MAN’S NATURAL DIET.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2439, 2 March 1909, Page 7

MAN’S NATURAL DIET.

PLEA FOR FRUIT AND NUTS. Animals by instinct select their food. The lion, with jaws like a, steel trap, witii saliva containing no starch digestant, with a very short intestinal tract, would be unable to use plant ioods. While such ioods have high nutritive value, they are of no value 1 to him ,as he has no means at his comw ■ inand to utilise that nutrition • and he by instinct, by nature, uses animal food. He seems to be adapted to that kind of food, and the food to him. The horse has lips prepared to take, up grasses, teeth which are excellent grmedrs of a coarse food, a very watery saliva, a long alimentary canal; and, 'on the other hand, he is not prepared to capture prey. He is fitted for the digestion of vegetable food. He' likes it and needs no instruction to teach him that this is the kind of food he requires. Alan, on the other hand, seems to have no--1 > thing to restrict him in the. selection of his foods. By his superior powers he can provide himself with any product of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom; and we suppose there is nothing which man can work up small enough to go down his throat that he does not put into his longsuffering stomach. Some have reasoned from this that man is omnivorous ; that he requires a diet consisting of a great variety of substances; that lie must have animal food as well.as ’ vegetable food in order to preserve the best of health. But the studies of comparative anatomy show that man is related to the tribe of ta_pes, monkeys, etc., not only in his general outline, but in the shape and functions of his digestive organs. The only omnivorous animal known to nature is the hog, and if man is sometimes a hog, .it is because he has made himself so, and not because he is one by nature. The monkey lives on nuts' and. fruits, and we should expect from man’s anatomy and physiology that J' these composed his original diet. That "'V he eats many other things is the result not of necessity, out of his desire to invent new means of satisfying a morbid appetite. Those who live to a great age, do so oh a simple, often a spare diet, and' with simple habits. One has only to try a fruit and nut diet to be convinced that with it he can maintain his strength Some of our most energetic workers have maintained themselves on such a diet. On adopting such a diet, one not accxistomed to it may experience, considerable inconvenience until the system has become accustomed to the change. Such inconvenience, however, is not ' the rule, and if one does have it, he should not hastily conclude that the new diet disagrees with him.