Dr. Kellogg in an address at Biloxi, October, 1917, said that the officials of the United States Department of Agriculture foresaw this condition and the increasing prices for animal flesh over twenty years ago. Since then the increase of our human population and the decrease of our animal population has so greatly exceeded their estimated figures that the question, “Is meat imperative to complete nutrition?” has become an imminent one.

Animal flesh supplies protein and fat. We have shown on page 10 how nuts supply the necessary fat and protein. Dr. Kellogg emphasizes the fact that nuts supply proteins of such a character that they render complete the proteins of cereals and vegetable foods.

“This discovery is one of the highest importance since it opens a door of escape for the race from the threatened extinction by starvation at some future period, perhaps not so very remote,” adds Dr. Kellogg.

“From an economic standpoint,” he adds, “the rearing of animals for food is a monstrous extravagance. According to Professor Henry, Dean of the Agricultural Department of the University of Wisconsin, and author of an authoritative work on foods and feeding, one hundred pounds of food fed to a steer produces less than three pounds of food in the form of flesh. In other words, we must feed the steer thirty-three pounds of corn in order to get back one pound of food in the form of steak. Such an extravagant waste can be tolerated only so long as it is possible to produce a large excess of foodstuffs. It is stated, as a matter of fact, that at the present time scarcely more than ten per cent. of the corn raised in the United States is directly consumed by human beings. A large part of it is wasted in feeding to animals. This economic loss has been long known to practical men, but it has been regarded as unavoidable since meat has been supposed to be absolutely essential as an article of food.”

“Think of it,” comments Good Health, for June, 1918, “100 pounds of perfectly good corn, in exchange for three pounds of beef, and the pound of beef when obtained is worth less as a food than a pound of the original corn. Ninety-seven pounds wasted just to satisfy a cultivated appetite, or appetite based on ignorance.”

“In view of these facts,” stated Dr. Kellogg, “it is most interesting to know that in nuts, the most neglected of all well known food products, we find the assurance of an ample and complete food supply for all future time, even though necessity should compel the total abandonment of all our present forms of animal industry.”

“The planting of seven or eight million acres of nut trees might supply the whole country with an abundance of fat, so that it would no longer be necessary to waste corn in feeding to pigs to obtain an inferior quality of fat,” says Good Health.