Meat Like Nuts

As has been stated under "Chemistry of Food," the various proteid substances exist principally in nuts, peas, beans, and lentils, meats, eggs and milk. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur are the same the world over, whether we find them in animal or vegetable matter. Proteids, containing as they do the above elements, cannot differ wherever they are found, whether in the animal or the vegetable kingdom. Obviously then meat possessing less albumin and fat than nuts, peas, beans, etc., notwithstanding all that has been claimed for it, has a food value much below these vegetable products.

Nuts, peas, and in fact all the other proteids belonging to the vegetable kingdom are exactly like meat. The substance or solid portion of meat is called fibrin. The gluten of the various "grains" is identical with the fibrin of meat, while the albumen contained in vegetables is likewise practically identical with animal albumen. The principle called casein, found both in the animal and vegetable kingdom, also belongs to the same class - proteids. However foods may differ in appearance, yet they have a much greater degree of similarity than we would ordinarily suppose to be the case.

All Food Alike

The composition of the fats, albumen and salts, derived from the animal kingdom, is practically the same as that of the corresponding elements obtained from the vegetable kingdom.

It cannot be otherwise unless chemistry be at fault. Up to a certain point meat, nuts, and all the other proteid compounds are exactly alike.

But meat differs from nuts and the other proteids in one very important respect in that it contains urea, uric acid, creatin, creatinin, leukomain, etc. With every piece of meat, therefore, we must of necessity take into our system urea, uric acid, and the several other undesirable poisonous compounds which overtax our excretory organs, especially the liver and kidneys.

Meat is not alone in containing uric acid. Certain food stuffs of vegetable origin also contain uric acid, as well as xanthin (an allied compound).

Speaking generally it may be said the muscles of animals (meat) contain uric acid to the extent of from 5 to 15 grains to the pound, sweetbreads 60 grains per pound, while the liver and kidneys contain from 6 to 15 grains to the pound, and these quantities are introduced into the bodies of individuals who swallow food containing them. Tea, coffee, and cocoa also contain these uric acid or xanthin compounds, while several other vegetable substances such as peas, beans, and lentils, mushrooms, asparagus, etc., contain considerable quantities of uric acid, or xanthin compounds, which are removed but a degree from uric acid itself. It is interesting to notice that while fresh eggs do not contain uric acid as such, yet immediately the process of incubation commences, uric acid at once appears, evidently formed out of the xanthin compounds already existing in the eggs.

Meat Vs. Nuts

The great difference between meat and the other food elements furnished by the vegetable kingdom in the form of nuts, fruits, and cereals, is that the latter are in a state of absolute purity. There is no admixture of poisonous or deleterious substances, and it is exceedingly rare that any of the regular vegetable food products through decay, or otherwise, ever become dangerous for use as food, the very opposite of which is true of flesh foods. This is a matter of the highest importance, and is a point wherein nuts and other products of the vegetable kingdom are far and away superior to meats. This one thing of itself recommends nuts in preference to meats. You can readily prove the truth of this for yourself by placing a piece of beef-steak, venison, or mutton in a jar, keeping it in a warm place for a day or two; and a potato or an apple kept under similar conditions. The one will be "bad," loathesome and repulsive; the other, at the worst, will be scarcely at all offensive, possibly a little "musty." On the surface, about all the difference there would seem to be between the two processes is that of the odor. But on a little investigation it will be found that the meat is undergoing the putrefactive process. It. is known that meat begins to undergo these putrefactive changes immediately on the cessation of the life of the animal.

Decomposition of either animal or vegetable substances never occurs spontaneously, but is brought about by the agency of microscopic organisms, microbes, in a complex series of processes. In the putrefaction of meat, no less than eight kinds of organic life, differing in form, activity and chemical results, succeed each other in an order which is rarely reversed before decomposition is complete, the processes being analagous to those in the decomposition of vegetable matter - alcoholic fermentation, where the alcoholic plant is succeeded by the acetic acid plant.