Part 4

As showing its perfectly digested state, demonstrations have proved that fruit sugar may be injected directly into the blood, from which it will be utilized in nourishing the body. This is in marked contrast with ordinary cane sugar, which, if injected directly into the blood, is expelled through the kidneys, the body being unable to appropriate it as such from the blood.

Fruit sugar may be eaten in practically unlimited quantities. It supplies the body with heat and energy in the most available form. For this reason, fruit when eaten will quickly relieve the sense of exhaustion.

_Fruit Acids_

The acids of fruits give to them their delightful and appetizing flavors. Fruits in the unripe state contain tannic acid, a marked astringent. The gastric and peristaltic woes of the small boy the night following the green apple episode are due to the tannic acid the unripe fruit contains. The three chief acids of fruit are citric acid, found in oranges, lemons, and grapefruit; malic acid, as found in apples, pears, peaches, and similar fruits; and tartaric acid, as found in grapes. These are organic acids, recognized and readily digested by the body.

The acids of fruits are remarkable peptogens; that is, they stimulate the appetite and promote the flow of the digestive juices. Fruit acids are most efficient disinfectants. Some years ago, an eminent medical authority of this country, in a representative medical gathering, said, "We are as yet without a satisfactory medicinal intestinal disinfectant." In fruit acids, we possess such an agent in a most desirable form. No germ, disease-producing or otherwise, can live in the presence of fruit acid. Fruit acids can be taken practically _ad libitum_. Fruit acids taken freely by mouth or diluted and injected into the bowel, most efficiently asepticize the intestinal canal. Three or four pints of water to which the juice of one lemon has been added, injected into the bowel following a cleansing enema, will thoroughly destroy disease-producing bacteria in the colon. Flushing the bowel frequently with such a solution is one of the most efficient known means of successfully combating the fetid summer diarrheas of children.

The proteid or nitrogenous element of fruits, as well as their fatty element, may be passed over with little consideration. Fruit contains little proteid; and aside from the olive, there is almost no fat in fruit. The fat of the ripe olive, however, is one of the most delicious and digestible forms of fat. Ripe olives contain about fifty per cent fat. Olive oil can be mixed with water; therefore it readily mixes with the intestinal juices, and is most easily digested.

_Fruit Salts_

The salts of fruit are most desirable, being so essential in tissue building. Some of the most important of these salts are potash, lime, phosphoric acid, and iron. Deficiency of the lime salts in the bones of children produces conditions of bone softening, or rickets. This can be largely prevented by adding fruit to the diet of these afflicted children, using especially grapes, oranges, lemons, and grapefruit, which contain high percentages of lime salts.

The condition of anæmia is a lack of iron in the blood. This cannot be replaced by medicinal or metallic iron, as the body is unable to appropriate these inorganic substances; but the iron in fruit is perfectly adapted to the body needs. Plums, cherries, and especially strawberries and currants contain considerable iron, and are most helpful in the treatment of anæmic conditions.

It is perfectly apparent that fruits possess qualities and constituents that make them of the greatest value as an essential part of the daily ration to nourish and energize the body, and to promote vital activities in the maintenance of strength and healthful vigor. Fruit is also an exceedingly important and efficient factor in restoring to normal function tissues and organs that have become vitiated and are functionating abnormally.

In spite of the widespread opinion to the contrary, it can be positively asserted that fruit is of great service in the prevention as well as in the treatment of rheumatism and gout. The prejudice against the use of fruit in rheumatism originated with the idea that the acids of fruit tend to acidify the body. Quite the reverse is true. The acids of fruit, when taken into the body, are promptly converted into the alkali carbonates, thus increasing the alkalinity of the blood, tending greatly to benefit and cure the rheumatic condition, as well as to lessen the general tendency to the formation of various calculi, or stones, in the kidneys, the urinary bladder, and the gall bladder.

_Fruit and Obesity_

A fruit diet is of great value in obesity. An exclusive fruit diet may be taken to the greatest possible advantage by the too corpulent who wish to reduce in weight. For this purpose, fruit has the advantage of satisfying the appetite while at the same time contributing very little nutrition to the body. The free use of fruit is the method par excellence for overcoming constipation. The eating of a half dozen raw prunes before breakfast, or the taking of the juice of one or two oranges, will in the majority of cases be all that is necessary to maintain regular bowel activity.

For an overworked liver, the so-called "bilious" state, fruit is the best of all means of relief. Auto-intoxication due to an excess of poisons circulating in the blood, is treated most naturally and efficiently by a fruit diet.

The natural diuretic properties of fruit are very well known. Nearly all fruits stimulate the kidneys to greater activity, but watermelon is of particular service in this respect.

Fruit and fruit juices greatly aid in successfully combating alcoholism. The acid of the fruit juices help materially in quenching the abnormal thirst.

There are but few individuals who would not be benefited by an occasional exclusive fruit meal; and in many cases, this can be maintained with greatest benefit for even several days. This is a very popular method of treatment in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, where the "grape cure" is utilized. Patients are placed upon a diet of grapes alone for several weeks, consuming from seven to ten pounds of grapes a day. Wonderful results are recorded at these resorts in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, obesity, constipation, intestinal catarrh, liver and kidney disorders, high blood pressure, arterial sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and many more physical disabilities.

Certain fruits, especially tart apples, are of great value in the treatment of diabetes, lessening the toxæmia of this condition, as well as mitigating the abnormal thirst that is so frequent and often distressing an accompaniment of this condition.

In the eating of fruit, some care must be exercised not to swallow large seeds or fruit pits. While the danger of appendicitis from fruit seeds' becoming lodged in the appendix has been greatly exaggerated, yet fruit seeds have occasionally been found in the appendix, and proved the exciting cause of the inflammation which followed. Cases are on record of children who have swallowed considerable quantities of grape seeds, suffering for months of colic, and being only relieved by discharging quantities of these seeds during energetic purgation.

It has been said that fruit is "gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night." But fruit is golden all the time. This wonderful gift, one of the greatest and best physical gifts of an all-wise Providence, cannot be prized to highly; for it is considered sufficiently valuable to endure for both time and eternity. Of the first man and woman, it was said that they might eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; and it is said of the inhabitants of the renewed earth, during eternity, that "they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them."

Too much good food makes one auto-toxic. Too muck fun makes one asinine. But keep sunny. A cheerful disposition, a happy temperament, is the master key that unlocks more secrets, more riches, more success, than anything else. A sunny temper is an "aroma whose fragrance fills the air with an odor of Paradise." Bury everything that makes you unhappy and discordant, everything that cramps your freedom and worries you. Bury it before it buries you. Adopt the sundial's motto, "I record none but hours of sunshine."--_Thomason._

TEN REASONS FOR A FLESHLESS DIET

_by A. W. TRUMAN, A.B., M.D._

Superintendent of Loma Linda Sanitarium, Loma Linda, California; Professor of Neurology, Loma Linda College

_1. The Strength Delusion_

Every movement we make, every thought we think, and every heart throb, involves waste and the expenditure of energy. There is a constant breaking down of our tissues; and the food ingested is the source of the material for repair. By its oxidation, digestion, and assimilation, energy is liberated for life's varied activities.

The primary object of taking food is, in the words of the wise man, "for strength, and not for drunkenness." Any one who makes the pleasure of eating the chief requisite will some day find, by a disordered stomach and a clogged liver, that eating has ceased to be a pleasure.

The idea has long been current that superior qualities of body and mind come from eating flesh food; but the verdict of science, after long observation and careful investigation and various experiments, is rapidly reversing this opinion.

The experiments of Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, president of the American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, are convincing. His elaborate investigations, extending over long periods of time, prove that persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, occupation, and constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical vigor while subsisting upon a diet containing but one half the usual amount of protein, and in which the flesh is reduced to a minimum or is entirely absent.

The subjects of the first experiment were three physicians, three professors, and a clerk,--men of sedentary and chiefly of mental occupation. For a period of six months, they were required to reduce the amount of meat and other protein food about one half. "Their weight remained stationary; but they improved in general health, and experienced a quite remarkable increase of mental clearness and energy."

_Chittenden's Researches_

For his next experiment, Professor Chittenden used a detachment of twenty soldiers from the hospital corps of the United States army, "representing a great variety of types of different ages, nationality, temperament, and degrees of intelligence." For a period of six months, these men lived upon a ration in which the proteid was reduced to one third the usual amount, and the flesh to five sixths of an ounce daily. There was a slight gain in weight, "the general health was well maintained, and with suggestions of improvement that are frequently so marked as to challenge attention." "Most conspicuous, however," remarks Professor Chittenden, "was the effect observed on the muscular strength of the various subjects.... Without exception, we note a phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation." There was an average gain in strength for each subject of about fifty per cent.

For the third experiment, Professor Chittenden secured as subjects a group of eight leading athletes of Yale, all in training trim. For five months, they subsisted upon a diet comprising from one half to one third the quantity of protein food they had been in the habit of eating. "Gymnasium tests showed in every man a truly remarkable gain in strength and endurance."

_Fisher's Experiments_

Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy of Yale University, concluded a series of experiments testing the endurance of forty-nine persons, about thirty of the number being flesh abstainers. The first endurance test was that of "holding the arms horizontally." The flesh eaters averaged ten minutes. The flesh abstainers averaged forty-nine minutes. The longest time for a flesh eater was twenty-two minutes. The maximum time for a flesh abstainer was two hundred minutes. The second endurance test was that of "deep knee bending." The flesh eaters averaged three hundred eighty-three times, the flesh abstainers eight hundred thirty-three times. Professor Fisher explains the results on the basis that "flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue poisons produced in the body."

Dr. J. Ioteyko, head of the laboratory at the University of Brussels, compared the endurance of seventeen vegetarians with that of twenty-five carnivores, students of the University of Brussels. "Comparing the two sets of subjects on the basis of mechanical work, it is found that the vegetarians surpassed the carnivores on the average by fifty-three per cent."

Professor Fisher remarks, "These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne, Metchnikoff, and Tisier of Paris, as well as Herter and others in the United States, seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat is like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion."

_Tests in Germany_

Professor Rubner, of Berlin, "one of the world's foremost students of hygiene," read a paper before the recent International Congress of Hygiene and Demography on the "Nutrition of the People," in which he said: "It is a fact that the diet of the well-to-do is not in itself physiologically justified; it is not even healthful; for on account of the false notions of the strengthening effect of meat, too much meat is used by young and old, and this is harmful."

In the long distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have invariably been easy victors. Upon this point, Professor Von Norden, in his monumental work on "Metabolism and Practical Medicine," says: "In Germany at least, in these competitive races, the vegetarian is ahead of the meat eater. The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long distance walks. The vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats."

A few years ago, a well-known athlete, Dr. Deighton, walked from the southernmost point of England to the northernmost point of Scotland, a distance of almost a thousand miles, in twenty-four days and four hours. His chief subsistence en route was a much advertised meat juice. Mr. George Allen, who for a number of years had subsisted upon a strict non-flesh diet, undertook the same task, which he accomplished in a little less than seventeen days, that is, in seven days less time.

As in the heat engine, energy for light, heat, or power does not come from burning copper, lead, or iron filings, but from carbonaceous materials, as coal, coke, fuel oils, etc., so in the human body, energy for warmth and muscular effort comes not from oxidizing the metal repair foods, the proteins, but from those foods which are rich in carbon, the starches and the sugars, called the carbohydrates.

_2. Flesh Food a Stimulant_

Whence then come these "illusions," these "false notions of the strengthening effect of meat"? They come from the fact that foods of this class are stimulating. A stimulant is a counterfeit for strength. It is a physical deceiver. It makes a person believe he is strong because he "feels" strong, when it is not true at all. That which is interpreted as strength is only nervous excitement. A stimulant never builds up; it only stirs up. While pretending to contribute energy, it actually robs the body of strength. The resort to stimulants to whip up the flagging energies of the body is an effort to trick nature in playing the game of life. It is like borrowing money. Some day the principal must be returned with interest to a relentless creditor.

Beef tea contains less than one per cent nourishment, but one can get the same kind of exhilaration from a cup of beef tea as from a cup of brandy. This is due to the drug effect of the beef tea, which is a solution of the waste products, the poisonous extractives, of the meat. Every animal organism is constantly throwing off these extractives, such as urea, uric acid, creatinine, etc. The kidneys have no other function than the removal of poisons. If an animal is deprived of the use of its kidneys, it will die of self-poisoning in a few days. When an animal is slaughtered and the blood ceases to circulate, this stream of urinary products on its way to the kidneys for excretion stops in the tissues, and is devoured by the consumer with the flesh.

Friedenwald and Ruhrah, in their book "Diet in Health and Disease," say: "The extractives are probably of no value either as a source of energy or in the formation of tissues. They act as stimulants and appetizers, and it has been stated that the craving some individuals have for meat is in reality a desire for the extractives."

Armand Gautier, the eminent French dietitian, says on this point, "Like the opium smoker, the individual who accustoms himself to meat, feels that he misses it when he does not take the usual excess."

If the poisonous waste products be removed from meat, it is insipid, and is no more stimulating than the same amount of bread.

_3. Ptomaine Poisoning_

The seeds of death and decay are in every animal organism; and just as soon as the heart ceases to throb, and the arteries cease to pulsate, and the spark of life leaves the animal, decomposition begins. These putrefactive changes often result in the formation of violent poisons, called ptomaines. The word "ptomaine" comes from a Greek word meaning _carcass_, or _cadaver_; and the poisons are variously called putrefactive alkaloid, animal alkaloid, etc. The presence of fatal amounts of these poisons in flesh may not be betrayed by any change in appearance, odor, or taste. The common practice of keeping meat until it becomes tender, or "ripens," is simply waiting for decomposition to advance until the meat fiber is softened by the process of decay. Canned meats are especially liable to contain the poisonous ptomaine.

_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_

While it is true that tuberculosis is more frequently contracted through the use of tuberculous milk than from tuberculous meat, the latter source of infection cannot be ignored. Numerous cases of tuberculosis have been reported where the infection could be directly traced to the flesh of tuberculous animals.

Dr. E. C. Shroeder, of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture, says: "That ten per cent of the dairy cattle in the United States are affected with tuberculosis impresses me as a very conservative estimate. In New York State, about thirty-three per cent of all cattle tested were found to be tuberculous." Dr. Julius Rosenberg, of New York City, writes: "Cattle tuberculosis is rapidly increasing. There is scarcely a dairy herd without a number of infected animals. It is an ever growing menace. The health department of Boston estimates the percentage of tuberculous animals producing the city's milk supply to be from twenty to twenty-five per cent. Conservative estimate places the number of cows dying yearly from tuberculosis at one million, were they permitted to die a natural death; but they are killed before drawing the last gasp, and served as prime beef." In one year in the United States, the entire carcasses of thirty-five thousand one hundred three cattle were condemned because of generalized tuberculosis. In the same year, a portion of the carcass of ninety-nine thousand seven hundred thirty-nine more were rejected because of local tuberculosis.

Professor Ravenal, of the University of Wisconsin, says that of the thirty-five million hogs killed for food annually in the United States, seven million are found to be infected with tuberculosis. Some one has said that meat would sell for a dollar a pound if all the diseased meat were eliminated.

Ulcer of the stomach is one of our most common diseases. Leading surgeons have shown that it is ten times as frequent as was formerly supposed. It is clearly of dietetic origin, and is usually associated with too high consumption of protein, and especially of meat. Starches, sugars, and fats are not digested in the stomach, and require no acid. Proteins, on the other hand, are digested within the stomach, and require for their digestion a high percentage of hydrochloric acid. The excessive production of acid within the stomach, stimulated by too much protein, is probably the chief cause of the formation of ulcers. In 1908, Dr. Fenton B. Turck, of Chicago, said before the American Medical Association: "Ulcer of the stomach is not found in those countries where the inhabitants eat rice. It is evidently a meat eater's disease. The zone of ulcer is in the meat eater's zone."