The Story of our Health Message

The Question of Flesh Food

The next step “closer” introduced the question of flesh eating. Here Elder White pointed to man’s original diet prescribed by God Himself in Eden. The shedding of blood and the subsequent eating of meat came as a result of sin. He drew lessons from the experience of Israel in the wilderness, when God was trying to “wean man from the use of flesh meats.” He met the frequent objection based upon the Biblical statement that “every creature of God is good, if it be received with thanksgiving and prayer,” by pointing out that the word “creature” embraces all that the Lord has created, and that “He has as much created wheat and corn and beans and peas and apples and peaches as He has living animals.” “How broad will you have the expression?” he asked. The cat, the dog, the rat, or the snake, are creatures. Why should they not be eaten as food, if a blessing were said “over them”? “There must be,” he concluded, “a limitation; and God’s Word has fixed the boundary in that which is good to eat; and that is, the fruit of the tree, and the fruit of the ground.”—Ibid. SHM 164.2

By mathematical calculations based upon what farmers had told him regarding the amount of grain required to produce a pound of beef or pork, he pointed out the economic folly of a poor man, if a farmer, in reducing his grain crop by throwing away fourteen parts and retaining “one part for his hungry wife and children”; or if he purchased his food, paying fifty cents for three pounds of beef or pork, which contains as much nutrition as might be bought in one pound of “graham flour or Indian meal” which costs “but three cents.”—Ibid. SHM 164.3

Coming “still closer,” he urged the use of graham flour instead of white. Referring to the sneering remark of some who claimed that it was no more nutritious than sawdust, he asked: SHM 165.1

“Then why don’t they feed sawdust instead of bran to their cows and horses? What makes the horse so healthful and sleek, and the cow give so much good milk? You have been giving them bran. Why does the farmer go twenty miles for a load of bran or shorts? Because it is one of the best things for his stock.”—Ibid. SHM 165.2