Spalding and Magan Collection

Meat-Eating

I have never felt that it was my duty to say that no one should ever taste of meat under any circumstances. To say this when people have been educated to live on flesh to so great an extent, would be to carry matters to extremes. I have never felt that it was my duty to make sweeping assertions. What I have said, I have said under a sense of duty, but I have been guarded in my statements, because I did not want to give occasion for any one to be a conscience for another. SpM 80.4

Sister Davis has just called my attention to an article printed in the Youth's Instructor of May 31, 1894. The question asked is, Did I design to have this sentence just as it appeared in the Instructor? I am surprised to see it just as it appears—“A meat diet is not the most wholesome of diets, and yet I would take the position that meat should not be discarded by everyone.” I can not explain why this appears just as it does. Since the campmeeting at Brighton I have absolutely banished meat from my table. It is an understood thing that whether I am at home or abroad, nothing of this kind is to be used by my family, or come upon my table. I have had some representations before my mind in the night season on this subject that I feel that I have done right in banishing meat from my table. I would desire that the sentence should be modified by changing the “not”—“Yet I would not take the position that meat be wholly discarded by everyone.”—for instance, by those dying of consumption. SpM 81.1

In California there is an abundance for the table, in the shape of fresh fruit, vegetables, and grapes, and there is no necessity that meat be used. SpM 81.2

There may be consumptives who demand meat, but let them have it in their own rooms, and do not tempt the already perverted appetite of those who should not eat it. SpM 81.3

Hot biscuit and flesh meats are entirely out of harmony with health reform principles. SpM 81.4

You may think you can not work without meat; I thought so too, but I know that in His original plan, God did not provide for the flesh of dead animals to compose the diet for man. It is a gross, perverted taste that will accept such food. To think of dead flesh rotting in the stomach is revolting. SpM 81.5

Make fruit the article of diet to be placed on your table, which shall constitute the bill of fare. The juices of it mingled with bread will be highly enjoyed. Good, ripe, undecayed fruit is a thing we should thank the Lord for, because it is beneficial to health. Try it. To educate your children to subsist on a meat diet is harmful to them. It is much easier not to create an unnatural appetite than to correct it and reform the taste after it has become second nature. Our Sanitariums should never be conducted after the manner of a hotel. I am sorry it is such a difficult matter for you to deny your appetites and reform your habits of eating and drinking. A meat diet changes the disposition, and strengthens animalism. We are composed of what we eat, and eating much flesh will diminish intellectual activity. Students would accomplish much more in their studies if they never tasted meat. When the animal part of the human nature is strengthened by meat-eating, the intellectual powers diminish proportionately. SpM 81.6