160
Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
perhaps fattening on decaying food, the entire body soon becomes
contaminated with foul matter.
Animals are often transported long distances and subjected to great
suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures and
traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded into
filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of
food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death, that human
beings may feast on the carcasses.
In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which
they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where
the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities. The fish that
are fed on the contents of the drains may pass into distant waters, and
may be caught where the water is pure and fresh. Thus when used
as food they bring disease and death on those who do not suspect the
danger.
The effect of a flesh diet may not be immediately realized; but this
is no evidence that it is not harmful. 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, while
the real cause is not suspected by themselves or by others.
[73]
The moral evils of a flesh diet are not less marked than are the
physical ills. Flesh food is injurious to health, and whatever affects the
body has a corresponding effect on the mind and the soul. Think of
the cruelty to animals that meat-eating involves, and its effect on those
who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness
with which we should regard the creatures of God!
Unpublished Testimonies, August 30, 1896 (Healthful Living, 98.5)
The weakness experienced on leaving off meat is one of the
strongest arguments that I could present as a reason why you should
discontinue its use. Those who eat meat feel stimulated after eating
this food, and they suppose that they are made stronger. After they
discontinue the use of meat, they may for a time feel weak, but when
the system is cleansed from the effect of this diet, they no longer feel
the weakness, and will cease to wish for that for which they have
pleaded as essential to strength.