EAT FOR STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE.
By David Paulson, M.D.
THERE is a vast amount of difference between immediate strength and endurance. A man may step into a gymnasium and surprise every one by some exhibition of strength in lifting a very heavy dumb-bell, and may be considered a very strong man; and from one point of view he is; but a very important phase of the question to consider is. How often can he repeat this? There are many who, upon the spur of the moment, can lift heavy weights, but who would utterly fail in doing ordinary work for even half a dozen hours continuously. The amount of food that is stored away in the muscles which is available for an emergency determines largely the amount of endurance that a man possesses. Many people are satisfied if their diet is such that they can at once feel the strength from it, even tho they become weary from a slight exertion; but the food which is the most satisfactory is that which enables a man to work hour after hour at wearing and taxing labor without any special sense of fatigue, to have fulfilled to him the promise of the Scripture, “They shall run and not be weary.” Dr. Haig, in a book recently published on the subject of “Diet and Food,” has the following to say in the preface with reference to food: “Diet, as at present used, is often the product of a vast amount of ignorance; it is the cause of a hideous waste of time and money; it produces mental and moral obliquities, destroys health, and shortens life, and generally quite fails to fulfil its proper purpose.” These are the words of a man who has spent years in studying this question from a scientific standpoint. It is not until quite recently that the distinction between stimulation and strength is becoming more and more apparent. A few years ago when a man took a dose of strychnine and felt stronger, or a strong cup of coffee, and thus banished his sense of weariness and sleep, or a meal composed largely of beefsteak, and felt at once more capable of working than before, it was imagined that in some mysterious way he had actually received strength, instead of merely sapping out a little more of his stored-up energy which nature had in reserve for use in emergency. Dr. Haig further states: “Stimulation is not strength, but force rendered a little more quickly available; and it is always followed (and must be so) by an exactly corresponding amount of depression, when the force used up is not available, and has to be replaced.” Then, proceeding to show how meat stimulates, he says: “I think that this action of meat as a stimulant and producer of quickly worked-off force has a good deal to say to the fact that as we have come to eat more and more meat, we have come to have a larger and larger number of meals in the day; and now, while the cheese and vegetable feeder can do well on two, or at most three meals a day, the flesh feeders often take four, or perhaps five. “It follows, also, that quite an exaggerated and erroneous estimate has been formed of the power of meat to produce force, because its stimulating effect has been mistaken for power, and the depression which follows has either been overlooked, which is possible at first, or, later, has been counteracted by alcohol, tobacco, and other more harmful stimulants; but the man who gets his albumens from a less-stimulating source, having no early stimulation, has also no subsequent depression, and so probably never feels the want of any alcohol at all. “Hence it comes about that those who took alcohol on a flesh diet generally very soon give it up when they give flesh up, and smoke also very little, having no craving for any stimulant, while if what most meat eaters say was true,13that meat is very much better nourishment, and more supporting than milk, cheese, fruit, and vegetables, it ought to be exactly the other way, and those who live on the latter foods should require to take alcohol, and be unable to do without it.” The fact here brought out should be carefully noted, that it is the small tippling with these stimulants that produces the necessity for stronger stimulants sooner or later, and irritating substances like condiments, and so-called stimulating substances like tea, coffee, and flesh meats, are surely paving the way for drunkenness, because the strength which they apparently produce is soon worked off, and a man then craves something which he thinks will give him more strength, and alcohol, cocaine, and morphine exactly supply this want for a little time, until the nervous system, deprived of all the reserve nervous energy, breaks down entirely, and the man is left a complete wreck. Those who live upon the simple products of the earth are constantly storing their muscles with more food available for energy, and their nervous systems are not at the same time constantly irritated by any waste products. During the last few years in many of the long-distance walking matches and bicycle races, this has become so apparent that it is attracting universal attention. A noted case of this was a seventy-mile walking match in Berlin the early part of the summer. There were some half dozen vegetarians and eight or ten meat eaters in this race. All the vegetarians arrived at the goal before a single one of the meat eaters came in. Mr. Barnett, known to the cyclist world as the "Nebraska cyclone rider," during the summer of 1894 won the first prize in twenty-three out of twenty-five long-distance bicycle races, the second prize in the twenty-fourth, and the third prize in the twenty-fifth. He lived exclusively upon fruits and grains. He was then persuaded if he would give up his vegetarian ideas and train upon meat he would be able not only to win the long-distance races but the short-distance as well. He put himself under one of the best trainers in America, and the result was that in a few months he was broken in health and unable to hold the ground that he had gained, and did not regain his health until he again trained upon the simple products of the earth. Scores of instances might be cited illustrating the same thing. In view of these facts, the question of the Scriptures becomes important, "Why spend ye your money for that which is not bread?" Animal food and other stimulants are excessive in price, and do not give the endurance of either body or mind that the simple, inexpensive products of the earth can produce. Furthermore, the man who lives largely upon flesh foods is having his blood poisoned and corrupted, and becomes an easy prey to disease, while the man who lives upon the pure products of the earth is building up resistance against disease, which enables him to go with freedom on his ministry of mercy where it would not be safe for a man who dines upon corpses to be found.