Relation of Diet to Health and Morals
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the taste and nutritious to the system. Of these our benevolent heavenly
Father says we may freely eat. Fruits, grains, and vegetables, prepared
in a simple way, free from spice and grease of all kinds, make, with
milk or cream, the most healthful diet. They impart nourishment to
the body and give a power of endurance and vigor of intellect that are
not produced by a stimulating diet.
Evils of Meat Eating
Those who use flesh meats freely do not always have an unclouded
brain and an active intellect, because the use of the flesh of animals
tends to cause a grossness of body and to benumb the finer sensibilities
of the mind. The liability to disease is increased by flesh eating. We
do not hesitate to say that meat is not essential to the maintenance of
health and strength.
Those who subsist largely upon meat cannot avoid sometimes
eating flesh which is more or less diseased. In many cases the process
of fitting animals for market produces an unhealthy condition. Shut
away from light and pure air, inhaling the atmosphere of filthy stables,
the entire body soon becomes contaminated with foul matter; and
when such flesh is received into the human body it corrupts the blood,
and disease is produced. If the person already has impure blood, this
unhealthful condition will be greatly aggravated. But few can be made
to believe that it is the meat they have eaten which has poisoned their
blood and caused their suffering. Many die of diseases wholly due to
meat eating, when the real cause is scarcely suspected by themselves
or others. Some do not immediately feel its effects, but this is no
evidence that it does not hurt them. It may be doing its work surely
upon the system, yet for the time being the victim may realize nothing
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of it.
Pork, although one of the most common articles of diet, is one
of the most injurious. God did not prohibit the Hebrew from eating
swine’s flesh merely to show His authority, but because it is not a
proper article of food for man. God never created the swine to be eaten
under any circumstances. It is impossible for the flesh of any living
creature to be healthful when filth is its natural element, and when it
feeds upon every detestable thing.