Shelton DC, Herbert Ch.

17 Fruitarianism and Vegetarianism

Prior chapters have made clear the superiority of the all-plant... diet over the flesh diet or over the
conventional mixed diet. A few things, however, remain to be said. In nature it is obvious that in
"temperate" climes, at least, animals that rely upon the surplus stores of plants for their winter food
have infinitely greater chances of survival than do the predacious animals who must rely upon the kill
for their sustenance. he plant feeding animals thus have a great advantage over the flesh eaters. his
advantage extends to many other features of life which need not be discussed here.
I do not intend to enter into any lengthy discussion of comparative anatomy and physiology at this
place, but will content myself with saying that every anatomical, physiological and embryo-logical
feature of man definitely places him in the class frugivore. he number and structure of his teeth, the
length and structure of his digestive tract, the position of his eyes, the character of his nails, the
functions of his skin, the character of his saliva, the relative si!e of his liver, the number and position of
the milk glands, the position and structure of the sexual organs, the character of the human placenta and
many other factors all bear witness to the fact that man is constitutionally a frugivore.
As there are no pure frugivores, all frugivores eating freely of green leaves and other parts of plants,
man may, also, without violating his constitutional nature, partake of green plants. hese parts of plants
possess certain advantages, as has been previously pointed out, in which fruits are deficient. Actual
tests have shown that the addition of green vegetables to the fruit and nut diet improves the diet.
he vast ma"ority of the human race have at all times been wholly or largely plant feeders. #uman
tribes that have lived exclusively upon meat and other animal foods have been exceedingly rare or non-
existent. $ven $skimo tribes eat some twenty-four different kinds of mosses and lichens, including
cloudberry, barberry, crowberry, reindeer moss and other plants, that grow in the arctic.
It is probable that more meat is eaten by man today than at any previous period in his history.
%ivili!ation is based on vegetarianism--on agriculture and horticulture. ribes that depend on hunting
and herding do not remain stationary and do not build civili!ations.
"&hen I go back," says #iggins in Anacalypsis II, page '(), "to the most remote periods of anti*uity
which it is possible to penetrate, I find clear and positive evidence of several important facts+ ,irst, no
animal food was eaten, no animals were sacrificed." -rigenes has left us the record that "the $gyptians
would prefer to die, rather than becomes guilty of the crime of eating any kind of flesh.
#erodotus tells us that the $gyptians subsisted on fruits and vegetables, which they ate raw. Plinius
confirms this statement. #arold &hitestone, in his he Private .ives of the /omans, says+ "-f the
/omans it may be said that during the early /epublic perhaps almost through the second century 0. %.,
they cared little for the pleasures of the table. hey lived frugally and ate sparingly. hey were almost
strict vegetarians, much of their food was eaten cold, and the utmost simplicity characteri!ed the
cooking and the service of their meals."
It was only after the con*uest of 1reece that the /omans alt...ered their table customs and became a
luxury-loving, meat eating people. $ven then the poorer classes lived frugally and, as &hitestone says,
"every schoolboy knows that the soldiers who won %aesar2s battles for him lived on grain which they
ground in their handmills and baked at their campfires."
Isis, one of the best beloved of $gyptian goddesses, was thought by them to have taught the $gyptians
the art of bread making from the cereals theretofore growing wild and unused, the earlier $gyptians
having lived upon fruits, roots and herbs. he worship of Isis was universal throughout $gypt and
magnificent temples were dedicated to her. #er priests, consecrated to purity, were re*uired to wear
linen garments, unmixed with animal fibre, to abstain from all animal food and from those vegetables
regarded as impure--beans, onions, garlic and leeks.
Island tribes have existed who had no access to flesh food and there are several peoples who abstain
from meat on religious grounds. &e find this so in %hina, India, urkey and among the $ssenses in
Ancient Palestine. he 3partans were forbidden to eat meat and, like the priests of Isis, were forbidden
to eat beans. here are sects in India the members of which are still forbidden to eat beans.
#indhede has shown that on the whole health and length of life are greater among vegetarian than
among meat eating peoples. 4c%arrison has shown that the better nourished fruit-eating #un!as of
5orth India are the e*ual in health, strength, freedom from disease and in length of life of any people
on earth.
6egetarian athletes have won honors in more than one field. Indeed where great endurance is re*uired
they almost always win. 4any thousands of invalids have turned from a mixed diet to a vegetarian or
fruitarian diet and have, thereby, saved their lives, even where they were unable to restore themselves
to vigorous health.
A surgeon on the staff of the 0one and 7oint #ospital, 5ew 8ork %ity, who has had a wide experience
among vegetarians, told me that vegetarian women give birth to their babies very *uickly, "drop them
like animals" with but little pain, and recuperate very *uickly. #e added that when he gets a call to
attend a childbirth in a vegetarian woman, he wastes no time, but rushes to her bedside and fre*uently
arrives only to find the baby born before he gets there. #e also stated that wounds heal more *uickly in
vegetarians than others. he surgeon, himself is not a vegetarian.
A surgeon here in 3an Antonio, who has handled deliveries for several mothers that the writer has cared
for through their pregnancies, once remarked to me+ "&hen I am called to care for a parturient woman
that you have fed I know there are going to be no complications and everything will go as it should, but
when I am called to care for a woman who eats in the conventional way, I never know what will
happen."
Professor /ichet found that fruits and vegetables do not induce serum diseases 9anphylaxis:, while
flesh foods do and interprets his findings to mean that nature vetoes certain proteids, chiefly animal, as
unsuitable. %ertainly no meat, meat "uice or eggs should ever be fed to a child under seven or eight
years of age. It has no power to neutrali!e the poisons from these until this time.
Auto-intoxication and liability to infection are less in vegetarian and fruitarian than in animal feeders;
many of the latter scarcely defending themselves at all, but tamely submit to parasitic imposition.
acitus tells us that the ancient -rientals refused to eat swine flesh because they were afraid of
contracting leprosy if they consumed the animal that served them as a scavenger. 0acon is particularly
resistant to the digestive secretions, its fat markedly slowing down gastric digestion.
0ouchard found that solutions prepared from the stools of meat-eaters are twice as toxic as those
prepared from the stools of non-flesh eaters. #erter, of 5ew 8ork, observed that animals are killed
*uickly by solutions from the stools of carnivorous animals, but do not die of similar solutions prepared
from stools of herbivorous animals.
It is *uite evident that the greater toxicity of decomposed flesh foods would give rise to more severe
types of diseases, should the putrefaction occur in the stomach and intestine, where absorption can
occur. his perhaps accounts for the fre*uent development of cancer and other serious pathologies in
meat eaters.
In his Presidential Address before 3ection ' of the 0ritish Association, '<'=, Prof. 1owland #opkins
pointed out in connection with certain important proteid reactions, that the carnivore behaves
differently to the herbivore, the latter showing greater powers of synthesis and defense. As regards
purity, stability and reliability, plant substances offer to man proteins and carbohydrates that are
superior to those derived from flesh foods. It is known that in fruit and nut eating natives wounds heal
much more rapidly than they do in flesh-eating $uropeans.
here is evidence to show that vegetarians and fruitarians live longer than flesh eaters. Advocates of
the flesh diet attempt to counter this evidence by pointing to the short life-span of the peoples of India.
In doing so they ignore all of the other factors of life that help to determine length of life. India is a
land of immense wealth and the home of one-fifth of the world2s population. 3he possesses natural
resources rivaling those of the >nited 3tates. 0ut these resources are undeveloped, the wealth is in the
hands of a very few, while her millions are poverty-stricken. India is ruled by foreign exploiters who
take from her a great share of what should be used to clothe, feed and house her teeming population.
5inety per cent of her people are illiterate, only thirty nine per cent of her people are well nourished
while ?@,@@@,@@@ of them are perpetually hungry. 0esides all this, India is a land of filth--sanitation is
little regarded. >nder similar conditions of filth, poverty, overcrowding, ignorance, hunger and
malnutrition meat eating $urope during the 4iddle Ages had a much shorter life span. his contrast of
meat eaters with vegetarians living under similar conditions presents a brighter picture for the
vegetarians.
he unfitness of certain classes of substances as foods is evident from the fre*uency with which
anaphylactic phenomena follow their use. he more closely these substances resemble the flesh of the
body the more unfit are they as foods. hus flesh is the worst offender, eggs are next and milk is last.
%ancer and anaphylaxis have much in common inasmuch as they are both due to protein poisoning.
Indeed, chronic latent anaphylaxis may be the long sought cancer virus.
Although cancer is a meat-eaters disease, we do occasionally hear of a vegetarian dying of cancer. In
nearly all such cases the vegetarian is descended from meat-eaters and became a vegetarian late in life.
In such cases the inherited diathesis is simply too strong to be countered by the hapha!ard food reform
so often resorted to. 4any of these "vegetarians" are really so in name only, eating fish, chicken and
other flesh "non-meats" regularly.
he man or woman who becomes a hapha!ard or a partial vegetarian and then only after some serious
impairment of health has forced the change, a kind of eleventh hour repentance, will not always find
salvation.
A pretty picture of how "vegetarians" are made to have cancer is presented in Ar. 94.A.: .ouis
&esterna 3anborn2s account of cancer among the "vegetarian" Italians of 3ambucci. Incidentally, in the
course of his account, he makes it known that these "vegetarians" are pork-eaters and wine-bibbers--
habits that have persisted since the days of ancient /ome. If the foes of vegetarianism are forced to
hold up such examples of cancerous "vegetarians" in their efforts to show that vegetarians do have
cancer, they are, indeed, driven into hiding.
I agree with Ar. 7ohn /ound that the vegetarian argument, like the cause of temperance, has suffered
from its friends. Pointing out that cancer-increase synchronises with the advance of meat eating, he
says+ "Amongst the Polynesians and 4elanesians cancer is almost unknown, and these races are
practically vegetarian; in $gypt cancer is seldom or never found amongst the black races; in 3outh
Africa the 0oers and $uropeans are largely meat-eaters and suffer fre*uently from cancer, whilst the
natives who are largely vegetarians seldom so suffer."
&e have been told that the meat-eating $skimo is remarkably free from cancer and we have thought
that this is due to their usually short life--they do not live long and die before the cancer stage develops.
0ut Prof. ,ibiger, writing in the .ancet 9.ondon: April B, '<C(, says that cancer affects $skimos with
approximately the same fre*uency as $uropeans.
4uch has been written about the failure of vegetarianism and it must be admitted that it has often
appeared to fail. 4ost of the criticisms of the vegetarian diet have, however, missed the real reasons for
the apparent failure.
6egetarians are prevented from adopting a real food reform because they have the erroneous idea that
the re"ection of meat is all that is re*uired to carry them into the dietetic heaven. hey do not know that
a vegetarian diet may be even more dangerous than a properly planned mixed diet. Indeed, the eating of
most vegetarians is so abominable that one cannot blame people for not following them.
he diet of the vegetarian is often inade*uate. -ne man who has had *uite a vogue in America in recent
years advocates a fat-free, starch-free, protein-free diet. #is own emaciated condition speaks well for
the evils of such an inade*uate diet. he late Arnold $hret advocated an inade*uate diet. -thers go to
the opposite extreme. hey accept the high-protein standard of "orthodox" medicine and consume large
*uantities of bread, cereals and pulses because these are rich in protein. A cereal and pulse diet with a
deficiency of green foods and fresh fruits is obviously inade*uate. It is deficient in alkaline elements--
yields an acid-ash--and vitamins.
Plant-feeders will always consume green vegetables if they can procure them and in the green parts of
plants, vitamins and minerals are present in their active state and in favorable *uantities. 3o-called
graminivorous animals become ill, breed badly, and rear fewer young, it they cannot get green leaf food
in addition to grains.
,ruits and green vegetables were abundant in the diets of the /omans, 3partans and $gyptians and are
plentiful in the diet of the #un!as. oday the average %hinaman eats five times as much green foods as
the average American. 1reen foods make up the greater part and during some seasons of the years, the
whole diet of all vegetarian animals.
Ar. Aensmore strongly condemned the old vegetarian diet, made up largely, as he said, of "soft, pulpy,
starchy food, spoon meat," not alone because of the excess of starch and protein it contained but
because they do "not involve mastication, the secretion of saliva in the mouth" is "not stimulated."
3aliva flows in response to a variety of substances--dry bread, or other dry starch, powdered dry flesh--
but not in response to fresh raw flesh, moist bread or other watery substances. 4ushes, boiled cereals,
soups, purees, etc., do not excite the flow of saliva. here is no efficient digestion of soft, sloppy meals.
he vegetarians of forty years ago consumed too much indigestible mush.
Aensmore asserted the "unwholesomeness of a bread diet and cereal diet." #e said "I do ob"ect to
bread, cereals, pulses and starchy vegtables because of the predominant proportion of starch contained
in them; but I also ob"ect to these foods; because their nitrogen is distinctly difficult of digestion, and
the cause of unnecessary waste of vitality."
&rong combinations also aid in wrecking the health of many vegetarians. $xcept for the absence of
flesh foods, their meals are often as varied and their combinations as inharmonious as those of mixed
diet eaters. %onservative cooking and correct food combining were unknown to the older vegetarians,
but there is no excuse for present-day vegetarians to repeat these older mistakes.
he pre"udice in the minds of many that vegetarianism means weakness is the outgrowth of the fact
that with rare exceptions, only invalids of some sort take up vegetarianism. hey are people whose
stock has suffered through the indulgence of their ancestors and through their own indulgence and who
now turn to vegetarianism as a means of saving their lives. hey are people who have been made
thoughtful through suffering and are only beginning to mend.
6egetarianism has not failed. -n the contrary, it is the one outstanding success of human and animal
history. 4eat eating is the great arch-type of failure as the same history testifies.