3,000,000 calories per acre from nuts; only 150,000 from beef

Consider what it would mean if America could take its many million acres of pasturage and get from each twenty times the food value! Of course, no thinking man would claim that every acre of pasturage is available for nut raising; but where the change can be made, that gain is possible.

As Dr. Kellogg points out, it takes two acres two years to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds; an average of 150 pounds per year per acre. The same acre planted to walnut trees would, he states, produce 100 pounds per tree per year for the first twenty years; which means 4,000 pounds of nuts from an acre of 40 trees. The food value of the 150 pounds of steer cannot exceed 150,000 calories or food units; while the nut meat from the same acre equals 3,000,000 calories in food value. As Dr. Kellogg concludes, “Twenty times as much food from the nut trees as from the fattened steer, and food of the same general character, but of superior quality.”

As Dr. Kellogg previously pointed out: “A pound of pecans is worth more in nutritive value than two pounds of pork chops, three pounds of salmon, two and a half pounds of turkey or five pounds of veal.”

While the price of nuts is by some considered high, Dr. Kellogg directs attention to the fact that “even at present prices the choicest varieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equivalent food values are compared.”

Experiments by Dr. Hoobler, Detroit, and at Battle Creek Sanitarium, prove that nuts “Possess such superior qualities as supplementary or accessory food that they are able to replace not only meats, but even eggs and milk.”