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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
VEGETARIANISM AND HEALTH
The question of the relation of food to health is being properly studied now-a-days by the leading medical authorities in the west.
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Dr. Bircher-Benner of Germany is one of those who have evidently bestowed much care and consideration on the subject. I am giving some valuable extracts here from his book, "Food Science for All" for the benefit of those interested in the question.
Dr. Bircher-Benner has discovered the fact that plants represent condensed sun-light, which is very essential for our health, and says with reference to it:
The meaning of this discovery will be at once evident to you when you hear that it is as much as to say: for human nourishment fruits, nuts, and raw salad have the highest value, foods of animal origin have the lowest value." (Food
Science for All, p. 66).
On page 58, he tells us :
"Neither with flesh, nor with poultry, nor eggs, nor caviare, not even with cow's milk, can one strengthen the weak, much less cure the sick. So many thousands have already had dearly to expiate such ignorant experiments; they have paid for them with early death or with long illness. The excessive proteids in the food are not only a bad source of energy their breaking down in assimilation grievously overloads the organs, as any chemist familiar with the facts can tell you." Again on p.
99 and the following pages he explains:
"Here one will be tempted to think that there are also other nutrition units of animal origin, such as, e.g., eggs and milk. The hen's egg also is a complete synthesis of food material for the first period of growth of a living being. But try to feed a human being on hen's egg alone, or even with a diet
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