UNDERCURRENTS.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17223, 5 October 1927, Page 6

UNDERCURRENTS.

IN THE DRIFT OF LIFE.

(By "Seefcer.T

NUTS VERSUS BEEFSTEAK. "People who are always thinking about their health are never any good.''] This remark of an old friend of mine, ' an editor in the Far East, comes back to me whenever I am inclined to go on a health crusade. However, the visit of Mr Clarke Irvine, the-American cinema man and simple-life apostle, is a. challenge to those who proclaim, with all the impatience of beefsteak vigour, that to think about health i 3 unhealthy. Here is Mr Irvine declaring that a diet of nuts, fruits and vegetables "not only add years to your life but life to your years." With his manifest vim and health, he is' convincing, but what of that rower I saw on the Waikato River on Sunday morning ? Other rowers were there who made good speed, but then came the. master of the art. With a couple of flicks of the oars he had his skiff skimming over the water, as if man and boat were one great powerful bird. There was a thrill in that sight. And in all probability that rower trains on beefsteaks, and quite possibly on beer. Again, Mr Irvine claimed that the simple habits for which he pleaded invigorated both the mental and the spiritual life. His words sounded true, but my mind went back to my friend out East, a keen thinker, a lucid writer, a man with a heart of gold and a rich humour. True, he had developed an uncomfortable circumference, and found walking painful, but he laughed at that, went on eating sausages and eels and drinking tea, coffee, beer and cocktails. And when I cited Bernard Shaw and Tolstoi and Rabindranath Tagore and other great vegetarians to prove the simple diet better, he said, with a twinkle, "Yes. these vegetarians claim to live a long time. • Certainly it must seem a very long time!''

We all know good people and vigorous people who- care nothing for exercise or fresh air and who cat whatever comes along. Yet there are few who, having tried the simple life, will fail to support it wholeheartedly, even though they may have reverted to customary ways for the convenience of others.

Fasting and Mountaineering.

Mr Clarke Irvine is too much in earnest to joke about health or to beat about the bush as I am doing. He had years of ill-health while engaged in publicity work for the great cinema people of California. Rheumatism, decaying teeth, defective eyesight, and various ills were his. Then came the change of habits, and with it health abounding. He told me of some of his experiences: "I was on a lecturing tour when I stopped at Shasta Springs and took ' the waters and fasted for three days. Then I ate a bunch of grapes and set out to climb Mount Shasta —a mountain of 14,200 feet. I took only raisins and figs and dried olives. It is a three clays' trip. The first day you climb up 11 miles to the Lodge, and on the second day up sliding shale and glaciers and snow-fields, and one tedious part was going like Santa Glaus up a chimney through sandstone. Two other parties started out the same day but neither reached the top. I had two companions with me; they were on ordinary diet, and it was always they who had to stop and rest. The last 200 feet 1 felt just as peppy as when I started. We got back about sunset and I took a plunge in a barrel of ice-water."

Mr Irvine does not particularly recommend a three days' fast immediately before climbing a 14,000 ft mountain, but he wanted to show what could be done on an empty stomach and a little fruit. In like manner he ate nothing but alligator pears (avocados) while walking in scorching heat from San Diego to Los Angeles—--133 miles. He climbed Mt. Haleakala a 0,000ft) in Hawaii during a rainstorm, with oranges and dates to give him "beef." In Hawaii he used to swim two miles a day, practising a new stroke that he has invented for speed over long distances. The fruits of the earth have certainly proved themselves the diet of endurance. Any vegetarian paper you pick up will give you instances of athletes who take no flesh food. At "a boarding school in England there is one house in which the boys have nuts and cheese in place of meat and fish,' and this house leads in athletic performances; of course, it wins the intellectual contests also. An un-' believer in tiie fruitarian creed has attributed the successes of the boys in this house not to their diet but to the fact that their parents are in many cases vegetarians, and therefore thinkers. Enough said.

The Example of the Great. Mr Clarke Irvine, in his little boofc "Health," gives a list of forty great men and women who were fruitarians. I have mentioned Shaw, Tagore and Tolstoi. Among the others are Thoreau, Annie Besant, Ella .Wheeler Wilcox, Gandhi, Emerson and Maeterlinck. Food and Bellicosity. Mr Irvine thinks that meat-eating j& inclines people to war. Apparently he has at least an clement of truth on his side, for the Burmese and Hindus, vegetarians by religion, are about tho most peaceful people in the world. On the other- hand the Turks, who are religious teetotalers but meat-eaters, are among the most bellicose.

There is an.interesting relation botween meat-eating and alcohol. Salvation Army workers havc : discovered that the one sure way to cure confirmed alcoholics of their craving is to keep them off flesh foods entirely and give them plenty of fruit. .Mr Irvine is strongly in favour of raw food—fruits, vegetables and nuts, lie holds that cooking destroys the elements of cleansing and of life.

Why IVlankind is Carnivorous. "Why revert to monkey habits?" asks the opponent of fruitarian diet 1 wonder why man, in evolving from his ancestors, took to 'eating meat? Maybe the less clever anthropoids, unable to get a living in the competition for the fruits of the trees, were forced to eat grain and potatoes and such like and look to hunting rats and sheep for a change of diet. They had not the intelligence to plant trees and wait years for their natural food to grow. So man took to foods that were unsuitable for him and had to doctor them up with all sorts of crushing and milling and fermenting and cooking and sauces. Think of the toil that is needed to make meat or wheat acceptable to the human palate! And most of us. if we had to prepare our own meat, would shy off at the first process—the slaughtering. There are some very cantankerous fruitarians and some very good and attractive carnivorous people. The noble spirit, "bom Io bless," shines regardless of circumstance. The "Seeker" is inclined to think the fruitarians are right. But after all people arc not just engines, dependent upon getting the right fuel-and~air mixture. Whatever they eat. whatever air they breathe, they are still oeople.