Part 7

“These elements are muscle poisons and brain poisons. They cause fatigue in the animal from which they are derived and in the man who eats them.”

“An experiment by the late Victor Horsley, a London surgeon, proved that in concentrated form these poisons completely paralyze the brain cells.”

“=Do we need meat?=” asks Alfred W. McCann, noted food authority, in Physical Culture. He answers his own question by pointing to conclusive proof of Anthony Bassler and others, that the human system cannot utilize over two ounces of protein a day. Yet four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, pork or lamb chops, etc., contain all the protein the system can utilize, while cereals, milk, eggs, nuts, etc., add to the quantity. He proves by the figures of former Secretary Houston, of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and of Dr. Clyde L. King, University of Pennsylvania, that Americans consume 80 grams of protein daily, compared to 44 grams for France before the war; 14 grams for Japan; 26 for Russia; 27 for Austria. He indicts Americans as “Kidneycides,” overtaxing the kidneys by this excess protein diet, and bringing on constipation, biliousness, headache, catarrh, rheumatism, etc. He emphasizes the disadvantages of animal flesh as a source of protein, shows how vegetable sources of protein are purer and safer.

The Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, the most authoritative food body ever gathered, “=voted that meat was not a physiological necessity=.” Dr. Graham Lusk, one of the American Commissioners to that body, suggests cutting the American meat ration in half. That this is readily possible is shown by the November, 1919, Monthly Crop Report of the United States Department of Agriculture. Page 116 gives the annual average meat consumption in the United States as 179.9 pounds per capita—while best authorities agree with the statement of Alfred W. McCann that 91 pounds would be more than ample. Dr. Lusk comments on the fact that in England “The reduction of meat in the dietary produced no unfavorable results.”

Grow Pecans—The Ideal “Fat” Food

Dr. Kellogg in an address at Biloxi, October, 1917, said that the officials of the United States Department of Agriculture foresaw this condition and the increasing prices for animal flesh over twenty years ago. Since then the increase of our human population and the decrease of our animal population has so greatly exceeded their estimated figures that the question, “=Is meat imperative to complete nutrition?=” has become an imminent one.

Animal flesh supplies protein and fat. We have shown on page 10 how nuts supply the necessary fat and protein. Dr. Kellogg emphasizes the fact that nuts supply proteins of such a character that they render complete the proteins of cereals and vegetable foods.

“=This discovery is one of the highest importance since it opens a door of escape for the race from the threatened extinction by starvation at some future period, perhaps not so very remote=,” adds Dr. Kellogg.

“From an economic standpoint,” he adds, “the rearing of animals for food is a monstrous extravagance. According to Professor Henry, Dean of the Agricultural Department of the University of Wisconsin, and author of an authoritative work on foods and feeding, one hundred pounds of food fed to a steer produces less than three pounds of food in the form of flesh. In other words, we must feed the steer thirty-three pounds of corn in order to get back one pound of food in the form of steak. Such an extravagant waste can be tolerated only so long as it is possible to produce a large excess of foodstuffs. It is stated, as a matter of fact, that at the present time scarcely more than ten per cent. of the corn raised in the United States is directly consumed by human beings. A large part of it is wasted in feeding to animals. This economic loss has been long known to practical men, but it has been regarded as unavoidable since meat has been supposed to be absolutely essential as an article of food.”

“Think of it,” comments Good Health, for June, 1918, “100 pounds of perfectly good corn, in exchange for three pounds of beef, and the pound of beef when obtained is worth less as a food than a pound of the original corn. Ninety-seven pounds wasted just to satisfy a cultivated appetite, or appetite based on ignorance.”

“In view of these facts,” stated Dr. Kellogg, “it is most interesting to know that =in nuts, the most neglected of all well known food products, we find the assurance of an ample and complete food supply for all future time, even though necessity should compel the total abandonment of all our present forms of animal industry=.”

“The planting of seven or eight million acres of nut trees might supply the whole country with an abundance of fat, so that it would no longer be necessary to waste corn in feeding to pigs to obtain an inferior quality of fat,” says Good Health.

A panoramic view in our large orchards, showing a fraction of one side which is not illustrated in the other pictures. Can you, looking forward fifteen years or more, see in this a picture of your own pecan unit trees sturdy and healthy, their branches thickly covered with pecans, filling out under the summer sun? The soil is the same, the climate the same, results should be better with the finer varieties planted. ]

Twenty Times As Much Food Per Acre

Consider what it would mean if America could take its many million acres of pasturage and get from each twenty times the food value! Of course, no thinking man would claim that every acre of pasturage is available for nut raising; but where the change can be made, that gain is possible.

As Dr. Kellogg points out, it takes two acres two years to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds; an average of 150 pounds per year per acre. The same acre planted to walnut trees would, he states, produce 100 pounds per tree per year for the first twenty years; which means 4,000 pounds of nuts from an acre of 40 trees. The food value of the 150 pounds of steer cannot exceed 150,000 calories or food units; while the nut meat from the same acre equals 3,000,000 calories in food value. As Dr. Kellogg concludes, “Twenty times as much food from the nut trees as from the fattened steer, and food of the same general character, but of superior quality.”

As Dr. Kellogg previously pointed out: “=A pound of pecans is worth more in nutritive value than two pounds of pork chops, three pounds of salmon, two and a half pounds of turkey or five pounds of veal=.”

While the price of nuts is by some considered high, Dr. Kellogg directs attention to the fact that “=even at present prices the choicest varieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equivalent food values are compared=.”

Experiments by Dr. Hoobler, Detroit, and at Battle Creek Sanitarium, prove that nuts “=Possess such superior qualities as supplementary or accessory food that they are able to replace not only meats, but even eggs and milk=.”

Nut Meat The Real Meat

It must be remembered that the period in which the use of nut meat grew over fifteen times as quickly as the population increased was before the war conditions made every man consider food values more carefully. Right up till 1914, the year in which the war in Europe started, there was a steady increase each year in the production of nuts and the importation of nuts, yet prices kept soaring on all the better varieties because the greatly increasing supply failed to keep pace with the increase in demand.

Though the importation of nuts in 1910 had been valued at over thirteen million dollars, and this was nearly four times as great as in 1900—it kept increasing until in 1917 it amounted to nearly thirty-three million dollars. The importation of nuts in 1917 was nearly ten times as great as imports for 1900, yet these imports and the increasing American production failed to meet the demand.

These figures from U. S. Government reports show that any one who assumes that nuts are a holiday luxury is entirely wrong. That the public wants nut meat the year round, that the only drawback to a still greater increase in consumption is the shortage of the supply of fine nuts is proved by United States Department of Agriculture figures.

When J. C. Cooper wrote in a leading agricultural weekly:

“The demand for walnuts is growing much faster than the supply. We do not produce in America more than twenty per cent. of what we consume, and it will take fifty to a hundred years, with all the encouragement of the nut experts, to raise enough walnuts to supply the home demand.”

he stated a condition which applies with manifold greater force to the consumption of pecan nuts.

It is true that the California production of Walnuts doubled during ten years, while the importation trebled—yet in spite of this five-fold production English Walnuts constantly increased in price. Since then the price of walnuts has increased steadily every year, despite increase of supply until in November, 1918, the price per pound was 80% higher than at the same time in 1914, according to the Monthly Crop Report for December, 1918. Yet the 1918 crop was nearly twice as large as in 1914, according to Statistician H. E. Pastor, well known as an authority on western crops.

The price of pecans increased 50% on the commonest sorts between 1900 and 1910; and from the December, 1918, Monthly Crop Report we see that the 1918 price per pound on all pecans was over 38% higher than for 1917; Georgia, which has the largest percentage of paper shell pecans, showing the highest price per pound.