p. 249 | DRUNKENNESS IN EATING by John Harvey Kellogg

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 2, 1881

DRUNKENNESS IN EATING.

By John Harvey Kellogg

Drunkenness may be caused by bad physical conditions, brought about by bad habits of eating. Would it not be well for us to look into bad table habits for one of the reasons why so many of our young men become drunkards? May there not be some cause working in the flesh of our youths, driving them to intemperance? May it not be possible that kind fathers and mothers for years have been filling up the awful gap of 10,000 dead drunkards annually, by feeding their children upon stimulating, highly-seasoned, innutritious foods? There is no doubt in my mind that every man is a glutton before he is a drunkard. If nature's laws are violated, a man's sensations will be all abnormal, and the mainspring of his life will be befouled, and the result will be irregular and vicious expressions of all the appetites, both for food and drink. I am, therefore, confident that the widespread appetite for intoxicating liquors is largely due to the false relations that the American people hold to their food. We cannot hope much from moral suasion and legal enactments so long as we overlook the physical condition of the drunkard. If you would cure disease or vice effectually, you must shut off that which nourishes them, instead of putting all your force into efforts to antidote them. "Let the wicked forsake his way," and then turn unto the Lord, "and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." There are 200,000 drunkards in the United States, 10,000 of whom go annually to premature graves. There are 20,000 prostitutes, whose average life in their profession is four years. Do you believe that this vast army of human beings go willingly to ruin? There are causes lying back of mere perversities of soul, in the common every-day dietetic habits of these forlorn ones.

Eating and drinking are always associated with the bar and the brothel, and if you will take notice, the eating is always of that kind of food which goes straight for the animal nature, and wakes up in a man everything that is beastly.

The whole tendency of the food furnished at the popular bar-room restaurant is to stir the baser elements in humanity and keep up the demand for alcoholic stimulants. No wonder the drinking saloons can afford to give what they call "free lunch." Care is taken to furnish such food as fires the appetite for strong drink, and the rum-seller gets his pay for his "free lunch" through the sale of the whisky that must inevitably follow it. Those who live on highly stimulating foods, but do not drink strong drinks, will find that the bias of their bodily powers, instead of being toward mental and spiritual spheres, will be toward animal indulgences, dragging the mind and soul into servitude to the flesh, and where there are any moral aspirations, making the conflict between the higher and the lower nature so intense that a vast amount of moral force is wasted in self-conflict that ought to go into the world's redemptive agencies for saving the lost.

I am confident that the American habit of eating sumptuous and late suppers, whether at our homes or church fairs or festivals, is damaging the physical, mental, and moral health of our nation more than any other one thing of its kind; more damaging, because it has the appearance of innocency, and the sanction of our fathers and mothers and some of our pastors.—Rev. J. F. Clymer.