Appendix 3 – Lectures on the Science of Human Life

Sylvester Graham

physiological interests would be best sustained by those vegetables products which require no culinary change or cooking….. But as man migrates.... he finds it necessary to subsist on different vegetables ..... it is possible that he may also find it necessary to prepare some of those substances by fire or otherwise.”

Comment – Cooking improves, not reduces digestibility of food, however, vitamin levels reduce with cooking. In the 19th century, cooking was essential to limit infection.

Score - Unverified

Fruit picked not fully ripe should not be eaten.

Page 551-1400 – “As a general rule, however, the fruits of other climates which are gathered before they are perfectly ripe are to be avoided as unwholesome and unsafe.”

Comment – It is true that fruit ripe on the tree has better flavour and higher vitamin content, but they are not unsafe or unwholesome. Without ripening in transport it would impossible, over most of the world, to maintain a continual supply of a wide variety of fruit.

Score - Unverified

Page 443-1102 – “Is flesh-meat as conductive to longevity in man as a well-chosen and wellordered vegetable diet? - and to this question I affirm, that both physiological science and factfully and unequivocally answer, no.”

Page 442-1100 - “If you would live long, live moderately, and avoid stimulating, heating diet, such as a great deal of flesh,"

Score – Significant

Why 50 – Meat – 1 (What 55)

Meat is less nutritious than vegetable foods.

Pag-355-890 – “the various kinds of flesh-meat average about thirty-five per cent of nutritious matter, while rice, wheat, and several kinds of pulses, such as lentils, peas, and beans, afford eighty to ninety-five per cent.”

Score – Unverified

Why 51 – Meat – 2 (What 55) Meat is stimulating.

Page 359-906 – “It is now well ascertained and universally acknowledged by those who are properly informed on the subject, that flesh-meat is far more stimulating or exciting in proportion to the quality of nourishment ..... than vegetable food”

Score - Unverified

Why 52 – Meat – 3 (What 55)

Meat eaters are not as well developed, beautiful, healthy, strong, long lived, intelligent and moral. Page 363-916 - “Animal food or flesh-meat, therefore, as a general law, is not so conductive as a proper vegetable diet, to healthfulness of growth, perfectness of development, symmetry, beauty, agility, permanent strength, uniformity of health, and great longevity of the human body; nor to the

Appendix 3 – Lectures on the Science of Human Life

Sylvester Graham

acuteness and integrity of the special senses, and activity and power of the intellectual and moral faculties.”

Page 460-1156 – “flesh-meat is less friendly to intellectual vigor and activity than vegetable food.” Comment – Longevity and growth may be true, but the other characteristics such as beauty are not.

Score – Verified

Why 53 – Meat - 4 (What 55)

Meat being heating and stimulating reduce suppleness and grace.

Page 392-990 – “It is a general physiological law, that the more stimulating and heating the diet, the more rapidly the changes in relative proportion and condition of the solids-and fluids take place - the more rapidly the solids become dry, inflexible, inelastic, rigid, and unyielding, and the body loses is suppleness and activity. Hence, flesh-meat is not so conductive to suppleness, agility, grace, etc, as proper vegetable diet.”

Score – Unverified

Why 54 – Meat – 5 (What 55)

More oxygen is used to digest meat than vegetables.

Page 392-991 – “Scientific experiment has fully proven that much more of the oxygen of the atmosphere is consumed in respiration, by the same individual, during the digestion of flesh-meat, than during the digestion of proper vegetable food; and the temperature of the stomach is consistently higher in the former case than the later.”

Score - Unverified

Why 55 - Meat – 6 (What 55)

Eating meat increases the animal passions, such as licentiousness, and cruel destructive behaviour. Page 486-1229 – “flesh-meat, more than proper vegetable food, develops and strengthens the animal propensities and passions,.... rendering the man more strongly inclined to be fretful and contentious and quarrelsome and licentious and cruel and destructive, and otherwise vicious and violent and ferocious.”

Page 487-1232 – “Its (meat-flesh) permanent effects, from generation to generation, as a general fact, are to increase the relative propensities of the lower and back part of the brain, and to cause the animal to predominate over the intellectual and moral man.”

Page 479-1214 – “It is one of the most important doctrines of phrenology, that the greater the proportionate width of the head and back of the ears, and depth from the ears to the back of the cranium, - or, in other words, the more the proportion of encephalic mass lying in the lower and back part of the skull,-exceed those lying in the upper and fore part, the more the animal propensities will predominate, and the more active and powerful will be the selfish and evil passions;”

Score - Unverified

Why 56 – Meat – 7 (What 55)

Stall fed animals are not suitable for human consumption.

Page 498-1260 – “Moreover, the confinement and stalls-feeding, and all the other artificial circumstances and educated habits of domesticated animals, render their flesh less wholesome for human aliment.”

Score – Unverified

Why 57 – Meat – 8 (What 55)

Most animals when slaughtered have diseases which are passed on to humans when eaten.

Appendix 3 – Lectures on the Science of Human Life

Sylvester Graham

Page 498-1260 – “Most of the animals .... are fitted to the slaughter-house.... are actually in a state of disease when they are killed; .... then putrid and malignant and violent disease, so severely scourge the human family, and especially in civic life.”

Score - Unverified

Why 58 – Meat – 9 (What 55)

Moses specified that only animals that eat pure, mild, and unexciting food are to be eaten.

Page 498-1260 – “It is not necessary for me to specify the kinds of animals to which Moses limited the Jews. .....They consist of those species whose natural food is the most pure, mild, and unexciting, and whose flesh, when used as human aliment, is least stimulating in its nature and least febrile and putrescent in its tendency,”

Score - Unverified

Why 59 – Meat 10 (What 55) Eating meat increases thirst.

Page 593-1519 – “the more exciting the food, the more frequent and intense will be the thirst; hence they who eat animal food of any kind, and more especially flesh, alwaysin proportion to the freedom with which they use itmore thirsty and drink more than they who subsist on vegetable food, other things being equal.”

Score - Unverified

What 56 – Raw Meat

If meat is eaten it should be eaten raw.

Page 503-1276 - (To be used only when necessity dictates.) “Revolting as it may sound to refined ears, and shocking as the idea may be to civilized human beings, still the stern truth of physiology compels me to declare, that flesh recently killed and eaten raw is least injurious to any animal that subsists on it.”

Score - Unverified

Why 60 – Raw Meat (What 56)

Raw meat is slowly digested, so is less exhausting and debilitating and exciting.

Page 503-1276 – “It is less rapid in its progress through the stomach, less exhausting and debilitating to the digestive organs, less exciting to the system generally, ..... than when it has been subjected to the changes of culinary preparations”.

Score – Unverified

What 57 – Cooked Meat

If meat is cooked it should be roasted on a spit.

Page 504-1279 - (If meat is to be cooked) “The old fashioned way of roasting flesh suspended by a string before the fire, and constantly turning round till it is moderately done through, is perhaps the very best manner of cooking it.”

Comment – Any way of cooking that is liable to char the meat increases the carcinogens in the meat.

Score – Unverified

Page 499-1263 – “Another exceedingly important dietetic regulation in the institutions of Moses, was the prohibition of fat.”