Forced to think and to work, man became civilized
The defenders of flesh food often point to the fact that flesh-eating people have achieved the highest civilization. Man's superior achievement in northern countries can no more be credited to flesh-eating than to the wearing of fur caps or leather boots. To meet the exigencies of his environment, he was forced to think and to work, and thinking and working developed the brain and laid the foundation for his present stage of civilization.
Another reason for the early habit of flesh-eating is found in the fact that in order to sustain the required amount of body-heat in cold climates, a liberal consumption of fat was necessary. Vegetable fats not being available, his only source of supply was from the body-fat of animals.
Use of meat unscientific
Aside from fat, protein is the only nutritive element meat contains. With the variety of vegetable and butter-fats, and vegetable proteids available in this age, supplemented by our knowledge of chemistry as a guide in their use, the consumption of flesh as an article of human food is entirely unscientific and wholly without reason.
Life MAY BE maintained by meat
A diet composed exclusively of flesh contains fat and nitrogenous compounds only. These two classes of foods can, of course, maintain life, as was explained in our sixth lesson, as proteid is capable of forming blood, sugar, and body-fat. The fact, however, that the proteid or the fat of meat can be made to fill, in the physiological economy, the place naturally supplied by the carbohydrate materials of vegetable food, does not prove that such a diet is without its harmful effects. The living body has many wonderful provisions whereby life is maintained under unfavorable influences. Just as a blind person develops a sense of touch which in a way acts as a substitute for sight, so the ability of the body to convert either proteids or fats into sugar, may be utilized in cases of emergency, but the using of this emergency or substitute function of the body cannot develop and energize the human machine as well or as perfectly as can a naturally balanced diet. The fact that some people exist largely upon a meat diet does not prove that this is without its handicapping and evil influences, any more than the use of alcohol and tobacco proves that man is benefited by indulging in intoxicants and sedative poisons.
That flesh-eating is largely responsible for the universal desire among civilized people for some form of stimulant has ceased to be questioned by those who have been placed in a position to make experiments—the source from Flesh-eating produces appetite for stimulants which all real knowledge is obtained. These conclusions were first forced upon the writer by noticing the gradual decline of appetite for coffee and tobacco in his own case, when he began to subsist upon natural foods. With this hint no opportunity was lost, among the thousands of patients he treated, to observe the effects and get at the truth. If only one or two people had completely lost their appetite for all forms of stimulation, after following a natural food regimen, it might have revealed only an idiosyncrasy. When a dozen undergo the same treatment, with the same results, it leaves but little doubt that the theory may be true, but when many hundreds give the same testimony, through a period of a dozen years' practise, it reveals a truth that cannot be consistently doubted. Such experience proves beyond doubt that flesh-eating supports and perpetuates the habit of taking distilled and ardent liquors, tobacco, tea, and coffee, and the numerous drugs which, altogether, have done the human race more harm; dethroned more intelligence; sapped from the human economy more vitality; ruined more homes; made more widows and orphans; changed more natural virtue into vice, and caused more sorrow and tears, more failure and fears, than all other agencies of destruction combined.
Since fats and proteids are the only nutrients supplied by flesh foods, we may well ask, "Is meat the best source from which these elements may be secured?"
Flesh food contains unexcreted waste matter