The packers' much heralded Stefansson stunt of living a year on an exclusive meat diet was a discreditable fake. Stefansson did not live on a meat diet, but on a diet consisting of one-fifth protein and four-fifths fat (caloric intake). When compelled against his protest to eat steaks and chops, he was made very ill with acidosis within two days, vomiting and purging so violently that he was compelled to make a complete and immediate change. Prof. Newburgh of our State University stated that Stefansson ate no more real muscle meat than the average man usually eats. The Stefansson experiment proved but one thing, namely, that a man even when accustomed to a meat diet, cannot live on lean meat alone for more than two days without becoming ill.
Dr. Newburgh produced nephritis, or acute inflammation of the kidneys, in rats by feeding them exclusively on meat for a few weeks.
Claim 6
That Eskimos thrive on a meat diet.
Captain McMillan who accompanied Peary on his discovery of the North Pole, a year or two ago informed me that the Eskimo is short lived. That he becomes at 50 years very old and useless and at 55 infirm and helpless, and rarely lives to the age of 60 years.
The Arctic traveler Stefansson said to me, "I do not claim to have proven that a man can live better or longer on a flesh diet, but only that he can live. Of course the scientific argument is against such a diet."
Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale University some years ago made a series of endurance tests in which the endurance of the athletes of the Yale gymnasium was compared with that of physicians and men nurses of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. As Prof. Fisher said in his report, which was published in the Yale Scientific Review, the endurance of the Battle Creek flesh-abstainers was found to be not only "greater" in all the tests, but far greater. In the arm holding (arms extended sidewise) tests, the Battle Creek men held their arms out longer than any Yale man and nine times as long as the same number of Yale men.
Vegetarian bicyclists have for many years held all the championships in endurance riding tests from Land's End to John O'Groats.
Through Finland's minister to the United States I have learned that Nurmi, the Finnish runner whose record stands unequalled, was trained on a non-flesh dietary.
The Great War taught the world among many other important lessons, the fact that meat may be dispensed with not only without injury, but with great and very definite benefits.