IF IT WERE ONLY TRUE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 15.

IF IT WERE ONLY TRUE.

A POOR student who starved and studied himself into insanity at Harvard is taken as a text by a San Francisco daily for a sermon against “Vegetarianism.” It says:—

“There is no doubt that vegetarianism would be an ideal dietetic condition. There is something repulsive in eating huge pieces of meat, murdering our fellow-animals to obtain them. But, constituted as at present, meat-eating is an absolute necessity, especially when hard mental effort is required.

“Our teeth are arranged for meat-eating, as well as for the eating of vegetables. Our stomachs are arranged for meat-eating. Our nerves crave meat, and this craving increases enormously with increase of mental activity.”

Now, the greater part of this is superlative nonsense. Not only man’s ideal diet, but man’s original diet, is anti-flesh. “Vegetarian” is not the proper term, because it carries with it the idea of vegetables instead of the vegetable kingdom. Man is graminivorous and frugivorous in his diet. It was fruits and grains that God gave him as his original bill of fare. Gen. 1:29.

It certainly is not good from a purely physical view-point to eat that which is repulsive. The mind has much to do with digestion. That which is repellant to a refined taste must, in the very nature of the case, have a disturbing effect upon the stomach.

There is a kind of vegetarian diet which is unwholesome. The commingling of fruits and grains and vegetables, often illy-prepared and half-cooked, with perhaps the addition of sugar, milk, and pastry, would be too much for the stomach of a horse. But we know from years of experience,—hundreds of others know from experience,—that a properly-cooked, properly-combined diet of fruit and grains is not only a wholesome diet, but one favorable to “hard mental effort.” In fact, mental workers who have found only trouble and sickness in a meat diet, have been completely cured and rejuvenated by the adoption of a diet of fruits and grains, or fruits, grains, and vegetables. They have had pleasurable satisfaction in knowing that no life has been sacrificed for their appetite, and that the food is clean and free from disease.

There may be old people for whom it is difficult to change from a mixed to an anti-flesh diet; but such cases are few indeed, if the mind is convinced, and the heart is in the effort. If there is still a craving for the flesh-pots of Egypt, while feeding on the better ideal diet, it can not be expected that that diet will do the most good. It will not “set well” on the stomach. The mind will not let it.

As to animals, the purely vegetarian rank as high mentally as the flesh-eating ones; as, for instance, the elephant and the horse.

It may be well to say, that one of the great desiderata in the preparation of grains and vegetables is thoro cooking, and cooking so as to retain the native sweetness of the article, unsoaked with grease. Baking in almost all cases is to be preferred.

Fruits and vegetables should not be eaten at the same meal. It is a bad combination. Some can not eat the legumes—peas, beans, and lentils—with fruit. Starch foods should be thoroly masticated, and mixed with saliva; not washed down with drink of any sort. Taking time to eat a simple, well-cooked, properly-combined diet, and the “vegetarian” will hold his own with physical or mental workers among the “eaters of flesh.”

In conclusion, remember the old proverb: “Eat ye that which is good; custom will render it most delightful.” The flesh-eater admits that grains and fruits and vegetables are good.