NATURAL MAN AND HIS DIET.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 103, 3 May 1929, Page 6

NATURAL MAN AND HIS DIET.

A medical contributor to the "Cornhill Magazine" has come into the arena against those bigoted vegetarians who endeavour to force down the throats of us all what, they themselves have a preference for: The writer has collected as weapons conclusive evidence that natural man — the savage —lias been made to appear quite other than he is, to clinch each vegetarian's argument. The author gives proof that no wholesome food produces disease and that meat is, all things considered, the. most wholesome of foods. That the "war was won on bully beef" has long been the dagger thrust between the ribs nourished upon cabbage and lettuce, and the thrust has caused less pain than the knowledge that there is no protective argument against it. The writer says that disease is common to us all, civilised and savage alike, and cannot be banished by the most carefully studied diet. Animals are as much the "product of Nature"'as vegetables, and early man —who lived a "natural" life—was always a hunter. In the dwellings of cavemen are found bones and shells, the remains of his feasts, and wild men cat anything which runs, or flies, or crawls and is to his taste. His appetite was guided by instinct, and that instinct is with us still. The Jew'is a long-lived, healthy human, and has not seen fit to do more than make sure of the soundness of his animal food since the patriarchs (including Noah) gave authority for tho consumption of flesh. Animal scavengers are excluded from the table of tradition-following Jews, and, with few exceptions, Gentiles agree with this. Cannibal races hold that human flesh is the best of all meats and have good reasons for tho belief. The Sikhs (of India) and Zulus will desert their grain food for meat when they can get it. Take note of the life and environment of any savage and attribute such health and strength as he may have to sunshine, air and exercise, rather than to his diet, which is mostly not so much a matter of choice as of chance. Primitive races arc no healthier than civilised, and their diseases are as varied and as fatal as ours, and their digestive troubles are frequent, as any world-wide traveller can show. The savage has less resistance to infections than ourselves, and in the mass lives no longer. In 1850 the annual consumption of meat in England was three pounds per head of population; now it is nearing fifty pounds per head. 11l the same time the death rate has dropped from 24 per 1000 to 12 per thousand, men and women live as long —or longer—and this in a more crowded area. Dr. Hutchinson's advice of thirty-five years ago, "Eat a good mixed diet," and Dr. Goodhart's "feat what you feel and believe is the best for you," are as sensible and useful to-day as when given. When beriberi was rife in the Japanese Navy the disease was checked by a ration _ of meat; pellagra has been cured by a meat diet, and so also has anaemia. Of seven hundred very old people questioned (in England) all were meat eaters. The sick poor of England arc to-day in need of meat. Doctors are unanimous in stating that meat docs not produce cancer, and our greatest living authority, Sir Berkeley Moynihan, says, "Nor any other article of diet." Cancer is known in vegetarian animals, in children who have had no meat, in monks and nuns who abstain from meat, and there is something like cancer in fish. Anatomists show that the structure of man indicates his need for a mixed diet. The elimination of any common article of food from your list of appropriate things is a personal matter. Your ability to consume "pretty nearly anything" is a sign of health, and if you cannot take this or that without discomfort it is the human machine and not the food that is wrong. Methods of cooking, flavouring and preserving may —any one of them —destroy the wliolesomeness of food, and if by "natural" food is meant the least sophisticated, least manipulated food, the term is to be permitted when not relating to coarse, fibrous, or tough substances which tax human functions beyond their ability;. ... ' —H.A.Y.