146
Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
full of disease. How can we, I ask, present such ones to the Lord for
healing?
Tract Regarding the Use of Flesh Foods (Eight page tract)
Many thoughts crowd into my mind, and I wish to express some
of them to you. I have been calling to mind the light God has given
me on health reform.
Have you carefully and prayerfully sought to understand the will
of God in these matters? The excuse has been that the outsiders would
have a meat diet. I know that with care and skill, dishes could be
prepared to take the place of meat, in a large degree; but if one whose
main dependence is meat performs the cooking, she can encourage
meat-eating, and the depraved appetite will frame every kind of excuse
for this kind of diet.
Meat seldom appears on my table. For weeks at a time I would not
taste it, and after my appetite had been trained, I grew stronger and
could do better work. When I came to-----I determined not to taste
meat, but I could get scarcely anything else to eat; I therefore ate a
little meat. It caused an unnatural action of the heart; I knew it was
not the right kind of food.... The use of meat while at-----awakened
the old appetite, and after I returned home, it clamored for indulgence.
Then I resolved to change entirely, and not to eat meat under any
circumstances, and thus encourage this appetite. Not a morsel of meat
or butter has been on my table since I returned. We have milk, fruit,
grains, and vegetables. For a time I lost all desire for food. Like the
children of Israel, I hankered after flesh-meats, but I firmly refused to
have meat bought or cooked. I was weak and trembling, as every one
who subsists on meat will be when deprived of the stimulus. But now
my appetite has returned. I enjoy bread and fruit. My head is generally
[67]
clear and my strength firmer. I have none of the goneness so common
with meat-eaters. I have had my lesson, and, I hope, learned it well....
Hot biscuits and flesh-meats are entirely out of harmony with
health-reform principles. If we would allow reason to take the place
of impulse and love of sensual indulgence, we should not taste of the
flesh of dead animals. What is more repulsive to the sense of smell
than a shop where flesh-meats are kept for sale? The smell of the raw
flesh is offensive to all whose senses have not been depraved by culture