Volume 5 — THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF VEGETALISM.

This article, the earlier part of which appeared in the October number, is from the French of Prof. H. Labbé, the head of the laboratoire à la Faculté de Médecine, in Paris. It reflects a characteristic aloofness to a any considerations other than scientific or economic. But it will well repay careful study.—[Eds.]

V

Though the consumption of vegetable foods seems to offer a slight disadvantage from the point of view of albuminoid matters, this is not the case touching hydro-carbonated matters and sugars. The vegetable kingdom constitutes the almost exclusive source of these alimentary principles. One cannot indeed take much account of the consumption of the .5-.6 per cent, of glycogen which exists in the animal muscle partaken of under the shape of butcher's meat. There is hardly enough in this for a large eater of between 200 and 250 grammes of meat, to find in hydrocarbonated matters the 1/300 or the 1/400 of the daily ration. Hydrocarbons are necessarily borrowed from the vegetable foods. This is also the case with sugars which do not exist in the animal kingdom in appreciable quantities. It is the same thing with alcohol which is obtained only from the vegetable kingdom.

VI

As to fatty matters, animal foods, like vegetable products, are abundantly provided with them. Moreover, from the point of view of digestibility and capability of assimilating, one may say that there is a quasi-absolute identity between animal and vegetable fats. The reason which would induce us to prefer either would not seem to be of a physiological nature. The economics, which we shall see further on, take this upon themselves, as the most serious reproach which can be made against the use of animal dishes is doubtless their dearness, and the reason which militates most in favour of the predominance of a vegetable diet is to a certainty its cheapness.

VII

Such are, briefly expounded and refuted, the fundamental objections which can be brought against the vegetarian diet and the “vegetalian” customs. There exists, in fact, no serious physiological or chemical reason for not satisfying our needs solely with foods of vegetable origin. It may be interesting to note that, in reality, the most confirmed flesh eaters support their energy-producing needs mainly with vegetable products. In the mixed diet universally practised meat plays but a small part.

In meat the waste in preparation and consecutive waste at table is considerable. To really introduce 200 grammes of meat into the stomach, nearly 400 grammes must be purchased, and expensively put into use. What do these 200 grammes really bring in nutritive elements?

Meat.

200 gr. (mod. fat.) at 18%albumin = 36 gr. album., about.

""5% fat = 10 gr. fat, about.

46 gr.

These 46 grs. constitute barely the 8 per cent. of the total weight of a ration, averaged in nutritive elements, calculated as follows:—

Albumin 80

Fatty matters 70

Hydrates of carbon 350

This is a very feeble proportion.

If one turns to the calorific point of view, in order to estimate the share of energy useful to the organism, we arrive at much the same conclusion. The 46 grs. of nutritive animal elements barely provide 230 thermal units which can be utilised, while the total diet which we are considering brings a power of disposal of nearly 2,350 thermal units. It is, even then, barely 10 per cent. of the total energy. The most convinced flesh eaters, those who buy 400 grs. of meat a day for their consumption, must learn, willingly or unwillingly, that the animal element enters only in an infinitesimal part into their real substance and reparation.

VIII

Beyond this very feeble nutritive help is there, then, in meat, anything else which makes the use of this article of food necessary, agreeable or particularly strengthening? It is incontestible that meat contains stimulating substances, which, as Prof. Armand Gautier has said, play the part of nerve tonics, and have perhaps a direct action on the circulation.

These special meat matters are found concentrated in the gravy. Meat gravy, in fact, beside a feeble proportion of albuminoid matters, or solubly derived quantities, polypeptides, etc., in notable proportion of liberated acids, contains a certain quantity of matters, qualified by the generic name of extractives; a notable quantity of these extractive matters being creatine and creatinine, as well as substances of which the fundamental nucleus is the puric grouping. These purins, by the name which E. Fischer attributes to them, derive from a special grouping which it would be supposed exists in a hypothetic body, but which is not known in a state of liberty, purin. This first term gives rise to a series of bodies in lateral groups, of which the most interesting are caffeine and theobromine. Amongst these substances the one which has the maximum of oxidation is no other than uric acid. Caffeine and theobromine enjoy nervine properties and energetic vascular actions. These properties minutely studied are utilised every day for therapeutic purposes. It is probable that the other bodies of the series which are met with in the extract of meat enjoy analogous physiological properties. These substances are ingested without discernment, often in great excess, and daily, by people who consume meat.

Amongst these latter, many would not dare to drug themselves with a centigramme of pharmaceutic caffeine, whereas they absorb each day 0 gr. 5 and more, of its homologous constituents.

Therefore, in the same way as chocolate, tea and coffee, meat has a stimulating effect on the system. He who is accidentally deprived of it finds that he experiences a passing depression. This obviously proves that by the exaggerated use of meat, one drugs and doctors oneself without discernment. However this may be, the judicious part played by meat must apparently be reduced to that of a condiment food destined to produce in a measure the whipping-up which is useful, and sometimes indispensable to the system. We cannot here discuss the expediency of action and the harmlessness of the dose of substances reputed stimulating. But one can ask oneself whether, to attain this object of stimulation, carnivorous feeding is indispensable, and if vegetarianism could not supply the need.

The reply is easy: the vegetable kingdom disposes of a variety of stimulating articles, such as tea, coffee, kola and cocoa. Through their active substances these foods are nerve tonics of the first order, less dangerous in their use than meat, because more easily assimilated, of far more continuous effects, less mixed with other substances, sometimes noxious, and consequently more measurable. Besides, in pulse food, quantities of purins are found as important as in meat. If the part they play has not been systematically studied from the point of view of their effects on the nervous organism, they still give rise to the same terminal products, such as uric acid. One can quite well argue that the pulse purins have physiological effects comparable to those of meat purins. On the other hand, vegetable purins have the considerable advantage of being less easily precipitated in the urine, after the human interorganic metabolism, than those resulting from the metabolism of flesh material.

This explains why a frequent use of a vegetable diet offers appreciable advantages in the amelioration of arthritic diatheses so common amongst us. Certain effects observed in these diatheses arise from the purins, from their localisation in the system, and their vitiated metabolism. The use of a moderate vegetable diet is the best means of treatment in order to relieve, to ameliorate, even to cure, arthritic diathesis.

IX

Such are the certain physiological advantages which the predominant use of vegetable products are capable of offering. If one takes the pure energy-producing point of view, the superiority of the vegetarian diet becomes greater still. From the fine works of A. Chauveau, modern physiology has shown us that muscle, in working, consumes sugary materials. These are provided by ingestions of sugar in a natural state, of dextrine or of starch; for a less important part, the glycogen of the system may also arise from hydrocarbonated cords existing in the molecule of certain albumins. Therefore it is only in an infinitesimal part, due to the fibrine of meat, and to the small proportions of glycogen which it contains, that flesh diet intervenes in the direct production of kinetic energy.

The demonstrations which have been essayed, touching the muscular superiority of vegetarians, appear superfluous to us. Such experiments could only have a positive value if they were made on both series of antagonistic subjects, with alimentary powers of energy-producing equality.

It should be distinctly understood that the vegetarian does not profit by any mysterious forces. The habit of preferring to nourish oneself with vegetable foods, can, at most, or at least, favour the physiological integrity of the subject, shield him against disease and assure his revictualment with foods recognised as active and easily measurable.

One cannot leave alcohol out of the list of advantageous vegetable foods. In fact, provided one keeps to strictly limited doses, it may be included among the alimentary foods, on a footing comparable to that of sugar. If one knew how to use without misusing it, alcohol might become a daily food.

X

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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