Good Health | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 20, 1879

Good Health.

A Vegetable Diet.

"At a recent meeting of the London Medical Society, Sir Joseph Fayrer said that he had seen in the northwest provinces of India, whose inhabitants are pure vegetarians,—eating not even butter, eggs, or milk,—some of the finest specimens of the human race, as regards strength, endurance, and physical development.

"Their food consists chiefly of peas, beans, and the like—articles of diet specially rich in nitrogen, which is one of the chief elements of nutrition.

"Hence, no person needs to starve who can secure a dinner of beans accompanied with good brown bread. The body finds in these the main things it requires to sustain life,—heat, strength, and nourishment. Indeed, few persons could find a really better diet—provided their digestion is not impaired."

Notwithstanding the constant accumulation of evidence of this sort, there are those who still continue to repeat over and over again the threadbare arguments which have been used for the last hundred years to show that human beings cannot live in health without consuming in their daily diet a large proportion of butcher's meat. The experience of large numbers of the human race is constantly proving this argument to be false, as is shown in the paragraphs quoted above. We would especially urge upon parents the importance of rearing children upon a diet including no other forms of animal food than milk and perhaps eggs occasionally, but not too freely. If diet affects the character, as is unquestionably the case, such stimulating articles of food as beefsteak and the usually accompanying condiments must be in a very appreciable degree unfavorable to the development of those temperate and amiable qualities of character which are most to be desired.—Good Health.