscles to furnish energy, is rejected and carried off by the kidneys as waste matter. As a consequence, the muscles are weakened, emaciation sets in, and nature, in order to keep the accumulation of sugar at as low a point as possible, induces a severe thirst; so large quantities of water are daily drunk, and as a consequence the secretion of the kidneys is enormously increased. In the majority of cases the cause of this disease is simply that the blood, instead of being a messenger of life to every tissue of the body, is a messenger of death. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean! not one.” Job 14: 4.

When the stomach becomes simply a receptacle for unclean and unnatural foods, the blood partakes of the same quality, the muscle cells become partially chloroformed, as it were, and refuse to use the sugar that is brought to them. The favorite method of treating this condition is to deprive the patient of all foods that produce sugar, and allow him to continue the wrong diet, which originally caused the disease. If all foods that can be transformed into sugar in the system are excluded from the dietary, of course, for the time being, the patient is not likely to eliminate much sugar, but in most cases the disease continues to progress. Putting a man in prison so he does not have an opportunity to steal does not necessarily make him an honest man. Much of the management of sick persons, both physically and spiritually, is simply depriving them of the opportunity to do wrong.

The whole system of curing a man from the outside, by fighting certain things which are merely nature’s danger-signals, is irrational to the last degree. “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly.” Jer. 6: 14. Man must be directed into the current of health, then God carries him on. We do not have to heal a man either physically or spiritually; God will attend to that. It is our duty to get him to work in harmony with the divine order. The rational thing to do for the man who is just beginning to have

diabetes is to cut off at once his meat diet, his tea, coffee, tobacco, sweetmeats, pasty mush, and doughy bread; and to have whatever starchy foods he partakes of thoroughly toasted; allowing him gluten, nut products, some of the vegetables, for sake of variety; together with plenty of exercise, if he is not too weak, thus encouraging the muscles to use sugar; and vigorous short applications of cold in various forms to arouse the stupefied muscle cells, which have, as it were, for the time being, gone on a strike.

NATURAL SUBSTITUTES FOR MEAT.

In attempting to reform the world, either physically or spiritually, there is danger of depriving persons of that on which they are leaning, without supplying something better in its place. It would certainly be wrong to deprive a person of the sacredness that he attaches to Sunday-keeping, and then not give him the great truth of Sabbath-keeping. It is likewise wrong to convince persons of the erroneous practice of meat eating, and not call their attention to the good foods which, with a little care, attention, and persevering effort, can readily be put in the place of meat. On account of the so-called stimulating properties in meat, the majority of those who discontinue its use experience what is known as an “all-gone feeling,” which is a distant relative of the terrible sense of depression that steals over the morphine fiend when he is deprived of his darling indulgence, and is very similar to that feeling which many experience in giving up tobacco, and which some experience in dispensing with tea and coffee. Such persons must recognize the fact that, after having borrowed from their future capital by using these unnatural substances, they can not expect immediately to recover from all the painful effects that are left behind. No natural food can furnish absolutely the immediate sense of exhilaration that comes from the use of these unnatural foods; but it can produce that endurance, strength, and continued sense of well-being that those who live upon stimulants can never experience.

The ordinary grains contain about ten per cent of the same food substance which makes up the bulk of meat, and in reference to other food elements in practically the right proportion in which the human system demands this substance.

A pound of peas, beans, or lentils contains more beefsteak than does a pound of meat, and contains other food substances in addition. These legumes can be rendered easy of digestion by cooking them thoroughly, and rubbing them through a colander, thus leaving the woody substance behind; spread moderately thin in a baking tin, and subject to oven heat for a sufficient length of time to form a nice brown crust.

Nuts are likewise rich in the same food substance found in meat, and contain, in addition, a larger amount of fat in a natural state than can be found in any animal food except the fattest pork. And one can have the satisfaction of eating this fat in a natural, emulsified state, and have no dread of swallowing trichinæ, tapeworm, etc.