Читать книгу The Natural Food of Man. Being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts онлайн

47 страница из 58

And Dr Kellogg has pointed out[11]:

“Another property possessed in a high degree by the gastric juice of carnivorous animals is its antiseptic or germicidal quality. When exposed to the conditions of warmth and moisture, flesh, whether that of mammals birds or fish, readily decomposes or decays, giving rise to poisonous substances of the most offensive character. The gastric juice of the dog is capable of preventing this putrefactive change while the food is undergoing the process of stomach digestion. That such changes occur later, however, while the food residue is lying in the colon previous to expulsion from the body, is evidenced by the extraordinarily offensive character of the fæcal matters of this class of animals.”

In man, this secretion is very weak, comparatively speaking, and hence of small value in preventing such putrefactive changes as those mentioned above. Take any piece of meat, and expose it for some considerable period to an environment of heat and moisture, and see the result! Putrefaction soon occurs—except where the meat is “embalmed” or preserved by powerful chemicals—thus rendering it unfit for human food. But it will be seen that just such conditions prevail in the human alimentary tract as are most suitable for the speedy and deadly decomposition of the food eaten; and, in the case of flesh-foods, the resulting products are poisonous in the last degree. The gastric juice of the human stomach being so far weaker than that of the carnivorous animal, the flesh is far less completely acted upon and digested in the stomach—much more work being passed on to the intestines, in consequence. Now comes in a most important factor. The bowel of the carnivorous animal is, as we have seen, short, (three times the length of the body) when compared to the frugivora, whose alimentary tract is about twelve times the length of the body. That is, the digestive tract in man is, roughly, about four times as long as in the carnivorous animal. The result of this is that any food eaten would take, ceteris paribus, four times as long to pass through the tube in the one case as in the other. This fact alone is sufficient to condemn the use of flesh-foods in any form for frugivorous animals, since the less active antiseptic and germicidal properties of the gastric juice in these animals render unsafe the long retention of such easily decomposable substances as flesh.