The call of the United States Food Administration for meatless days, for porkless days and for every day a fat saving day, taught a lesson that America will never forget.

Food experts have for years emphasized the fact that Americans eat too much animal flesh. Physical Culture says:

“About forty per cent. of our American bill of fare is of animal origin. In England the percentage is but twenty per cent. of the total food, in Continental Europe it is less, and in Japan it is not more than five per cent. Yet the Japanese have astounded the world in every test of endurance.”

“‘The American soldier is eating 100 per cent. too much meat,’ said the world famous Dr. Wiley; while Dr. Gordon J. Saxon, director of the laboratory for cancer of the Oncologic Hospital, Philadelphia, was quoted by the Philadelphia North American as ascribing the wonderful resistive powers of the French soldiers to the fact that they lived on a meagre supply of high protein foods, like animal flesh, and were given an abundance of fats and carbohydrates. He laid stress on the excessive cost of our American diet with its high ‘animal intake,’ and this was also emphasized by the booklet, ‘War Economy in Food,’ issued by the U. S. Food Administration, which characterized animal flesh as the most expensive of staple foods in proportion to food value.”

Americans are just learning that the cause of most of their bodily ailments is the securing of fat by eating animal flesh. As the Literary Digest well says in its March 9th, 1918, issue:

“Fats are chiefly valuable as fuel for the body. But in addition to being consumed and turned to energy, fats are also readily stored away by the body, alongside muscle and bone; as a reserve in times of illness or physical exertion.

Chief among the functions of protein is its importance as a builder of bodily tissues. It is structural. The part it plays is like that of iron in a locomotive.”

Once built, the body, like the locomotive, needs only sufficient building material (protein) to rebuild wornout portions; but it needs motive material (fat) in far greater proportion. Yet high animal flesh diet, which has been the American custom, puts into the system a far greater amount of protein than is needed and too little fat. The system cannot absorb this excess protein, and sluggishness, intestinal derangements, autointoxication and flesh-borne diseases are the inevitable result.

“Fat is fuel for Fighters,” said the U. S. Food Administration. It urged civilians to avoid waste of fats because fats are necessary to those who must withstand extremes of climate, stand in water-soaked trenches and indulge in extreme physical activity.

As Good Health for March, 1918, pointed out, “Fats are fuel foods! The daily requirement is two to four ounces.”

There is a way to get this required quantity of fat without the excessive protein intake which is the inevitable result of our high animal flesh diet. By following this plan America can multiply its industrial efficiency, and benefit the physical welfare of all.