Appendix 1

Health & Medical statements found in The Ministry of Healing (M. of H.), 1905 Spiritual Gifts Volume 4 (S. G.), 1864

M. of H. page 296 - “Some foods that are adapted for use at one season or in one climate are not suited to another. So there are different foods best suited for persons in different occupations. Often food that can be used with benefit by those engaged in hard physical labor is unsuitable for persons of sedentary pursuits or intense mental application.”

Comment – If all the nutrients are supplied and there is not excess calorie or fat intake, then the diet is good. However people with high-energy needs, the physically active or those living in cold climates, can tolerate higher fat and calorie intake, than those with lower energy needs.

Score – Minor

M. of H. page 297 – “Nature's abundant supply of fruits, nuts, and grains is ample, and year by year the products of all lands are more generally distributed to all, by the increased facilities for transportation. As a result many articles of food which a few years ago were regarded as expensive luxuries are now within the reach of all as foods for everyday use. This is especially the case with dried and canned fruits.”

Page 299 – “Wherever fruit can be grown in abundance, a liberal supply should be prepared for winter, by canning or drying…..For household canning, glass, rather than tin cans,”

1870, Review and Herald, July 19 – “depend on fruit, canned or dried,”

Comment – Because a wide variety of fruit and vegetables is required all the year round for an adequate vegetarian diet, then without preservation and good transport it is very difficult to get enough variety. It was only in the 20th century that these conditions have been obtained. Thus up until the 20th century, vegetarianism was not a good health option outside the tropics, where there is a greater seasonal range of fruits and vegetables.

Score – Significant

What 32 - Flesh Foods G 55 (A 108) C 34 J 59 K 65 M. of H. pages 313 - “Flesh was never the best food;”

S. G. page 147 – “Many die of disease caused wholly by meat-eating” Page 153 – “We have no meat,…. upon our table.”

Comment – Meat contains no fibre, no phytochemicals, few antioxidants and red meat contains the wrong type of fatty acids. If meat is eaten in more than a small amount, it excludes the eating of more nutritious plant foods that are required for longevity.

Up until recently it was regarded as desirable to have flesh foods to get sufficient iron, protein and Vitamin B12. In fact it was regarded as essential for a growing child. Now the ideal diet contains no more than 100 gm of flesh foods each day (World Health Organization).

Score – Significant (1960 – Unverified)

Why 32 - Flesh Foods (What 32)

M. of H. page 313 – “People are continually eating flesh that is filled with tuberculous and cancerous germs. Tuberculosis, cancer, and other fatal diseases are thus communicated.”

S. G. page 147 – “Animals are frequently killed that have been driven quite a distance for the slaughter. Their blood has become heated…. Their blood is highly inflamed, and those who eat of their meat, eat poison. Some are not immediately affected, while others are attacked with severe pain, and die from fever, cholera, or some unknown disease.”

Appendix 1

Health & Medical statements found in The Ministry of Healing (M. of H.), 1905 Spiritual Gifts Volume 4 (S. G.), 1864

Comment – By 1900 bovine tuberculosis was understood and identified. The much more common human tuberculosis, which caused consumption, was a different organism and not found in animals. Public health authorities still battle with bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis.

Micro-organisms are not regarded as being carcinogenic. Several viruses have been found to be carcinogenic, but they are not acquired by eating animals with cancer. The evidence against meat is that it is high in saturated fat and protein which in turn are associated with heart disease, a number of cancers, diabetes and obesity. Meat lacks fibre and phytochemicals and has few anti-oxidants Note: Ellen White also mentions cruelty as a reason for not eating meat, but as this is not a health reason, it is not given a score.

M. of H. page 314 – “Animals are often transported long distances and subjected to great suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures, and traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded into filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death, that human beings may feast on the carcasses.”

S. G. Page 147 – “Some animals are inhumanly treated while being brought to the slaughter. They are literally tortured, and after they have endured many hours of extreme suffering, are butchered.”

Score – Unverified

Why 33 – Second Hand Food (What 32)

M. of H. Page 313 – “Those who eat flesh are but eating grains and vegetables at second hand;…. How much better to get it direct, by eating the food that God provided for our use!”

Comment – There is no direct health reason for not eating “secondhand food.” Plant food (food low in the food chain) produces more food from any given area of land than animal food (food higher in the food chain). Eating ruminant animals is a more efficient food source than nonruminant grass eaters. The least efficient is eating carnivorous animals. As more food can be produced from a given area, starvation is less likely with eating lower in the food chain.

Score - Verified

Why 34 – Battery Fed Animals (What 32)

M. of H. page 314 – “And some of the processes of fattening them for market produce disease. Shut away from the light and pure air, breathing the atmosphere of filthy stables, perhaps fattening on decaying food, the entire body soon becomes contaminated with foul matter.”

S. G. page 146 – “Many poor animals are left to breathe the poison of filth which is left in barns and stables. Their lungs will not long remain healthy while inhaling such impurities. Disease is conveyed to the liver, and the entire system of the animal is diseased. They are killed, and prepared for the market, and people eat freely of this poisonous animal food.”

“Their meat is poison, and has produced, in those who have eaten it, cramp, convulsions, apoplexy, and sudden death.”

Comment – It is debated whether eating the meat of animals from batteries and feed lots is less healthy than meat from open range fed animals. It is true, however, that they are more diseased and it is cruel, but it is unlikely that many diseases are passed on when eaten. If there is any risk it will be minor.

Score – Unverified

Why 35 – Faintness from Meat Eating (What 32)

M. of H. page 316 – “When the use of flesh food is discontinued, there is often a sense of weakness, a lack of vigor. Many urge this as evidence that flesh food is essential; but it is because

Appendix 1

Health & Medical statements found in The Ministry of Healing (M. of H.), 1905 Spiritual Gifts Volume 4 (S. G.), 1864

foods of this class are stimulating, because they fever the blood and excite the nerves, that they are so missed.”

S. G. page 129 – “This faintness is generally the result of meat-eating, and eating frequently, and too much. The stomach becomes weary by being kept constantly at work, disposing of food not the most healthful. Having no time for rest, the digestive organs become enfeebled, hence the sense of ‘goneness,’ and desire for frequent eating.”

Comment - There is no excitation of the nerves, fever of the blood or enfeebled digestive organs with eating meat.

Score - Unverified

Why 36 - Excitation of the Nerves (What 32)

M. of H. page 316 – “(Flesh foods) are stimulating, because they fever the blood and excite the nerves.”

S. G. page 132 – “Children who eat improperly are often feeble, pale and dwarfed, and are nervous, excitable and irritable. Everything noble is sacrificed to the appetite, and the animal passions predominate. The lives of many children from five to ten and fifteen years of age seem marked with depravity. They possess knowledge of almost every vice….. They tempt their children to indulge their appetite by placing upon their tables flesh meats and other food prepared with spices, which have a tendency to excite the animal passions.”

Comment – The meaning of fever of the blood or exciting the nerves is not defined here, but is inferred on page 320 of M. of H. (Why 38 - Eggs) as meaning that there is an increase of sexual desire. This is a major component of the reasoning in Appeal to Mothers, written at the same time as Spiritual Gifts Volume 4A. There is no truth in this statement for adults as expressed in The Ministry of Healing, but for the 5- to 15-year-olds as defined in Spiritual Gifts, it does apply. Between 1860 and 1960 mainly due to diet (meat and fat) there has been a drop of the age of onset of menstruation from 16 to 12.8 years, with a smaller change in boys. This has caused massive social changes in young people with often disastrous consequences to their moral development (Time, Oct 30, 2000).

M. of H. page 313 – “swine's flesh is unfit for food.”

Page 312 – “Only such animals could be used for food as were in good condition. No creature that

the Lord thy God, which have separated you from other people. Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing, . . . which I have separated from you as unclean. Leviticus 20:24”

S. G. page 146 – “The eating of pork” (is unsafe).

1878, March 21, Signs of the Times – “God forbade the eating of unclean beasts, not to exercise an arbitrary authority, but to preserve the life and health of his people.”

Comment - Investigative medical knowledge has not confirmed this principle. It is the author’s view that the scaled fish rule does protect against poisonous fish, which are nearly all non-scaled and crustaceans that filter. On the other hand, I consider the “chewing of the cud” rule is for efficiency. It takes a lot more grass to produce the same amount of meat in a non-ruminant than a ruminant. Thus they require bigger paddocks and more hay storage to survive winters or dry

Appendix 1

Health & Medical statements found in The Ministry of Healing (M. of H.), 1905 Spiritual Gifts Volume 4 (S. G.), 1864

seasons. If this is so then the rule is not primarily for health, except that by the end of winter there is more food available and there will be less malnutrition.

Score – Minor

Why 37 – Pigs (What 33)

M. of H. page 313 –“The tissues of the swine swarm with parasites.”

Page 314 – “Swine are scavengers, and this is the only use they were intended to serve. …. It is impossible for the flesh of any living creature to be wholesome when filth is its natural element and when it feeds upon every detestable thing.”

S. G. page 146 – “The eating of pork has produced scrofula, leprosy and cancerous humors. Porkeating is still causing the most intense suffering to the human race.”

Page 148 – “Swine have been prepared for market even while the plague was upon them, and their poisonous flesh has spread contagious diseases, and great mortality has followed.”

Comment – It is true that pig meat in Ellen White’s time had a high parasite load, but so did other animal’s meat. The risk would not have been so different from bovine tuberculosis or brucellosis to set pigs apart from other meat. Cancer is not directly caught from eating pig. The problem with pigs is the high saturated fat content. There was quite a shift in Ellen White’s thinking about diseases that are transmitted by eating pig between 1863 and 1905. This reflects the discovery of bacteria and the knowledge of how they cause specific diseases. As this Why is to set pig meat apart from other meat I do not consider it should have a further score.

Score – Unverified

M. of H. page 314 – “In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities.”

1888, letter – “In many localities even fish is unwholesome, and ought not to be used….. We seldom have any fish upon our table.”

Comment – Even though fish is not to be a main source of food, it is not as vigorously condemned as red meat. In 1960 there was no health distinction between fish and red meat.

Now it is realized that fish contains omega 3 fatty acids which helps heart disease and reduces inflammation, but it contains no fibre or phytochemicals and few anti oxidants.

Score – Significant (1960 – Minor)

Why 38 – Fish (What 34)

M. of H. page 314 – “In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities….. Thus when used as food they bring disease and death on those who do not suspect the danger.”

1888, letter – “This is especially so where fish come in contact with the sewerage of large cities…..The fish that partake of the filthy sewerage of the drains may pass into waters far distant from the sewerage, and be caught in localities where the water is pure and fresh, but because of the unwholesome drainage in which they have been feeding, they are not safe to eat.”

Comment – This is true especially with shellfish and crustaceans, but there is also a danger in eating any fish because of heavy metal contamination from sewage near large cities.

Score – Verified