Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting / Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922

by Unknown

At the World's Eugenics Congress held in New York last fall, Professor Davenport expressed the opinion that the human race will ultimately perish, and Major Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, one of the world's leading economists, gave expression to similar views. We are evidently traveling a downhill road and the tide of degeneracy is rising so fast it will certainly sweep us on to race extinction unless we return to sane and biologic living. We are primates, not carnivores like the dog, nor omnivores like the hog. The primates are fruit and nut eaters in whatever part of the world they are found. All the primates adhere to the family bill of fare. The gorilla, reigning king of beasts in the forests of the Congo, his somewhat lesser relative, the chimpanzee, which tenants a wide area of the Dark Continent, the orang-utan of Borneo, and the gibbon of tropical Asia, diversified as they are in form and habitat, are all equally circumspect in their adherence to the diet of nuts and fruits, tender shoots and soft grains, foods which Nature has prescribed as the primate's bill of fare.

A return to natural eating would doubtless do, to say the least, as much as any one thing toward checking the downward race movement, and no one who has ever studied the economics of diet will question that the only way in which the earth's dense populations of the future can be fed will be by the elimination of the flesh-pots and a resumption of the natural dietary. This is clear when we recall the fact that the Agricultural Experiment Stations have demonstrated that 33 pounds of digestible foodstuffs are required to make one pound of beef. When an animal is fattened, the creature uses a large part of the food which it consumes for its own purposes. The eater of flesh does not get back the original corn and other foods given to the animal but only a small fraction of it; and hence dense populations can only indulge in beef eating by importing meats from other countries not yet fully occupied. Evidently, the present rapid increase of the earth's population will soon bring us to a point where this enormous waste must cease. Flesh eating will have to be abandoned for economic reasons. Even the milk supply will necessarily be limited, for we are compelled to feed the cow 5 pounds of digestible foodstuffs to obtain 1 pound of water-free food in the form of milk.

Those pessimistic economists who predict that by the year 2000 the American Continent will be so densely populated that means will have to be adopted to limit the increase of population because of the scarcity of foodstuffs, are evidently not aware of the activities of the Nut Growers Association and of the marvelous efficiency of nut trees as producers of protein and fats, the two elements of our foodstuffs which are most costly because hardest to produce.

I am creditably informed that one acre of land supporting 35 black walnut trees in full bearing, will produce not less than 350 pounds of walnut meats, each pound of which has a nutritive value in protein and fats fully four times that of an equal weight of beef or an equivalent of 1400 pounds of meat. To produce a steer weighing 1600 pounds, requires two acres and two years. Two acres and two years will produce 1400 pounds of nut meats, the equivalent of 5600 pounds of beef or more than 9 times the amount of nutritive material in the form of protein and fat produced by beef raising.

Of course, the question might be raised whether nuts as a source of food are equal in value to meats, which supply the same sort of food material, namely, protein and fats. If the anthropologists are right, this is a question which need not worry us, for, according to Professor Keith, the eminent English anatomist and a leading paleontologist, and Professor Elliot, of Oxford, nuts were the chief staple of our hardy ancestors of prehistoric times. Professor Elliot, indeed, tells us in his work, "Prehistoric Man," that the first representatives of the human race who appeared in the Eocene Period were fruit and nut eaters, and were abundantly supplied with this sort of nutriment. This eminent author says,—

"On the bushes by the rivers and along the shore there were all sorts of fruits and nuts. For the subsistence of our lemur-monkey-man in the early stages of evolution, what fruits would seem a priori most suitable?

"I think that one would select the banana and bread-fruit. Ancestral forms of both were flourishing in the Eocene. Many other fruits with which man has been afterwards continually (perhaps one might venture to say most intimately) associated, occur at this period. These are, most of them, found in so many places that one is apt to think they were then of world-wide distribution.

"In the temperate brushwood and on the river-sides, acorns, hazel-nut, hawthorne, sloe, cherry and plum might be found. Here and there, he might alight upon a walnut or an almond; figs also of one kind or another seem to have been common. Palm trees existed, and some of them were of enormous size."

If, in modern times, nuts have come to be used as a luxury rather than as a staple article of diet, it must be because we have neglected to cultivate this choicest of food products which Nature is ready to provide with a lavish hand when invited to do so by our co-operation. But as the public become better informed respecting the high food value of nuts and especially in view of the steadily rising cost of flesh meats, the nut is certain to gain higher appreciation, and the writer has no doubt that some time in the future nuts will become a leading constituent of the national bill of fare and will displace the flesh meats which today are held in high esteem but which in the broader light of the next century will be regarded as objectionable and inferior foods, and will give place to the products of the various varieties of nut trees which will be recognized as the choicest of all foods.

In nutritive value the nut far exceeds all other food substances; for example, the average number of food units per pound furnished by half a dozen of the more common varieties of nuts is 3231 calories while the average of the same number of varieties of cereals is 1654 calories, half the value of nuts. The average food value of the best vegetables is 300 calories per pound and of the best fresh fruits grown in this country, 278 calories. The average value of the six principal flesh foods is 810 calories per pound or one-fourth that of nuts.