Repeated subsequent examinations have given similar results. These results also agree with observations made by various other German and American bacteriologists. Decomposition of animal flesh begins immediately after the animal dies. Within twenty-four hours after killing, even though the carcass is kept in an ice box or refrigerater, the whole mass is permeated with putrefactive bacteria. Refrigeration even to a point close to freezing delays but does not prevent the growth of putrefactive organisms although at lower temperatures the usual volatile products which give notice of the presence of putrefaction by an odor of decay are not produced. Persons whose stomachs manufacture a liberal amount of hydrochloric acid, an essential constituent of healthy gastric juice, are able to disinfect even highly putrescent meat, so that they apparently do not suffer any immediate injury when such meat enters the stomach. In a stomach which produces little or no hydrochloric acid, the process of putrefaction continues all the way through the alimentary canal, giving rise to the same poisonous substances which are present in the putrefying carcass of a dead rat or any other dead animal, and produces intestinal or alimentary toxemia with the multitude of mischiefs which grow out of this condition, among which may be mentioned all sorts of skin troubles, high blood-pressure, apoplexy, premature senility, Bright's disease, heart failure, gallstones—a list which might be increased by the addition of scores of other common, chronic maladies.
When one recalls the statement made before the congressional committee by the chief of the United States meat inspection service that if all animals, any part of which was diseased, were rejected by inspectors, not more than one in a hundred would pass muster; and when one also reflects upon the wide prevalence of tuberculosis in animals,—at least ten per cent of all the cows in the country are known to be tuberculous,—and the growing prevalence of tapeworm and trichinae, diseases which are exclusively derived from the eating of flesh, and then contemplates the purity and perfection of the choice little food packets which we call nuts, it is easy to be persuaded that a substitution of nuts for flesh foods, even on a very large scale, would be not only a perfectly safe procedure, but one which would be followed by the most desirable results.
The use of nuts as a staple article of food is not an experiment. All the higher apes, man's nearest relatives in the animal world, thrive on nuts. Many savage tribes live almost entirely on nuts. The Indians of the foothills of California gather every fall large quantities of nuts which they store for winter use. The early settlers of California reported also that many tribes of Indians in that part of the United States lived almost wholly upon acorns. Before the great oak forests of this country were cut down for lumber, millions of hogs were fattened on mast, and the price of pork depended more upon the acorn crop than on the corn crop. The peasantry of southern France and northern Italy during half the year make two meals a day on chestnuts.
The objection commonly urged, that nuts are too expensive to enter largely into the ordinary bill of fare, at first sight appears to be valid, but upon examination this objection almost, if not wholly, disappears. For example, a pound of pine nuts which is more than the equivalent in nutritive value to two and a half pounds of the best beefsteak and two-thirds of a pound of butter, can be bought wholesale for twenty-five cents. The cost of the equivalent food value in meat and butter would be at least sixty to seventy cents, or more than double the cost of the nuts. A pound of almonds can be bought at wholesale for forty cents, and has food value equal to that of meat which would cost a dollar or more. A pound of peanuts can be bought at wholesale for seven or eight cents, and furnishes nutritive value equivalent to more than a pound of beefsteak and a half a pound of butter, which would cost forty-five to fifty cents, or seven times as much. No objection can be offered to the fact that we are comparing wholesale with retail prices, for the reason that nuts do not readily spoil as do meat and butter, but will keep in perfect condition for months. Further it is entirely reasonable to suppose that the price of nuts may sometime in the future be considerably reduced when the cultivation of nuts becomes more general, and especially when the United States Forestry Department becomes convinced that it would be a sensible thing to cover with nut trees some of the large areas which have in the last fifty years been laid waste by deforestation. The planting of nut trees along all the public highways of the country would in less than twenty years result in a crop, the food value of which would be greater than that at present produced by the entire livestock industry of the country.
The high price of meat of which so much complaint has been made in recent years is not likely to recede. The high price is not due to manipulations of the market, but to natural causes, the chief of which is the limitation of pasturage and is the consequence of a decrease in the number of livestock. As the country becomes more and more densely settled, the difficulty of supplying the demand for meat will increase, and in time the necessity for utilizing every foot of ground in the most efficient manner, will necessarily bring about a change in the dietetic habits of the people. Not a single example can be found in the world of a densely populated country dependent upon its own resources in which flesh foods constitute any considerable part of the national bill of fare. Since Germany has been nearly shut off from the outside world by the present war, the government has found it necessary to restrict the consumption of meat to one-half pound per week for each adult. All other European countries are equally dependent on outside sources for their meat supply.
The time will certainly come when nuts and nut trees will become a most important food resource. If a reform in this direction could be effected within the next ten years, the result would be a disappearance to a large extent of the complaint of the high cost of living. Mr. Hill said the basis for complaint was not the high cost of living, but the cost of high living. I should prefer to say that the real cause for complaint was wrong living rather than high living, or necessarily high cost. With right living the cost will be automatically reduced. For example, suppose a person were content to choose the peanut as his source for protein and fat, the elimination of the butcher's bill for meat and the grocer's bill for butter would at once cut out two-thirds of the expense incurred for food.
When a student in college more than forty years ago, I was already making dietetic experiments and lived three months on a diet such as I have suggested, at an average expense of exactly six cents a day. This was the total amount expended for raw foodstuffs. I paid my landlady five times as much for preparing and serving the food, and had reason for believing that some portion of my supplies was utilized by others than myself. As evidence of the fact that the experiment was not dangerous, I may add that I have pursued the same meatless dietary during my entire lifetime since, as I had done for ten years before, and I am still alive and hard at work. Man is naturally a frugivorous animal. According to Cuvier, the great French naturalist, the natural diet of human beings, like that of those other primates, the orangoutang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, consists of fruits, nuts, tender shoots and cereals. A sturdy Scotch highlander informed me that his diet consisted of brose, bannocks, and potatoes, and that he rarely ever tasted meat. When asked what he fed his dogs, he replied, "The same as I eat myself, sir." The high-bred foxhounds of the southern states are fed on cornmeal, oatmeal and bread, and rarely taste flesh of any sort. Dogs thus fed are hardier, healthier, have more endurance, better wind, keener scent, greater intelligence, and are more easily trained than meat-fed dogs. A diet which is safe for carnivorous animals, must certainly be safe for human beings, who belong to a class of animals all representatives of which, with the exception of man are flesh abstainers.
Some years ago I experimented with various sorts of carnivorous animals for the purpose of ascertaining whether nuts could be made a complete substitute for meat. Among the various animals utilized for the experiment was a young wolf from the northwest that had never eaten anything but fresh raw meat. After giving the animal one day to get accustomed to its new surroundings and to acquire a good appetite, I gave him a breakfast of nuts properly prepared and was delighted to find that he took to the new ration without the slightest hesitation and remained in excellent health during the several months of the experiment. I succeeded perfectly in substituting nuts for meat with all the animals experimented upon, including a fish hawk, with the single exception of an old bald-headed eagle, which refused to be converted.
I have a suspicion that the so-called carnivorous animals were all at some remote time nut eaters; the so-called carnivorous teeth would be as useful in tearing off the husks of cocoanuts and similar fruits, as for tearing and eating flesh.
An economic argument for the general adoption of nuts as a suitable article of food is the enormous increase in food resources which such a change would bring about. Some years ago, an experienced stock-raiser informed the writer that it takes two acres of land and two years to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds when dressed. Fresh meat is three-fourths water; hence the food material actually represented by such an animal would be considerably less than one hundred and fifty pounds, allowing for the weight of the bones. The food value, estimated as dried meat, would be about sixteen hundred calories per pound, or the same as an equal quantity of wheat meal. That is, an acre of land would produce in the form of beef, the food equivalent of seventy-five pounds of wheat in two years, whereas, a single acre of grain would produce on an average, even when poorly cultivated, in two crops not less than thirty-two bushels of more than 1900 pounds of wheat, or more than twenty-five times as much food as the same land would produce in the same length of time in the form of beef. Humboldt showed that the banana would furnish sustenance for twenty-five times as many people as could be nourished by the wheat produced by the same area of land; and according to Hutchinson, the chestnut tree is capable of producing on a given area a still larger amount of nutrient material than the banana. In other words, an acre of ground covered with chestnut trees in full bearing will furnish food for more than six hundred times as many people as could be supported by the same area devoted to meat production.