Beef steak has become almost a fetish with many people, but the experiments of Chittenden and others have demonstrated that the amount of protein needed by the body daily is so small that it is scarcely possible to arrange a bill of fare to include flesh foods without making the protein intake excessive. This is because the ordinary foodstuffs other than meat contain a sufficient amount of protein to meet the needs of the body. Nuts present their protein in combination with so large a proportion of easily digestible fat that there is comparatively little danger of getting an excess.
It is also worthy of note that the protein of nuts is superior in quality to that of grains and vegetables. The critically careful analyses made in recent years have shown that the proteins of nuts, at least of a number of them, contain all the elements needed for building up complete body proteins, in other words, nuts furnish perfect proteins, which are not supplied so abundantly by any other vegetable product.
This fact places the nut in an exceedingly important position as a foodstuff. In face of vanishing meat supplies it is most comforting to know that meats of all sorts may be safely replaced by nuts not only without loss, but with a decided gain. Nuts have several advantages over flesh foods which are well worth considering.
1. Nuts are free from waste products, uric acid, urea, carmine and other tissue wastes.
2. Nuts are aseptic, free from putrefactive bacteria and do not readily undergo decay either in the body or outside of it. Meats, on the other hand, are practically always in an advanced stage of putrefaction, as found in the meat markets. Ordinarily meats contain from three million to ten times that number of bacteria per ounce, and such meats as hamburger steak often contain more than a billion putrefactive organisms to the ounce. Nuts are clean and sweet.
3. Nuts are free from trichinae, tapeworm and other parasites, as well as the infections due to specific disease. Nuts are in good health when gathered and remain so until eaten. The contrast between the delectable product of the beautiful walnut, chestnut or pecan tree and the abattoir recalls the story of the Tennessee school teacher who was told when she made inquiry about a certain shoulder of pork which had been promised in part payment of services, but had not arrived: "Dad didn't kill the pig." "And why not," said the teacher. "Because," replied the observing youngster, "he got well." Nearly all the cows slaughtered are tuberculous. They are killed to be eaten because too sick to longer serve as community wet nurses.
That nuts are competent to serve as staple foods might be inferred from a fact to which Professor Matthews, of the New York Museum of Natural History, calls attention to, to wit, that our remote ancestors, the first mammals, were all nut and fruit eaters. They may have gobbled an insect now and then, but their staple food was fruits and nuts, with tender shoots and succulent roots, which is still true of those old fashioned forest folks, the primates of which the orang outang, the chimpanzee and the gorilla are consistent representatives, while their near relative, also a primate, civilized man, has departed from his original bill of fare and has exploited the bills of fare of the whole animal kingdom.
The keeper of the famous big apes of the London Zoo informed me that they were never given meat. Even the small monkeys generally regarded as insectivorous, were confined to a rigid vegetarian fare and were thriving.
Whole races of men, comprising many millions, live their entire lives without meats of any sort, and when fed a sufficient amount are wonderfully vigorous, prolific, enduring and intelligent. Witness the Brahmins of India, the Buddists of China and Japan and the teeming millions of Central Africa.
Carl Mann, the winner of the great walking match between Berlin and Dresden, performed his great feat on a diet of nuts with lettuce and fruits. The Finn Kilmamen, the world's greatest runner, eats no meat. Weston, the long-distance champion, never eats meat when taking a long walk. The Faramahara Indians, the fleetest and most enduring runners in the world are strict vegetarians. The gorilla, the king of the Congo forests, is a nut feeder. Milo, the mighty Greek, was a flesh abstainer, as was also Pythagoras, the first of the Greek philosophers, Seneca, the noble Roman Senator, and Plutarch, the famous biographer. The writer has excluded meat from his diet for more than fifty years, and has within the last forty years, supervised the treatment of more than a hundred thousand sick people at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on a meatless diet.