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Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
The General Conference Bulletin, April 14, 1901
We want the pervading truth of God’s word to get hold of every
one of our people before this conference is over. We want them to
understand that the flesh of animals is not the proper food for them
to eat. Such a diet cultivates the animal passions in them and in their
children. God wants us to educate our children in right habits of eating,
dressing and working.
Testimonies for the Church 2:60-62
Your family have partaken largely of flesh-meats, and the animal
propensities have been strengthened, while the intellectual have been
weakened. We are composed of what we eat, and if we subsist largely
upon the flesh of dead animals, we shall partake of their nature. You
have encouraged the grosser part of your organization, while the more
refined has been weakened. You have repeatedly said in defense of
your indulgence of meat-eating, “However injurious it may be to others,
it does not injure me, for I have used it all my life.” But you know not
how well you might have been if you had abstained from the use of
flesh-meats. As a family, you are far from being free from disease.
You have used the fat of animals which God in His word expressly
forbids: “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout
all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.” “Moreover, ye
shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any
of your dwellings. Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of
blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.”
You have flesh, but it is not good material. You are worse off for
this amount of flesh. If you should each come down to a more spare
diet, which would take from you twenty-five or thirty pounds of your
gross flesh, you would be much less liable to disease. The eating of
flesh-meats has made a poor quality of blood and flesh. Your systems
are in a state of inflammation, prepared to take on disease. You are
liable to acute attacks of disease, and to sudden death, because you
do not possess the strength of constitution to rally and resist disease.
There will come a time when the strength and health you have flattered
yourself you possessed will prove to be weakness. It is not the chief
end of man to glorify his stomach. You have animal wants to be
supplied; but because of this necessity shall man become all animal?