“Beefsteak has a certain food value,” says Good Health for January, 1919, “though far less than is generally attributed to it, but in addition it embodies toxic elements, waste products from the animal’s body, contained in the venous blood, always poisonous, which gives the beefsteak its red color.”

“These elements are muscle poisons and brain poisons. They cause fatigue in the animal from which they are derived and in the man who eats them.”

“An experiment by the late Victor Horsley, a London surgeon, proved that in concentrated form these poisons completely paralyze the brain cells.”

“Do we need meat?” asks Alfred W. McCann, noted food authority, in Physical Culture. He answers his own question by pointing to conclusive proof of Anthony Bassler and others, that the human system cannot utilize over two ounces of protein a day. Yet four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, pork or lamb chops, etc., contain all the protein the system can utilize, while cereals, milk, eggs, nuts, etc., add to the quantity. He proves by the figures of former Secretary Houston, of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and of Dr. Clyde L. King, University of Pennsylvania, that Americans consume 80 grams of protein daily, compared to 44 grams for France before the war; 14 grams for Japan; 26 for Russia; 27 for Austria. He indicts Americans as “Kidneycides,” overtaxing the kidneys by this excess protein diet, and bringing on constipation, biliousness, headache, catarrh, rheumatism, etc. He emphasizes the disadvantages of animal flesh as a source of protein, shows how vegetable sources of protein are purer and safer.

The Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, the most authoritative food body ever gathered, “voted that meat was not a physiological necessity.” Dr. Graham Lusk, one of the American Commissioners to that body, suggests cutting the American meat ration in half. That this is readily possible is shown by the November, 1919, Monthly Crop Report of the United States Department of Agriculture. Page 116 gives the annual average meat consumption in the United States as 179.9 pounds per capita—while best authorities agree with the statement of Alfred W. McCann that 91 pounds would be more than ample. Dr. Lusk comments on the fact that in England “The reduction of meat in the dietary produced no unfavorable results.”