The American Meat Institute would have us eat more flesh food, and argues the point on the basis of nutritional requirements which they indicate can be met by no other foodstuff. The tendency of commercial interests to scrap intellectual honesty for financial gain is well known, a particularly flagrant example being the tobacco industry. These folk actually endeavor to prove that tobacco is not only relatively harmless, but perhaps healthful. They try to snuggle under the protective coat of medical organizations and publications, in an effort to mislead a sanguine public into thinking that physicians recommend their narcotics and poisons. The meat interests are trying the same trick, and although they offer a produce that gives man certain food values instead of poison, their advertising nevertheless leads far afield from the truth, and from cold, scientific fact.
The American Meat Institute contends that flesh foods are quite essential. to health, vigor, and endurance. They would have us believe that no harm can result from their free use, summer or winter, and that they are not in any wise responsible for acute or chronic disease. They further play on the vitamin hysteria, and advise us that meat is a rich source of B complex, and also essential minerals. "Eat more meat" is their slogan.
But we offer contradictory testimony, and will endeavor to support our premise that flesh food is injurious to the body. Our arguments will be discussed under five divisions: (1) Meat is a stimulant. (2) Meat is a cause of disease. (3) Meat decreases efficiency. (4) Meat is condemned by comparative anatomy. (5) Meat is unnecessary for a balanced diet.
I. Meat Is a Stimulant
Flesh food is popular not only because of its nutritional benefits, but because of its enjoyable flavor and its stimulating effect. Chemists tell us that there is a substance in flesh food suspiciously like the caffeine found so abundantly in coffee. We call this chemical element a meat extract. It provides precisely the same boost to a fatigued muscle or a sleepy cerebrum that is provided by a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, or a swig from the little brown jug. When you place a cup of hot beef bouillon before a convalescing friend, you are providinc, him with a simon-pure stimulant—not with a food as you think. Doctor Sohn tells us that "in one-half pound of meat (which makes one pint of beef tea) there is at least one and one-half times the nerve stimulation found in one-half ounce of dry tea." Now, that means that meat juice contains a very potent whip.
Gantier, in his "Diet and Dietetics," backs up these remarks by stating: "Like caffeine, the bases of meat broth tone up the heart, and accelerate the digestion and circulation." And he goes on to remind us that these bases are poisonous. Substantiating evidence comes out of the following research carried on at the College of Medical Evangelists. A group of healthy medical students of approximately the same age were placed on a carefully weighed, balanced, nonflesh diet, under the supervision of a corps of dietitians. The protein intake was maintained at a constant figure throughout the period of observation. Blood-pressure estimations were made daily for two weeks. The average systolic blood pressure for this period was 109 millimeters of mercury for the whole group. These same students were then put on a diet that contained flesh foods, the total quantity of food remaining the same and the percentage of protein the same. During this two-week period on a meat-protein diet, the average blood pressure for the group was 119 millimeters of mercury, and yet the total quantity of protein in each diet was precisely the same.
In the one case the protein was derived from eggs, milk, cheese, legumes, and nuts; in the other it was secured from roast beef, leg of lamb, steaks, and meat loaf. Both diets furnished the same chemist's alphabet of amino acids and supplied the same complete and necessary protein. And yet with the flesh-food diet, the blood pressure crawled up to an average of 10 millimeters of mercury higher than with the nonmeat protein diet, in that very brief period of time. We must conclude that the change was effected through the agency of stimulating substances found in flesh foods, and not through the protein of the meat.
The mechanism of this nerve and circulatory stimulation, as demonstrated by the blood-pressure changes, is interesting, but time and space will not permit of discussion. Suffice it to say that we believe that there is evidence sufficient to classify meat extracts—found in every kind of flesh foods--with tea and coffee, which are admitted stimulants. We are assured that the boost that meat eating provides is not alone the response of a well-filled, satisfied stomach. The eating of meat quickly chases that tired feeling, not by its quality as a food, but by its action as a stimulant. The convalescent is "pepped up" by the use of juice drained from chopped meat. There is no food there, not a bit of nourishment, but there is sufficient of the stuff that whips, that stirs, the weary nerve cells to put forth borrowed energy, that blocks the cry of weary muscles, that brings a false sense of vim and added capacity.
The man who sees harm in coffee and tea must on the same basis condemn flesh foods. Of stimulants, David Starr Jordan says, "One and all their functions is to force the nervous system to lie. One and all their habitual uses is to render the nervous system incapable of ever telling the truth." Doctor Jordan w as talking about tea and coffee. Meat goes into the same category as a stimulant.
II. Meat as a Cause of Disease
Doctors Evans and Risley, of the College of Medical Evangelists, after months of careful investigation have found that the kidneys are damaged by a diet high in flesh foods. Their opinions are substantiated by Doctor McCollum, the well-known nutrition expert of Johns Hopkins, as well as others of sound repute. Recent work by McCollum indicates that a diet of 75 per cent dried liver produced hopelessly diseased kidneys in less than one year. On the other hand, a diet that consisted of the same number of grams of protein, but made up entirely of casein (milk protein), and fed for sixteen full months, produced practically no kidney injury. Now, in both cases we have in these foodstuffs—meat and milk—a perfect and complete protein. All of the amino acids essential to body growth and maintenance are present. McCollum thinks, however, that the injury comes from certain additional specific amino acids present in meat, but not present in milk, that may be distinct kidney irritants.
Some recent work at Stanford University under the direction of Dr. Thomas Addis suggests that the kidneys are distinctly overworked by a high protein (meat) diet through the demand put upon them to excrete urea. Protein produces urea, and naturally the more flesh food one eats, the more urea there is produced for the kidneys to take care of. Kidneys were found to enlarge appreciably under heavy protein feeding, and the investigators concluded that large amounts of urea strain the kidney just as hard mountain climbing strains the heart. And yet the American Meat Institute advertises that even in Bright's disease the use of meat need not be restricted.
Now, we know today, from recent incontrovertible research, that high blood pressure and its accompanying hardening of the arteries and eventual heart disease, is the usual aftermath of kidney disease. Therefore, anything that insidiously attacks the kidney is the indirect cause of heart and blood-vessel disease.
A few years ago the Arctic explorer Stefansson went on a total meat diet, paid for by the meat interests. They insisted that he limit his diet exclusively to lean meat. He did this for two days, and in that short period became so violently ill—purging and vomiting —that he had to fast for two days to regain a feeling of fitness. He then found that he could stand a diet of meat only when it was accompanied by four times its energy value in fat. In spite of this fact, his sponsors would have us believe that he was on an unlimited lean-meat diet, and prospered on it. From this they broadcast the erroneous and dishonest statement that meats may be taken in any quantity, summer or winter, without fear of physical injury.
Another angle of the problem marks meat as a factor in the production, not only of chronic degenerative diseases of the kidneys, heart, and blood vessels, but also of acute conditions such as appendicitis and colitis. Most people never stop to think that the more tender the steak, the "riper" it is. This process of ripening is nothing else but putrefaction, due to infection of the meat with colon germs.
Bacteriologists tell us that meat that contains ten million colon germs per gram is potentially rotten. Now, pork runs about 95 million; hamburger, 525 million; and ground round steak, 75 million germs per gram. Thus it is reasonable that we should accept the observation of clinicians that meat is a common cause of colitis and appendicitis—not the only cause, understand, but one important cause. These diseases are relatively unknown in flesh-abstaining areas. Swiss peasants are an example. They eat little or no meat. The peasants of Russia are largely vegetarian. Colitis and appendicitis are very uncommon among them. Two hundred million East Indians are strict vegetarians, and these ailments are equally scarce among them. With meat-eating Americans, intestinal diseases are very common and are increasing.
Again, we must consider the danger in meat from parasites—trichinae, tapeworm embryos, and the like. Tuberculosis, undulant fever, anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, and cancer are among the twenty-four and more diseases rampant in fowl, fish, beef, sheep, and hog. And put not your trust in Government inspection. The Government admits that at least one third of all animals slaughtered are eaten without even seeing an inspector. It is also recognized that inspection does not catch more than a tenth of the disease. We will pass this rather loathsome discussion of our subject with the further thought-provoking observation that some top-flight scientists are convinced that cancer is a germ disease, and that it is transmitted by the use of flesh foods.
_________ To be concluded in April
