Here it will be seen that Dr Williams classes man as a “cooking animal” merely because he has no other class (according to his own classification) in which to place him! But it will be observed that no mention whatever is made of fruitarian diet, or the possibility of man living upon fruits and nuts alone. He does not even mention the fact that there are fruitarian animals! Naturally, if one eliminates a whole class in this way—that class being the one to which man belongs—it is impossible to find a rightful place for him; but once recognise the fruitarian class of animals, and it will be found that man, structurally, and in every other way, belongs to it; and for that reason he does not stand apart by himself as a “cooking animal,” but is simply one member of the fruitarian family.
There are many other reasons for thinking that the fruitarian diet is the best, and that uncooked foods should form man’s staple diet. One of these is that they are more economical in the long run. While certain other foods may be purchased at a less cost, particularly in the winter-time, they are not nearly so nourishing to the system; and it can be shown that the nutritive value, per pound, is far greater in the case of fruits and nuts than is the case with any other articles of food. For this reason, although fruits and nuts may cost more, they will ultimately be found to cost less—because they contain a higher percentage of nutriment; and indirectly because they avoid doctor’s bills, and maintain the body in a higher state of health and energy. They thus enable it to accomplish more work; and, since work represents, as a rule, financial return, it will be seen that these foods are in the end most economic. As before pointed out, moreover, they do not induce over-eating, as do cooked and stimulating articles of food.
Fruits also exert a very cleansing and purifying effect upon the system. Their medicinal value is therefore not to be omitted from our consideration; and further, were the fruitarian diet followed, humanity would escape nine-tenths of the ills from which it now suffers, because of its over-eating, and its living upon gross and highly stimulating articles of food, and bad food-combinations. The choking and blocking effects of the more solid and earthy food would be avoided—while indigestion, fermentation, constipation and all the ills which accompany them would also be entirely done away with.
This question of the prevention of disease by diet is a very important one, both from the economic and from the physiological point of view, and if any diet can be found which will prevent a large percentage of the diseases from which mankind suffers, that diet should surely be adopted. Inasmuch as fruits and nuts are man’s natural diet, it should be obvious that they are the ones best suited to his organism, and consequently those which will maintain it in the highest state of health. Let us consider this question a little more fully.
In my previous work, I argued that every article of diet must be more or less healthful or more or less injurious, and this being so, only those foods should be eaten which had been proved by philosophy and experience to be the most wholesome. The fact that the system can live upon other foods, and maintain a certain degree of health, argues merely that it can withstand the bad effects of these other foods, and by no means shows us that they are the best! I further contended that the same foods are alike detrimental or beneficial to all, and that the old doctrine which Dr Page called “the most foolish of all aphorisms”—namely, “one man’s meat, another’s poison”—is totally false. I contended that, while there might be certain deviations and variations in the details of the diet, still all men are rudimentally alike, and that the body of each human being is made after a certain pattern, which pattern is in accordance with the general principles which apply to all individuals. Man, that is, belongs to a certain genus, and consequently his food must be, within certain limits, the same as that of the rest of the family to which he belongs. That is, as we have seen, the frugivora, and his diet must accordingly consist of fruits and nuts in their uncooked, primitive form. There may be certain individual differences, and there doubtless are. Thus, some individuals are unable to eat strawberries, others bananas, others onions, others mushrooms, but this would show, merely, that these particular individuals, while in the peculiar state of body in which they then are, are unable to appropriate and utilise, with benefit, these particular food-stuffs. The chemical composition of their bodies has become altered in some way unknown to us, and, as the result of this altered chemical composition, they are unable to appropriate, with profit, food containing certain elements with which they may already be overstocked. In other words, this would prove, merely, that, in their present physical condition, they are unable properly to assimilate and digest those particular food-stuffs. It does not show that, if they were normal, these foods could not be appropriated and used with benefit. In other words, the fault is rather with the individual than with the food. Still, I admit that these differences have to be taken into account; and that no two individuals can be treated exactly alike—especially at first. To use a simile, no two spokes of a wheel are identical—that is, each spoke is individual, and different from all other spokes—but they all lead, nevertheless, to the hub, the central point which unifies and combines them all. In a similar manner, I can see that there is an ideal diet for the human race, which should be followed by all who are in health, and could be eaten by all with equal profit and benefit, if the chemical composition of their bodies were altered. But, as each spoke must be treated individually at first, so must each individual be treated individually, and, by gradual changes in the diet, be brought more nearly to a normal standard, when it will be far easier for it to adopt a simple fruitarian diet, without any of the disturbance or unpleasantness that might otherwise follow. As Dr Jackson expressed it:
“If I had his ultimate good in view, I should seek to change the state of his stomach that he might eat what was in itself better for him, rather than to have his morbid necessity say what he should be compelled to eat.”
Some readers may contend that I have gone too far in thus insisting upon an ultimate unification of diet, and that such a state can not only not be hoped for practically, but is false theoretically. I myself do not think so. When discussing this question in my former book, I said:
“It must be noticed that, with the single exception of man, every class of animal feeds upon its own particular and especial kind of food. All dogs, for example, eat practically the same food, and about the same amount of it.. .. When a dog is fed upon milk, meat, and biscuit, in certain amounts, when living in England, we do not think of modifying his diet to any appreciable degree should we take him with us to America or to the Tropics. The diet might, in the latter case, be somewhat lessened, but that would effect its bulk only, not materially effecting the quality of the food-supply. Again, we should be surprised to find dogs fed upon altogether different substances in any portion of the globe to which we might travel; if, e.g., they were fed upon turnips, oysters, mince pie, hay and sauerkraut—yet I must earnestly insist that this unholy combination is no more bad and unnatural than some that supposedly ‘civilised’ men and women take into their stomachs in the course of twenty-four hours! To be sure, there might be modifications or alterations in the diet, but the changes would not be of kind, merely of degree, and we should feel, doubtless, that these dogs, having their diet altered to an altogether different kind, live under such abnormal and altered conditions rather in spite of than on account of their newly acquired régime, and would be inclined to feel that the same dogs might be infinitely more healthy and live longer lives on their normal diet. Similarly with every other species of animal; each genus has its proper and natural food, allotted by nature, and any attempt to depart from this diet, and to live upon other and altogether unnatural food, must of necessity weaken, devitalise and eventually destroy the organism of the animal so attempting to live contrary to nature’s unchanging dietetic laws.”
Now, since we have seen that man is anatomically and structurally a member of that family whose normal food is fruits and nuts, he too should live upon that diet if he wishes to maintain the highest degree of health. There is only one valid objection to this theory, which is that man, having lived so many ages upon the cooked diet, is now more adapted to that diet than to his original uncooked foods, and that an attempt to return to such a diet would be attended with grave and possibly disastrous consequences. As Professor Goodfellow put it: “The conditions of life have so altered that the natural food of our ancestors would be unnatural now, living as we do under such different conditions.”[39]
This objection, however, is completely refuted by the fact that no anatomical change whatever has taken place in man’s digestive apparatus since the most primeval times. If the body had gradually grown accustomed to the cooked and unnatural foods, this should not be the case—certain modifications in the digestive apparatus and perhaps throughout the body should be noted, corresponding to this altered adaptability. But no such changes have been observed. As we have seen, man corresponds structurally throughout with the higher apes, and he has altered not one whit since the days when he more closely resembled them than he does now!