We Can Live Without It! "If someone seriously wants to live a real life, his first decision should be not to kill any animal for its meat" —Tolstoy   Finally, we can move on to some really good, encouraging stuff now! Professor Chittenden, who is president of the American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, performed a six-month experimental study of twenty soldiers. These soldiers represented a wide range of ages, temperaments, nationalities and levels of intelligence. Here are his final observations: The general health was maintained, and with [indications] of improvement that were frequently so marked as to challenge attention. Most conspicuous, however&ldots;was the effect observed on the muscular strength of the various subjects....Without exception, we note a phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation Eat For Strength, pg.3.   The average gain in strength for each of the subjects was about 50 percent. What caused these profound improvements? These men lived on a diet reduced in protein by 2/3, and their flesh foods reduced to 5/6 of an ounce daily! Doesn't that sound familiar to Daniel and his friends' experience in Babylon? (See Daniel chapter 1.)   Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy at Yale University, concluded a series of endurance tests on 49 people. About 30 did not eat meat, and 19 did. The first test was to hold their arms out horizontally. The flesh eaters averaged 10 minutes, while the flesh abstainers averaged 49 minutes. The longest time for a meat eater was 22 minutes. The longest time for a vegetarian was 200 minutes, or 3.3 hours. The second endurance test was deep knee bending. The flesh eaters averaged 383 times, while the flesh abstainers averaged 833 times. Professor Fisher explains that the reason for the great discrepancy is that, Flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue poisons produced in the body. Ibid.   It is being gradually demonstrated that "...the fancied strength from meat is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion." Ibid, pg. 4.   In long-distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have invariably been easy victors. In his monumental work on the book Metabolism and Practical Medicine, Professor von Norden says, The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long-distance walks. The vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats. Ibid.   Just after the First World War, Denmark was cut off from all imports. Fearing that they would be faced with devastating food shortages, they made food rations that virtually excluded all meat consumption. The people ate the grain directly. And the astounding discovery was that by the end of the year the people had actually sustained less loss. The death rate dropped by over 34 percent from the average of the 18 previous years! The same thing happened in Norway during the Second World War. In the people in all countries where meat had been drastically cut back, or entirely out, the general health of everyone was greatly improved. But after the vegetarian diet was no longer required, the nation's death rate instantly went back up. 1   It is also worth our notice that the people who eat high amounts of animal products live shorter lives. Take the Eskimos, for example. They are one of the highest in meat consumption. They, along with other people groups who also eat similarly, have an average life expectancy of only 30 years! This has little to do with the harsh climate, as there are many who live in equally unmerciful areas but eat very little or no animal products and still have an average life expectancy of 90 to 100 years! Not only though do they live longer, but they are incredibly healthy and productive their entire lives. Retirement is unheard of in their communities. 2 "Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." —Winston Churchill What will we do? All rights reserved Copyright © 2006 By J. Lee