To one who has closely followed the arguments for and against the various dietetic systems described in the foregoing chapters, very little reflection will suffice to reveal the only principle which is of universal application in the selection of a diet. It is obvious at the very outset to the scientific mind that there can be absolutely no justification for the claims made by each set of propagandists for the wholesale adoption of their tenets and practice, because the personal factor which is of such vital importance in all human affairs is overwhelmingly so in the question of diet.

Diet And Character

It has been held that popular taste is an infallible indicator of the best and most suitable nutritive items in a nation's bill of fare, and doubtless there is a period in the history of every country, before it has emerged from its primary isolation and come into contact with other nations, when this may be true. In such circumstances the selection of food is dictated less by choice than by necessity, and as the resources of most countries are strictly limited - and this remark applies with especial force to the most robust and vigorous peoples living in temperate climates - the choice is by no means boundless. It has been claimed that racial features have thus been moulded, and that the character of a people owes its origin in great measure to its food. But there is absolutely no authority for the statement that the character of a man is influenced by what he eats. The North American Indians, who lived to a large extent on flesh, were fierce and warlike, while the Eskimos, who live entirely on flesh, are amongst the mildest and most peaceable of men.

The Armenians are periodically massacred by a race of bloodthirsty vegetarians. The Hindus, who live on rice, are lacking in stamina, while the Japanese and Chinese, who are also stated to live on rice, are about the toughest and most enduring of mankind.

Diet does not alter the character or personality, but in large measure the personality decides the most suitable diet. The facility of communication, too, which has been such a potent factor in the history of the world during the last century, has altered in a marked degree the dietetic habits of mankind - no doubt originally dictated by climatic necessities - and has interfered in a large measure with any reliance which might have been placed on the popular taste as a guide to the most suitable food for any nation. The comparative cheapness of meat and of such beverages as tea has tended to their enormously increased consumption, and now they are at the command of even the very poorest people. It cannot be said that tea, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco have in any way increased the efficiency or contributed to the health of the community, and it is now recognised that they are not only luxuries, but in most cases unnecessary and probably always harmful.

Legislation has recognised this, and by taxing them has no doubt been of some service in limiting their consumption; and one might go so far as to say that if it could be demonstrated that meat is likewise harmful, because liable to be used in excess, it should also be taxed. Our recent experience of the diminished consumption of alcohol by reason of its increased taxation has been a valuable lesson to our legislators, and it may be hoped has opened their eyes to the philosophic fallacy of "free food" in our present stage of evolution.

Review Of Diet Reforms

It is not altogether easy to give any rational explanation of the origin of the various dietetic sects in existence - although I will presently indicate my view in the matter - and an attempt to reconcile their doctrines with any fundamental code of reasoning will apparently meet with as little success.

We shall begin our comparisons of their various advantages by considering first the three main theories dealing with the quantity and quality of the one absolutely essential alimentary principle, viz., protein.

The low-protein feeders admit flesh into their dietary, have not the slightest objection to purins in soups or xanthins in tea, coffee, etc, and lay no special stress upon the observance of other laws of health, such as the necessity for exercise, abstention from tobacco, etc. If they yield obedience to any rule of life, it is in their endeavour to see that their diet contains a sufficiency of fats and carbohydrates to satisfy the caloric necessities of the body, and in large measure to leave the protein to take care of itself.

The purin-free feeders expunge all purins and xanthins from their diet list, and are most sedulous in their insistence upon at least 50 percent. more protein, while one would be disposed to infer, from reading the published treatise of their leader, that these are the only practices essential to perfect health.

The flesh-abstainers agree with the low-protein advocates in the smallness of their protein-content, and with the purin-free feeders in their objection to purins and xanthins, but in addition to this expunge every possible toxin from their diet list, and place the greatest emphasis on the performance of every known law of health. It is the irony of fate that in their efforts to adapt vegetarian foods to the palates and digestions of their devotees they should have enlisted art to such an extent as to have deprived many of them of their most valuable qualities. They have concentrated their attention so closely on improving their digestibility by removing much of the indigestible cellulose, that they have been compelled again to call in the aid of art to supply the deficiency, and we are thus presented with the spectacle of the vegetarian eating highly concentrated artificial foods and supplementing them by adding the lost cellulose in the form of blocks of agar-agar. It may be said with much truth that a lack of cellulose is the prevailing defect of the food of civilised mankind, and is responsible for most of the chronic constipation so rampant to-day, but a system claiming to provide the "natural" diet of man should surely be free from this defect. It will always be found that any disturbance in the balance of a diet, even if it does not interfere with nutrition, is liable to upset the natural rhythmic action of the digestive organs and so disorder the secretions or in some other way induce defective functioning.