Another order of ideas which one cannot pass by in silence at the present time militates in favour of vegetable alimentation. Dietetics cannot neglect economic problems. A flesh diet is very costly. In large towns, like Paris, at a time when everything is increasing in cost, one must be favoured by fortune to be able to indulge in the real luxury of consuming the calories of meat. As we said in 1905, with Prof. Landouzy and M. Labbé, in our inquiry into popular Parisian alimentation, the calorific energy of meat comes, on an average, to between 15 to 20 times dearer than that of bread or pulse foods.
The diet with a vegetable predominance may therefore, by those who adopt it, be considered as much less costly than a mixed one. Does not this fact, then, deserve to be taken into consideration and compared—startlingly illustrative—to the ingenious calculation recently made by Lefèvre in his examination of vegetarianism? One acre of land planted for the purpose of breeding cattle produces three times less living strength than an acre planted with wheat!
Is it not criminal, or at any rate ill-judged, for the richness and health of the country to have, by the laws of a draconian protectionism, spurred the French agricultural population along the road to the breeding of cattle, thus turning it away from cultivation? These laws are the cause, on the one hand, of the high price of wheat, owing to the abandonment of its culture and the barriers opposed to its entrance, and on the other, of the dearness of meat, owing to the stock and the land which the cattle require.
Under these facts economists have indeed a direct responsibility, as for more than fifty years economic orthodoxy has presented meat as a necessity, whereas it is the least advantageous particle amongst so many others.
In conclusion, let us hope that future distinctions of “Vegetalists,” vegetarians or flesh eaters may be completely abolished. In medio stat virtus. The dietetic regimen, the general adoption of which must henceforth be desired, must reject all preconceived and hereditary ideas, and unite in one harmonious use all foods with a hygienic end in view. The place of each one amongst them and its predominance over the others should be determined only by conforming to reasons at the same time physiological and economic.
H. Labbé.
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