WHAT TO EAT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19737, 13 March 1926, Page 9

WHAT TO EAT.

SAYIXG CIVILISATION* A VEGETARIAN DIET. REVELATIONS BY MR J. R, DEVEREUX. (Feou Ocn Own Coheespondest.) LONDON, January 21. Mr James Raymond Devereux, of Christ* church, In a book just published, sets out, as the title implies, to save civilisation. Whether civilisation will allow itself to be saved or not is another question. “Eating to Banish Disease and to Save Civilisation” (C. W. Daniel Company) is the name of this ambitious work. It is a serious attempt to get men back to a diet of nuts, raw carrots, and other vegetables, and fruit. The author leaves the reader wondering how he has continued to live in spite of the poisons he has been swallowing since hia infancy up. "Arsenic, alcohol, tobacco, tea, and white flour, for instance, are all men’s poisons.” This sentence will give an indication of the extreme attitude Mr Devereux takes up. He may be perfectly right in all he says, but one is tempted to ask: If wa should imitate the orang outang in the method of eating, why should we not go still further and imitate the orang outang in the matter of clothing, or lack of clothing. Why should we not live entirely in the open air? Why should bo compromise by eating dried fruit? That vegetarianism is increasing in England' is evident from the number of vegetarian shops and restaurants which are springing up. But even Mr Eustace Miles seems to have gone wrong. He has wisely abolished all flesh foods from his dietary, but is too much in favour of cooking. No, wa must go further. We must give up fired food. Dead food is useless. No food that cannot ■be eaten and relished in its uncooked natural state is good food. We must abandon all flesh foods, potatoes, cereals, and pulse to obtain the best possible results. FRUIT EATER'S INTESTINES. “How does a portion of the corpse of ft bullock, in Its uncooked state, appeal to oar eye?” asks the writer. “How would you like to teach your children to bury their teeth in a nice uncooked mutton chop, or in the neck of the lamb it came from. What appeals to our instincts the most, a lump of raw bacon and liver or a feast of strawberries, grapes, oranges, apricots, apples, bananas, nectarines, plums, pineapples, pears, passion fruit, figs, dates, peaches, almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, and all the other fruits, nuts, and vegetables we use? "We have no claws for tearing meat to pieces; we have no beaks for eating grains: we are not ruminants, as the cow; we have no aptitude for diving into the water for fish; but we have got the hands, teeth, intestines, and instinct ci the fruit, and nut eaters.” This is a mere statement. of opinion, of course, but the author fortifies hia opinions by a volume full of the horrors that arise from pursuing our present wicked course. We are warned that no doctor can cure. Only Nature cures. Every meal we have eaten of cooked or wrong foods we have lost some vitality. It is merely_ a question of debit and credit, and the higher the debit balance becomes the sooner we must expect the vitality to become bankrupt. “How can we know that there are not some extremely important and vital substances necessary and present in natural, uncooked food that are not in cooked food? Experience shows that this is so, and man’s cancerous, miserable, diseased, prematurely aged condition, and short average life are the results of'his idiocy.” CHOKED WITH FILTH. Here are the reasons for thinness or fatness. “The condition know as being too thin indicates a variety of troubles, very often the villi of the small intestines are perpetually choked with filth. In spite of tne fact 'that large quantities of food are often eaten, the person eo affected still remains thin because only the top portions of the villi are extracting nutriment as the food goes pas*.. Fat cannot come from air, and persons so encumbered usually have their body littered with the results of overrating and' wrong eating, and, as the Americana say, are walking round in their own coffins.” One in four of our number now living over the age of 43 must die of the hell of all diseases—cancer. All this could he altered if wc got back to the food of the orangoutang. “Modern investigation as to tha causes of the insidious diseases, pellagra, beri-beri, rickets, polyneuritis, tuberculosis, cancer, have positively established that they are all caused by incorrect feeding, and we are safe in stating that an astounding number of diseases can be traced to this source. We recognse this fact as aplied to tha vegetable and animal kingdom, but have failed to recognise that it also applies to ourselves.” _ _ THE HORRORS OF FAT. Here is another striking pronouncement; “How, if I find a particular friend developing liis fat. strong as the term may seem, I trv to make him rtalise his condition by saying that he is storing up excreta. “We pen a pig in the smallest possible space, so that if obtains no exercise. We feed it ou all manner of foods, deficient and otherwise in the 16 elements. The pig is in tha same position as the overfed humans. It cannot excrete all the waste matter, and stores it in the most suitable form—i.e., fat. This is the condition in which we love to see our animals for the table. We love to have them littered with this fat, but I want the reader to pause and ask himself seriously how can this, apart from all other considerations. bo good to eat? How can it be right to eat this rubbish, this excreta? No wonder if it promotes the growth of foul an I abominable disease, such as cancer.” Certainly, when we have read all that Mr Devereux has to tell us cooked meat, and specially cooked fat. should turn us sick. In the end he gives us a list of all the rubbish we have been consuming. It is a formidable list—white flour,_ oatmeal, and other porridges, refined white sugar (this is only useful for the bath), nee, rmiK, butter, cream, cheese, tea. coffee, cocoa, salt manufactured foods of any description. _ WHAT IS MEAT? Ore more quotation from Herewsrd Carrington iu “The Natural hood of Man, and surely no one could eat another mouthful of meat. “When an animal is killed in any manner it does not instantly die. It loses consciousness, its heart _ ceases to beat, its conscious and somatic life end, but its tissues still continue to live for several hours in the taso of warm-blooded animals, for several days in the case of cold-blooded animals like the snake and turtle. During the time which elapses between death socalled, and the actual death of the cell* and tissues of the body, the activity of tile animal tissues consumes the soluble food material which is in contact witn those cells and tissues —at the same time continuing to produce those wastes substances which, during life, are rapidly remeved from the body through the kidneys, lungs, and other excretory organs. It is by the accumulation of these poisons after death that the tissues are killed.” T- Devereux has crowded some j. 46 pages with vigorous damaging evidence against the ordinary diet of the ordinary man. Ha I mails out a good case_for raw carrots and fruit and mits._ Ho will convert many to his way of thinking, and when the world is a little older it may see the light and sot out to save itself.