complexities of modern life?

Of course, vegetarianism is no new thing. Its principal exponent was Sylvester Graham. It so happens that he was the brother of my great grandmother, and of him my father wrote in 1861, "long lanky Sylvester Vegetable Graham, leanest of men." Graham in 1829 began the advocacy of moderation in the use of a diet consisting of vegetables, Graham bread, fruits, nuts, salts and pure water, and excluding meat, sauces, salads, tea, coffee, alcohol, pepper, and mustard. The first effect of this diet, which largely eliminated the flavors, was to reduce the weight through lowering the intake of food, but the health of many followers of the diet appears to have been benefited. The "Graham System" of dieting suffered from withering criticism at the time. He published in 1837 a little book entitled, "Bread and Bread Making," bearing on its cover the scriptural quotation "Bread strengtheneth man's heart." He says in this volume:

But while the people of our country are entirely given up as they are at present, to gross and promiscuous feeding on the dead carcasses of animals and to the untiring pursuit of wealth, it is perhaps wholly vain for a single individual to raise his voice on a subject of this kind.

The well-known work of Chittenden has shown that when the protein intake is reduced by one half or less of that which the average American appetite suggests, professional men, soldiers and athletes may be maintained in the best physical condition. One of Yale's champion intercollegiate athletes won all the events of the year in which he was entered while living on a reduced protein or Chittenden diet. Upon such a diet, or less than that, the people of Germany are now living to-day. The principle involves eating meat very sparingly, taking half a piece where one would have formerly been taken, and using it only for its flavor. The wing of a chicken has little meat on it and yet if eaten together with vegetables it gives the meal a different quality than it would have had without it, and to this extent its use is warranted. The muscles are active when hard labor is done, but the muscles do not need meat for the performance of their work. A fasting man may have considerable power. The popular idea of the necessity of meat for a laboring man may be epitomized in the statement: a strong man can eat more meat than a weak one, hence meat makes a man strong. The proposition is evidently absurd.

Not only is the taking of meat without beneficial relation to the capacity for muscular work, but, in fact, an exclusive meat diet results in the sensation that work is being accomplished with difficulty. When meat is metabolized it stimulates the body to a higher heat production, as great an increase as 55 per cent. having been observed in a resting man. No other food-stuff will accomplish so great an increase. It is especially worthy of note that this increase in the heat production, due to the specific dynamic action of protein, as it is called, cannot be utilized in the execution of mechanical work. When the organism of a laborer at work in a hot environment is called upon to eliminate extra heat, due to the work he is performing, he must also eliminate the quota of heat which is derived from any large ingestion of meat. Hence, the American farmer in the hot weather can eat little meat.

So far as is known, taking meat even in large excess is not harmful, but it represents luxury and waste. According to an oral statement by A. E. Taylor, the results of many thousand urinary analyses in Germany during the second year of the war showed about 7 grams of nitrogen excreted, which would correspond to a dietary containing about 45 grams of protein. As a matter of fact, this is the equivalent of the reduced protein dietary of Chittenden, and it is reported that no ill effects can be attributed to it. The flavor of meat is such that it lends itself to the easy preparation of a palatable meal, but this flavor could undoubtedly be as well obtained if the present consumption of meat were cut in two. It is a question of habit, but with the present reduced supply of meat one must adopt new habits. It would be highly desirable if the grain now fed to fatten beef were given to maintain herds of milch cows.

Indulgence in meat is due to the desire for strong flavor. With the increased distribution of wealth, the demand for meat grows. Its consumption by all classes had vastly increased in all prosperous countries prior to the war. It is well, however, to remember that its use has been excessive and unnecessary, and its price can be cut by wholesale voluntary abstinence. The British people have suffered no hardship in the recent reduction of their meat ration.

A British Commission has reported to Parliament that it takes three times as much fodder to produce beef as it does to produce milk or pork of the same food value. Since cows eat chiefly hay and grass and pigs eat grain the cost of the production of a unit value of milk is much less than the cost of the same value in the form of pork. It takes only fifty per cent. more fodder to produce veal than to produce pork. Milk, pork, and veal have long been the established protein-containing foods of nations on the continent of Europe. According to these figures beef should cost in the market twice what veal costs, and yet the butcher charges nearly the same for the two. It would save food for milk production if steers were eaten as veal and not fed up into beef cattle. A suitable tax on all steers over a year old would accomplish this result. If all heifers were developed into milch cows and no cow capable of giving milk in quantity were slaughtered, the country would be placed on a much better basis than at present. It might make beef expensive, but there is every reason why it should be expensive. It would increase the dairy business, which is evidently a need of the times, something for the protection of the welfare of mankind. For it must be remembered that a well-nourished cow during a single year will give in the form of milk as much protein and two and a half times the number of calories as are contained in her own body.

This was written before the publication of the following words of Armsby, the foremost authority on animal nutrition:[2]

Roast pig, to those who like it, is not only a delicacy but a valuable article of diet, but nevertheless, it is possible to pay too high a price for it, and while a proposal to restrict rather than to promote meat production in the present crisis may appear both irrational and unpatriotic it may nevertheless be in the interest of true food economy....

It may be roughly estimated that about 24 per cent. of the energy of grain is recovered for human consumption in pork, about 18 per cent. in milk and only about 3.5 per cent. in beef and mutton. In other words, the farmer who feeds bread grains to his stock is burning up 75 to 97 per cent. of them in order to produce for us a small residue of roast pig, and so is diminishing the total stock of human food....

The task of the stock feeder must be to utilize through his skill and knowledge the inedible products of the farm and factory, such as hay, corn stalks, straw, bran, brewers' and distillers' grains, gluten feed, and the like, and to make at least a fraction of them available for man's use. In so doing he will be really adding to the food supply and will be rendering a great public service. Rather than seek to stimulate live stock husbandry the ideal should be to adjust it to the limits set by the available supply of forage crops and by-product feeding stuffs while,