4. Unbalances the Diet
It is of primary importance that one should guard against consuming excessive quantities of any kind of food material, but there is a difference. Should we take an excess of starches or sugars, provision has been made for storing a certain amount in the form of fat, or as glycogen in the liver and the muscles; but no provision is found for storing an excess of protein. An excess of this food element is of particular injury to the body. The extensive experiments of Professors Chittenden, Fisher, and other scientific workers, have shown that for efficient nutrition, we require that only one tenth of the daily intake of food should be of the structure-building, tissue-repairing protein. In the laboratory of nature, the food elements have been so combined by the plants, that the protein element is very low; and thus a diet selected from the natural products of the earth is not only free from uric acid and other waste products, but is already balanced. The addition of flesh food—which does not contain any starch—to the menu, at once raises the protein constituent too high.
5. Bright's Disease and High Blood Pressure
The waste products in the blood arising from excess of protein are a leading cause of Bright's disease, auto-intoxication, arteriosclerosis, and high blood pressure. These maladies are often associated in the same individual, and frequently have a common origin. Sir William Osler, in his "Principle and Practice of Medicine," writes: "I am more and more impressed with the part played by overeating in inducing arteriosclerosis." "There are many cases in which there is no other factor." Dr. Alexander Haig, of London, states that uric acid makes the blood "collaemic" or viscous, and then the heart has difficulty to pump it through the capillaries. Hence the blood pressure increases. Isaac Ott, in his textbook on physiology, says on this point, "Burton-Opitz has shown that hunger reduces viscosity, and meat diet raises it to a great height, whilst carbohydrates and fat diet give average values to it."
In the colon, flesh foods rapidly undergo decomposition, giving rise to numerous poisons, which are absorbed into the blood, and are toxic to the nervous system, and cast an additional burden upon the liver and the kidneys. These are a sort of dietetic clinkers, which throw nature's delicate machinery out of adjustment, and produce various symptoms of auto-intoxication. Bouchard found that the fecal and urinary excrement of carnivorous animals is twice as poisonous when injected into rabbits as that from a herbivorous animal. The former also emits a strong odor, and the fecal discharges are offensively repulsive. Dr. Haig, before quoted, also asserts that "Bright's disease is the result of our meat-eating and tea-drinking habits; and as these habits are common, so also is the disease."
6. Tuberculosis, Ulcer, Cancer, and Appendicitis