VEGETARIANISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3195, 22 May 1909, Page 7

VEGETARIANISM.

One of the leading English medical journals has just made against vegetarianism what is probably the most vigorous attack that this food fad has ever received. " The great argument, of the vegetarians, says this paper is that the Oriental, ,who lives principally on vegetables, is a marvel of strength and endurance. This, it continues is a mistake. The Japanese have already come to realise it, and have reformed their army ration by adding to it food that is much richer in animal matter. Then, again, the vegetarian is much more poorly equipped to withstand the attacks of disease than is the person who has been led upon a meat diet. His-resistence to disease is greaUy diminished, because his system is lacking in albuminoid matter. As for the natives of India, whose diet is always exclusively vegetarian, those who have seen them at work know that they are able to perform far lass labour than meat eating 1 Europeans. It is also notable that kidney diseases are more frequent among the vegetarian Hindus than among the carnivorous Europeans. Th*e kidneys are lass able to excrete the refuse of a vegetarian diet than of one which has meat as its basis. Their vegetarian regimen makes the Hindu more liable to diabetes, pneumonia, tuberculosis and gangrene. AH of which the scientific editor of a French weekly sums up in the words: —"So veget'jransm is bankrupt."