MORE NUTS—LESS MEAT

Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Michigan

The oft reiterated appeals to the American public to "Eat more meat to save the livestock industry" and exploitation of a so-called "all-meat diet experiment" by Stefansson and Anderson, justify the presentation of the special claims of other foodstuffs, so that those who desire to regulate their eating in accordance with their bodily needs, rather than to meet the exigencies of business, even to aid a declining industry, may have a fair opportunity to judge comparative merits and draw sound conclusions based upon scientific facts, rather than misleading statements or the biased dictates of custom.

If the American people are really suffering for lack of meat the efforts of the Meat Board of Chicago should be regarded as a noble philanthropic effort to correct a national fault and to avert the dire consequences of the physical collapse which must necessarily result from a deficiency diet. But if it is not true that the average American eats less beefsteaks, chops, sausage, etc., than he needs, but as a matter of fact is actually suffering notable injury because of the great consumption of flesh foods of all sorts, then this persistent appeal to the American stomach to render economic service as well as to do its work of digestion, is not only a most extraordinary business anomaly but a grave menace to the health and welfare of the American people.

The discussion of this question is germane to the objects of this convention, since nuts are the vegetable analogues of meats, and hence we cannot reasonably ask nor expect that more nuts will be eaten simultaneously with an increased consumption of meat. And so I shall undertake to give in this paper some of the reasons why we may properly urge the people of this country to eat more nuts and less meat.

Nut meats are the real and original meat. Says Prof. Henry C. Sherman, of Columbia University in his admirable textbook, "Food Products":

"To speak of nuts as 'meat substitute' is natural under the present conditions and reflects the prominence which has been given to meat and the casual way in which nuts have been regarded for some generations. Looking at the matter in evolutionary perspective, it might be more logical to speak of meats as 'nut substitute' instead."

Evidently Professor Sherman believes, as do many other eminent scientists, that nuts were a staple in the diet of primitive man. Professor Elliot, of Oxford University, in his work, "Prehistoric Man," calls attention to the fact that in the early ages of his long career, man was not a flesh eater; and the famous Professor Ami, editor of the Ethnological History of North America, and other paleontologists, hold that man began the use of meat only after the glacial period had destroyed the great forests of nut trees on which he had formerly feasted.

This, however, likewise agrees with Holy Writ. We read in Genesis 1:29: "And God said, behold I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." So the real meat grew on trees and herbs. Beefsteak and chops are poor substitutes for the real meat, which still constitutes the food of the human race, for with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon race and a few savage tribes, meat forms no substantial part of the human diet. The teeming millions of India and China, which constitute nearly half of the whole human race, eat practically no meat. The thronging millions of Central Africa thrive on corn, nuts, bananas, peanuts, manioc, sweet potatoes and melons. The same is true at the present time of the natives of Mexico, Central and South America, who find in maize, beans, potatoes and various tropical fruits ample and satisfying sustenance.

The average American consumes 165 pounds of meat a year; the Japanese, four pounds; the people of South China less—practically none at all. Taking the human race as a whole, meat fills only a very insignificant place in the world's bill of fare. Bread is the staff of life, and nuts, the real meat, are gradually recovering their old prestige. It is only in comparatively recent years that meat has entered so largely into the bill of fare of civilized nations. Major J. B. Paget, a writer in the English Review, calls attention to the fact that there has been in England a deterioration in stature and otherwise since the Peninsular War, the reason for which he thinks "is not difficult to discover. We are the same race with the same climate and the same water. The only difference is our diet."

According to Wellington's Quartermaster General's Report, the rations of the men who fought the Peninsular War under the Iron Duke, was one pound of wheat per day and a quarter of a pound of goat's flesh. But they had to catch the goats who ran wild in the mountains and so they seldom got that part of their ration.

According to General Sir William Butler these soldiers were "splendid men with figures and faces like Greek gods." And he adds with regret, "Such men have passed away."

Major Paget tells us that the Spaniards were greatly impressed by the fine teeth of these English soldiers and especially of their wives who accompanied them. Of their diet the Major says:

"These men before they enlisted were nearly all agricultural laborers who were brought up on a hard, wholemeal bread, garden produce, and apparently very little meat, as the consumption of meat was then three pounds per head per annum."

It is to be remembered also that nuts form a substantial part of the diet of that large and interesting family of vertebrates, the primates, represented by the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan and the gibbon, animals that do not eat meat, and that man is also a primate. No authority has ever offered any reason why man's diet should differ from that of other primates.

Man is not naturally a flesh-eater. Infants usually evince a dislike for flesh when it is first given them.

Adults who use flesh foods are attracted by their flavors rather than by the nutritive elements which they supply. As a matter of fact, more and better food material is supplied by plant foods and at a far less cost.

Meats are notably deficient in vitamins, while nuts are rich in vitamin B, some, as the hazel nut, containing one-fifth as much as dry yeast. The precious vitamin A, found in only very meager amounts in meats, is found in the almond, the pine nut, coconuts and peanuts.

The minerals, too, are found in better proportions and in larger amounts in nuts than in meats.

The deficiencies in essential elements in a lean meat diet are so pronounced that when Chalmers Watson fed rats on meat they became deformed and sterile, their mammary and other sex glands degenerated and in three generations they ran out completely. Watson attributes the steady and very pronounced lowering of the birth-rate in Great Britain to the increased consumption of meat in that country, which has risen in a little more than a century from 3 pounds to more than 100 pounds per capita, while the birth-rate has fallen until it closely approximates the mortality rate. The same thing has happened in the older sections of this country, especially the New England states.

According to Newburgh, of the University of Michigan, the large consumption of meat in this country may be responsible for the high death rate from Bright's disease, which is mounting higher every year. And the same is true of diseases of the heart and blood vessels, which now claim more lives annually than any other cause. He finds that when rabbits are fed meat meal mixed with flour in bread, they soon become diseased through changes in the bloodvessels and die of old age before they are a year old.

Hindhede, of Copenhagen, a physiologist of world-wide renown, and food commissioner for Denmark, in a notable paper read before the Race Betterment Conference at Battle Creek, January, 1928, remarked as follows:

"One notices the terrible death toll in America due to Bright's disease. I can no longer doubt that the high meat diet ruins the kidneys, especially in view of Dr. Newburgh's experiments, proving as they do that we may, with mathematical certainty, produce Bright's disease even in rats by placing them on a high meat diet.

"I feared that you might doubt my statistics, and might consider me merely another 'crank,' so I placed my figures before Dr. Sundwall, Professor of Hygiene of the University of Michigan, and asked him to check their correctness. Dr. Sundwall and Dr. Newburgh recalculated the data, and authorized the publication."

Hindhede found the number of deaths per 100,000 from six causes—alcoholism, apoplexy, disorders of digestion, cirrhosis or hardening of the liver, nephritis (Bright's disease), and diabetes—to be in this country 255 and in Denmark on a low meat diet, 112. He calculates that the adoption in this country of the Danish diet, which would eliminate more than half our meats, would save the lives of not less than 200,000 of our citizens annually. And yet there are vested interests which continually clamor for the increased consumption of meats. Fortunately the American people are becoming enlightened on the subject of diet and are using less meat and more green vegetables, with less bread and cereal breakfast foods and more milk and potatoes.

Nutrition researches are daily teaching us new lessons in dietetics, some of which are of commanding importance. One of the most significant of these is the necessity for taking account of the nature of the ash left by a foodstuff in the body. There are basic or alkali-ash foods and acid-ash foods. Foods of the latter class when freely used cause acidosis. Meats are high up in the list of acid-ash foods. It is for this reason that such animals as the lion and flesh-eating men have little endurance. The American team made a poor showing at the last International Olympic meet, in the writer's opinion because of their excessive meat-eating. According to Roosevelt, a vegetarian horse, with a heavy man on his back (Teddy), was able to run down a lion in a mile and a half.

Thousands of short-winded, asthmatic people who are tired all the time and take cold at every change of the wind and think they are overworked because they find it so hard to work, are victims of acidosis from a heavy meat diet. If such persons will eliminate meat from their diet and add a pint of milk or buttermilk, they will experience an immediate physical uplift which, in some cases, will seem almost incredible.

Meat contains poisons, the natural wastes of the body. By its use, the labor of the kidneys is more than doubled.

Besides, fresh meats are always swarming with bacteria, and not the harmless sort that are found in buttermilk but the pernicious germs which have their headquarters in the colons of animals. Meats always become infected with these filthy colon germs in the process of slaughtering and the longer it is kept the more numerous the colon germs become, for they multiply amazingly fast, and this is the reason the meat becomes more tender when "hung" for a long time.

I was consulted not long ago by the manager of a large popular hotel who wanted suggestions about feeding his guests. I recommended special care in the selection of meats and the choosing of that which had been most recently killed.

"Oh!" said the manager, "my chef is on to that. He is very particular. You know our hotel meat usually has a beard of green mold on it an inch long. My chef is very careful. He never allows the beard to be more than a quarter of an inch long."

Another hotel manager told me they often had to cut away nearly half of the meat because it was so green and rotten.

This is not pleasant information but it is simply commonplace, every-day fact. Sausage, hamburger steak and "game" with a high flavor, are little if any better than carrion, and the poisons which such foods introduce into the body must all be detoxicated by the liver and eliminated by the kidneys, and thus they are worn out prematurely by overwork.

"As sweet as a nut," is an old bon mot which hides no such repulsive picture. The nut, inside its germ-proof shell, is solid nutriment of the purest sort, the very quintessence of nutrient value, sunlight in cold storage. The nut represents food energy in its most delectable and concentrated form.

From an economic standpoint, the nut leaves flesh foods so far behind that they are almost out of sight.

Experiments to determine the digestibility and nutritive value of nuts were conducted several years ago by the eminent Professor Jaffa of the University of California. His researches conducted over many months, using human volunteers as subjects, showed that nuts were well digested and created no intestinal disturbances. Later experiments confirmed and extended the observations of Professor Jaffa. These experiments, conducted by Professor Cajori of Yale University in the Yale laboratory and in the laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, have finally definitely settled the question.

Says Professor Cajori, with reference to his results: "A few years ago a rather extensive series of digestion experiments were inaugurated at Yale University in an effort to settle the question of the indigestibility of nuts and also to test out some of the commercial nut products to find what effect roasting, boiling, and other processes that nuts are subjected to had on their digestibility. Through the courtesy of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, it was possible to follow up these experiments with a series at Battle Creek. It is of the result of these tests that I wish to speak."

"Our digestion experiments show the following results: For protein digestion of nuts—almond 89%, pecan 84%, pine nut 89%, English walnut 83%, Brazil nut 88%, and coconut 88%."

"How, then, explain the undoubted discomfort that many people experience after eating nuts? I believe the explanation rests on the fact that our common American way of eating nuts is not the rational way. We would not consider topping off a heavy meal with eggs, meat, or cereals, or eating these in large quantities between meals without realizing that we were exposing ourselves to possible digestive discomfort. No more, then, can we expect to eat nuts, which are even more concentrated or "heavy" than meats or eggs, merely as an adjunct, without occasional discomfort. Unpleasant results from so eating does not condemn the nut as indigestible; rather it condemns our mode of using that nut. Further, we must recognize that a nut is a hard compact substance, and that unless completely masticated is not readily penetrated by the digestive juices of the alimentary canal. This was very well brought out in our experiments with dogs. The dog bolts his food and where there were large fragments of the nuts in the food they appear unchanged in the feces, while if the nut was ground fine before feeding it was readily digested. Comparisons of nut butters and nut pastes with the whole nut also brought out this point. The completely comminuted nut butters showed consistently higher degrees of digestion than the whole nut."

Nuts should be used as a food staple, a major element in the bill of fare, rather than as a dessert, and special care must be taken as to thorough mastication, which is almost equally true of apples, bananas and numerous other fruits which possess a firm flesh.

To overcome the objection that some people are unable to masticate nuts properly on account of defective teeth, and to insure the proper assimilation even if not properly chewed, the writer some forty years ago conceived the idea of converting the nuts by crushing and grinding into a paste, in other words, chewing the nuts by machinery. The peanut was first utilized in this way and rapidly won its way to public favor. Now, many scores of carloads of that nut are eaten under the name of "peanut butter."

Almonds were next used, and were found to make a delicious nut paste, or butter, which by the addition of water and a little salt, became a most delicious cream. In the form of almond cream or milk nothing could be conceived in the way of nourishment which the body can more easily appropriate and more fully utilize.

As regards the necessity for eating meat, this question was definitely settled by the Inter-allied Scientific Food Commission which met during the war, without doubt the most authoritative body on the subject of food and nutrition that was ever brought together.

The question of a minimum meat ration was discussed by the Commission, and it was decided to be unnecessary to fix a minimum meat ration, since, in the words of the commissioners in their report, "no absolute physiological need exists for meat, since the proteins of meat can be replaced by other proteins, such as those contained in milk, cheese and eggs, as well as those of vegetable origin."

Quite in line with this official action was an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which states that "man's health and strength are not dependent on the assumed superior virtues of animal flesh as a dietary constituent."

A supreme advantage of nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut, the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or any other disease which may be communicated to human beings.

Speaking of his childhood diet, Professor Stephen Mizwa says: "We had chicken, too, but I rarely tasted one unless I was sick and the chicken was sick." The voluntary eating of sick animals may be less common in this country than in Poland, but the eating of the flesh of diseased animals may nevertheless be much more extensive.

Within the year 1918 there were slaughtered in the United States a hundred million beeves, sheep, pigs and goats, one whole beast for every man, woman and child in the United States. Of this vast multitude of animals the Federal inspectors examined nearly two-thirds (60,000,000) and found one and a half per cent so badly diseased that the whole or part of the carcass was condemned. In other words, nearly a million (900,000) carcasses were found seriously diseased. But there were 40,000,000 other beasts killed and eaten which were not inspected; and they were without doubt much more badly diseased, a fact which was in many cases, most likely, the reason why no inspection was made. Allowing that three per cent of these were diseased, which is a low estimate, the total number of diseased animals found in the 100,000,000 slaughtered was not less than 2,000,000, or one in fifty of the total number. And most of these were eaten by human beings either wholly or in part.

If we should abandon meat eating in favor of nuts we would not have to worry about what our victuals died of.

By the substitution of nuts for meats all dangers associated with flesh eating may be avoided; hence their use should be encouraged in every practical way. National and state legislators should make liberal appropriations for the study of the soil and climatic conditions best suited to nut culture, and otherwise encourage this infant but most important industry.

Mr. Bricker: Have any of you come in contact with a black walnut, seemingly deformed, in which there is only one lobe in the shell?

The President: Dr. Deming, what is your observation of the Stabler with one lobe?

Dr. Deming: 50% are one lobe.

Mr. Hershey: Mr. Bixby found, I think, 60%. We don't know why there should be nuts with one lobe.

Dr. Smith: In my observation of the Stabler, the percentage of one lobe nuts is very small, not more than 5%.

Mr. Bricker: Also there is a large black walnut at Atalissa, with a very thin shell. I have seen some of them, however, that were not very well filled last year.

The President: Is that a little town in Iowa?

Mr. Bricker: Yes. Below Iowa City, east of West Liberty.

The President: Mr. Wilkinson has something interesting to tell us about the discovery of a black walnut valued for its lumber.

Mr. Wilkinson: Possibly Professor Smith knows more about that than I do. The first I knew of it Mr. Lamb wrote that he had found an unusual figured walnut. He had already sent scions to Dr. Morris and Mr. Bixby, and Dr. Morris suggested he send me some. When the log came Mr. Lamb found it unusually highly figured. He traced it to where it was loaded. They went to the fields and chopped into the tops until they found the tree by the figure of the wood. It had been cut two months and the wood was entirely dry. Mr. Bixby sent me two very tiny grafts. The tree sawed out something over 60,000 feet of veneer that sold from 16 to 18 cents per square foot; quite a large tree. It sawed out five logs and the stump sawed out 500 feet. Several thousand dollars for the tree. I saw several pieces of the tree last year. The most beautiful thing I ever saw. Most highly figured log that ever came into the mill at Chicago.

Dr. Zimmerman: Prof. Lake sent me scions named the Lion.

Dr. Deming: The figure is not in the scion wood.

Dr. Zimmerman: The scion wood I put on was quite curly.

Dr. Smith: Does the curly character show in the sap wood or the heart?

The President: You have to go away from home to know what is going on there. It is the first I have known about that very interesting tree. I would like to get some trees of that curly type. Mr. W. K. Kellogg is very much interested in having us propagate that type.

Dr. Zimmerman: Mr. Link told me Mr. Linton had some.

Mr. Harrington: It seems to me very strange that the stump didn't sprout.

Mr. Wilkinson: The stump was used.

Dr. Deming: There must have been roots.

The President: Sometimes it is difficult to get them to grow.

Mr. Weber: Three miles northwest of Blufftown there is a natural hybrid between the white and chinquapin oaks. There are some samples out on the table. We picked up some of the nuts and found them edible. No trace of any bitterness whatever. You come out of Blufftown on No. 30. About a half mile above the town you turn to the left and go about a mile or more. It is at the intersection of the Erie Quarry road. It has a wire fence around it.

Dr. Smith: How do you know it is a hybrid?

Mr. Weber: From Richard Leber. It was discovered by a man by the name of Williamson, and he suggested that the state acquire the land in order to preserve the tree.

Dr. Smith: It will be another source of carbo-hydrate food.

The President: Dr. Zimmerman is a specialist on chestnut blight, and particularly on inducing immunity.