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

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With the invention of fire, however, many articles of food became edible which had not been edible before. Finding that grains and roots, and certain weeds (vegetables) could be eaten, when cooked, although they were uneatable when raw, man took to cooking his food, and substituting this food for a portion of his original diet—which was probably scarce at the time. In this way, the cooking of food probably originated. It began in the far-off ages, and has been handed down to us—a legacy of barbarism, to which man rigidly clings, in the vain effort to preserve a distinction between himself and other animals—who do not cook their food—because of this fact! He prides himself that he is the only “cooking animal”! If man would only learn that it is owing to this very process of cooking that much of the suffering, and many of the ills from which mankind suffers, are due!

Many persons imagine that, if they returned to a primitive diet of this character, they would become as the savages—wild and uncivilised. They “don’t want to become like the animals,” they will say. They wish to remain “civilised,” and not return to a state of savagery and barbarism! There is no logic in this argument—indeed, no sense. Because a man lives upon fruits and nuts, it is, of course, no reason why he should return to a primitive state, mentally; indeed, there is far less evidence for this than there is that man becomes like the carnivorous animals by eating meat. There is evidence for that! But living upon fruits and nuts has no other effect than to elevate the tone and character of the body; to increase its energies and to render the mind clearer and more active. If these objectors to the fruitarian diet would only study physiology and human nature before passing any such absurd judgment upon the facts, their arguments would have more force—but then, in that case, they would not raise the arguments at all! Of course, this whole idea is conclusively proved to be erroneous by the facts in the case.