Meats

This is the term usually applied to the flesh and various organs of such animals, poultry, and game as are used for food.

This class of foods contains representatives of all nutritive elements, but is especially characterized by as excess of albuminous matter.

But in actual nutritive value flesh foods do not exceed various other food materials.

A comparison of the food grains with beefsteak and other flesh foods, shows, in fact, that a pound of grain is equivalent in food value to two or three pounds of flesh.

At present time there is much question in the minds of many intelligent, thinking people as to the propriety of using foods of this class, and especially of their frequent use. 

Besides being in no way superior to vegetable substances, they contain elements of an excrementitious character, which cannot be utilized, and which serve only to clog and impede the vital processes, rendering the blood gross, filling the body with second-hand waste material which was working its way out of the vital domain of the animal when slaughtered.

To this waste matter, consisting of unexpelled excretions, are added those produced by the putrefactive processes which so quickly begin in flesh foods exposed to air and warmth.

That flesh foods are stimulating has been shown by many observations and experiments.

Flesh foods are also specially liable to be diseased and to communicate to the consumer the same disease. The prevalence of disease among animals used for food is known to be very great, and their transmission to man is no longer a matter of dispute. It has been abundantly proved that such diseases as the parasitic, tuberculous, erysipelatous, and foot and mouth diseases are most certainly communicable to man by infected flesh. All stall and sty fed animals are more or less diseased. Shut up in the dark, cut off from exercise, the whole fattening process is one of progressive disease. No living creature could long retain good health under such unnatural and unwholesome conditions. Add to this the exhaustion and abuse of animals before slaughtering; the suffering incident to long journeys in close cars, often without sufficient food and water; and long drives over dusty roads under a burning sun to the slaughter house, and it will be apparent to all thoughtful persons that such influences are extremely liable to produce conditions of the system that render the flesh unfit for food.

Thousands of animals are consumed each year which were slaughtered just in time to save them from dying a natural death. It is a common thing for cattle owners, as soon as an animal shows symptoms of decline, to send it to the butcher at once; and when epidemics of cattle diseases are prevalent, there can be no doubt that the meat markets are flooded with diseased flesh.

There are few ways in which we can more effectually imperil our health than in partaking freely of diseased animal food. This is no new theory. The Jews have for ages recognized this danger, and their laws require the most careful examination of all animals to be used as food, both before and after slaughtering. Their sanitary regulations demand that beast or fowl for food must be killed by bleeding through the jugular vein, and not, according to custom, by striking on the head, or in some violent way. Prior to the killing, the animal must be well rested and its respiration normal; after death the most careful dissection and examination of the various parts are made by a competent person, and no flesh is allowed to be used for food which has not been inspected and found to be perfectly sound and healthy. As a result, it is found in many of our large cities that only about one in twenty of the animals slaughtered is accepted as food for a Jew. The rejected animals are sold to the general public, who are less scrupulous about the character of their food, and who are in consequence more subject to disease and shorter-lived than are Jews.

Trichinæ, tapeworms, and various other parasites which infest the flesh of animals, are so common that there is always more or less liability to disease from these sources among consumers of flesh foods.

Meat is by no means necessary for the proper maintenance of life or vigorous health, as is proved by the fact that at least "four tenths of the human race," according to Virey, "subsist exclusively upon a vegetable diet, and as many as seven tenths are practically vegetarians." Some of the finest specimens of physical development and mental vigor are to be found among those who use very little or no animal food. Says St. Pierre, a noted French author, "The people living upon vegetable foods are of all men the handsomest, the most vigorous, the lease exposed to disease and passion; and they are those whose lives last longest."

The use of large quantities of animal food, however free from disease germs, has a tendency to develop the animal propensities to a greater or less degree, especially in the young, whose characters are unformed. Among animals we find the carnivorous the most vicious and destructive, while those which subsist upon vegetable foods are by nature gentle and tractable. There is little doubt that this law holds good among men as well as animals. If we study the character and lives of those who subsist largely upon animal food, we are apt to find them impatient, passionate, fiery in temper, and in other respects greatly under the dominion of their lower natures.

There are many other objections to the use of this class of foods—so many in fact that we believe the human race would be far healthier, better, and happier if flesh foods were wholly discarded. If, however, they are to be used at all, let them be used sparingly and prepared in the simplest and least harmful manner. Let them be cooked and served in their own juices, not soaked in butter or other oils, or disguised by the free use of pepper, mustard, catsup, and other pungent sauces. Salt also should be used only in the smallest possible quantities, as it hardens the fiber, rendering it more difficult of digestion.

We can conceive of no possible stretch of hygienic laws which admits the use of pork; so we shall give it and its products no consideration in our pages.

Such offal as calves' brains, sheep's kidneys, beef livers, and other viscera, is not fit food for any one but a scavenger. The liver and kidneys are depurating organs, and their use as food is not only unwholesome but often exceedingly poisonous.

Meat pies, scallops, sauces, fricassees, pâtés, and other fancy dishes composed of a mixture of animal foods, rich pastry, fats, strong condiments, etc., are by no means to be recommended as hygienic, and will receive no notice in these pages.

In comparative nutritive value, beef ranks first among the flesh foods. Mutton, though less nutritive, is more easily digested than beef. This is not appreciable to a healthy person, but one whose digestive powers are weak will often find that mutton taxes the stomach less than beef.

Veal or lamb is neither so nutritious nor so easily digested as beef or mutton. Flesh from different animals, and that from various parts of the same animal, varies in flavor, composition, and digestibility. The mode of life and the food of animals influence in a marked manner the quality of the meat. Turnips give a distinctly recognizable flavor to mutton. The same is true of many fragrant herbs found by cattle feeding in pastures.

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