Vegetarianism

Blueprint For Man

     Vegetarianism—is a word that may be accepted with credibility and delight by some, or it can be an irritant and cause anger and consternation for others.

     What about vegetarianism?  Scientifically, we know that a flesh diet is a very mediocre diet for man.  Man’s anatomy and physiology are poorly adapted to the digesting of meat and it cannot be done without some putrefaction occurring.  Meat-eating animals have teeth for tearing meat from bones.  God created man’s teeth all on the same level and closely set together.  The jaw has a wide range motion vertically which allows him to bite at large fruits.  The grinding motion used in chewing is proof of man’s adaptation for eating substances such as nuts, seeds grains, fruits and vegetables.

WHY WE SHOULD NOT EAT FLESH

     There are actually many reasons why it is best not to eat meat.

     Science has proven that a flesh diet is not essential.  In fact the largest percentage of the earth’s population eat very little or no meat.  Only the industrialized countries in the past hundred years have begun to over indulge in flesh eating.

     Raising animals for meat eating is the most wasteful method of food production known.  With today’s population there is only one acre or less of agriculture land for each person.  A vegetarian needs only 1/4 acre.  But when one depends largely on meat for food his requirements soars to three acres.

     The cost of water to “grow” one pound of meat is 25 times greater than that for growing vegetable food.

     The food that is fed to the factory animals is digested and then reassembled to become a part of the animal’s tissues.  If this were all, even in spite of the enormous waste of plant protein, it wouldn’t be quite so bad, but tissues contain blood and waste products such as urea, creatins and uric acid.  When you eat these, your kidneys must eliminate all this from your body.

Meat Is An Inferior Source Of Minerals And Vitamins.

     Meat is inferior as a source of minerals.  It is rich in phosphorus but is very poor in calcium.  Grains, vegetables and nuts furnish an abundance of phosphorus and calcium.  And many nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables have far more iron in them than meat.

     What about vitamins?  Most flesh meats are muscle meats which is relatively low in vitamins.  Meat as ordinarily eaten is a poor source of vitamins.

     Too high a protein diet is injurious to health.  Flesh foods are very high in protein, which is a great danger to the system, placing an added load on the liver, which may be injured.  Animal protein promotes cancer, while replacing animal protein with plant protein appears to stop carcinogenesis.  A reasonably varied plant-based diet will easily provide enough protein.

Fats In Meat Can Be Harmful

     Most of us are already aware that the fat in meat tends to be harmful to human health.  Even lean muscle meat contains much fat.  There is much microscopic fat between the muscle bundles.  Fats are a main factor for arteriosclerosis and aging.  Today’s scientific evidence bears witness to the scientific wisdom in God’s instruction to ancient Israel that they should not eat the fat of animal flesh.

     Besides specific diseases and their germs, it has been shown that meat contains one to more than 10 million colon germs per gram, these being a contamination from the fecal matter during the act of slaughtering.

     Then there is salmonellosis, botulism, ptomaine poisoning-all common food poisoning associated with animal products.  Almost every meat eater at one time or another has experienced various gastrointestinal diseases contracted from eating spoiled animal foods, but have mistakenly taken it for the stomach flu.

Endurance of vegetarians

     Flesh eaters are noticeably inferior to vegetarians in the matter of physical endurance.  It is a fact that in general the plant-eating animals have greater endurance than carnivorous animals and dogs fed a meatless diet have increased endurance.  Experiments with trained (meat-eating) athletes versus non-athlete vegetarians have shown the vegetarians to possess greater physical endurance.  Repeatedly vegetarians have surpassed the flesh eaters.

     Yale University published the results of an experiment.  Fifteen meat eaters were asked to hold their arms outstretched to the side.  Only two of them managed to keep them horizontal for 15 minutes.  No one exceeded 30.  The situation among vegetarians was quite different.  Twenty-two of 34 vegetarians reached 15 minutes.  15 of those 22 lasted one half hour.  One endured for three whole hours. 

     Deep knee bending proved to be just as revealing.  Fifteen meat eaters averaged 1,000, while the vegetarians reached an amazing 2,000.  Most of the meat eaters had to be carried away.  Not a single vegetarian had to be helped.

Meat Difficult To Digest

     All animal proteins are difficult to digest.  One of the main reasons is because man does not secrete the uricase enzyme that meat eating animals do.  Meat then becomes putrefactive.  Meat can take up to 60-100 hours to digest whereas normal digestion takes only about 24 to 30 hours.

Higher Blood Pressure

     When meat was added to the diets of vegetarians their blood pressure was elevated after 11 days.  A follow-up in European studies with the elderly showed a drop of blood pressure to within normal range after two months when they were put back on a vegetarian diet.

Aging And Fatigue From Meat

     Aging and fatigue is hastened by flesh foods.  Aging is the wearing out of the body.  The cells of the body are little units.  Each cell must take on nourishment, give off waste and take in oxygen.  When something interferes with the process, the cells and the organs they make up, begin to deteriorate.  If the body fluid that bathes the cells is overloaded with waste, life in all the cells become shortened.  Meat contains waste products that the animals did not have opportunity to eliminate.  Then when one eats flesh, the waste products from the meat are also consumed.  Prominent among body waste products are urea and uric acid which resemble caffeine—the uric acid accounts for the quick pick-me-up feeling.

     Meat also lacks fiber which is abundant in fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains.  A high meat diet results in constipation, with hard and infrequent stools due to the lack of fiber.

Should You Become A Vegetarian?

     Granted some people say.  “I don’t feel it’s really necessary that I become a vegetarian” While true, over the centuries the human race has maintained life on a conglomerate assortment of foods, (many times it has been a necessity), and if life had not been maintained on these diets our race would have long since vanished.  But past generations did not have high quality lives.   

     The human body also works best and lasts longer when fed the fuel that God intended for it, and on which the body will best flourish: fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds.  The biological equipment of humans is such that the body is much more capable of obtaining complete and optimal nutrition, without threat or stress, from plant foods.

     God engineered the anatomy of the human digestive system to digest plant-based foods. High in fiber and complex carbohydrates and only moderate in protein.  Freed from the fiberless, fatty burden of flesh foods, our digestive systems perform smoothly and efficiently.

     The leading reasons why we should eliminate all flesh, even of healthy animals, is flesh is filled with toxic wastes on the way to the excretory organs, kidneys, lungs, and pores.  Disease in animals is rapidly increasing today, making not only their flesh unsafe, but also increasing the dangers of using even the dairy products.

     Also, the idea that persons who do hard physical labor need a hearty meat-and-potatoes diet are a culture illusion.  Even if you are a six-foot, two-hundred-pound lumberjack, you can get just as much strength and stamina (in fact for a longer period of time) from eating a diet of fruits, vegetables and grains as you can from steak and fries, and eating the vegetables and grains will give you an overall healthier body.  Studies have shown that a vegetarian diet can provide you with more stamina. 

     Neal Barnard, M.D., Director of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, tells that two-thirds of Americans alive today will die of cancer or heart disease, most of it diet related.  That’s a steep food bill.

     Learning to eat that which the body truly needs—and not what we desire because of our perverted taste buds and cravings—can be made interesting as well as challenging.

     Dr. John a Scharffenburg, in Problems With Meat says, “Meat is a major factor in the leading causes of death in the United states, and probably in similarly affluent societies.  In fact, next to tobacco and alcohol, meat is the greatest single cause of mortality in the United States.  A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions.

     “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

1 Corinthians 10:31

Katy Chamberlin