WHAT SHALL WE EAT?
“Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command
thee this day, to do them And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness.” – (DEUTERONOMY 7:11 & 15)
A Study of the Divine Laws Essential to Good Health and Long Life
THIS is an abridgement of an article that originally appeared in Destiny Magazine for February 1943. It was written in England, referring, of course to conditions in that country, but the reader will be aware of the Australian and American parallels. Enquiries are constantly received concerning the Divine laws pertaining to health and asking for a commentary on permitted foods. Accordingly, this article is reprinted for the enlightenment and guidance of those seeking to understand the dietary laws which form a vital part of the Law of the Lord.
A nation is as strong as the health of its people and we are gradually being destroyed, as the Prophet Hosea says, “for want of knowledge.” This is because we refuse to go to the source of that knowledge — the Word of God — and put its edicts into force. Hence, there are proposals for huge national expenditures on social and health services in an effort to patch up our
infirmities and defects.
One of the most extensive inquiries yet undertaken upon the nation’s health was that carried out a few years ago by the Political and Economic Planning Group (P.E.P.), forming the basis of the data set forth in Britain’s Health by S. M. Herbert. This inquiry
estimated the total economic burden of ill health at something in the order of $1,500,000,000 a year more than $30 per head of the population. And while this estimate is claimed to be no more than an approximation, it was worked out conservatively “and
is almost certainly an underestimate” in this writer’s opinion.
Yet this is only part of the story. Health is something that cannot be fully defined, while its advantages, in terms of money, are immeasurable. If we are to solve the problems this war (World War II) will bequeath to us, the problem of ill health must
clearly have much greater attention than it has received in the past. Ignorance and apathy have left us with an unhealthy peace of mind, and knowledge alone will compel us to grapple with this question of health on the soundest lines. And regarding the
want of knowledge, which the Scriptures say lies at the root of the trouble, the author of Britain’s Health remarks: “What does stand out particularly, when the figures of health are examined, is that ill health is the result of mistakes which could be avoided,
given wider knowledge and greater care.
THE FIRST LAW WAS A FOOD LAW
Such is the penalty for departing from the laws God laid down for His model state regarding food and hygiene: ill health and a shortened span of life. A return to these laws must be among the first of the reforms to be instituted. Full physical health is a fundamental necessity of a nation’s well-being and happiness. For this reason the laws of diet were among the very first to be given through Moses to the Israelites. In fact, the first law of any kind given to man was a food law (GENESIS.2:16). And in the New World Order mankind will discover that obedience to God’s laws, including those covering food and health, is the only way in which His promise of long life can be achieved.
The very first instruction of any God gave to man was one relative to diet:
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so.” (GENESIS 1:29-30)
Thus, when living creatures were first made, from man downward to the smallest insect and creeping thing, their Creator intended them all to lead an entirely vegetable existence. And we know that the huge pre-Deluge, monsters of the animal kingdom drew all the sustenance necessary for their vast bodies – as the elephant does today — from the vegetable kingdom.
Before the Deluge, which was a judgment upon the corrupted Adamic civilisation, earth conditions were entirely different from what they have been since. They were such as to produce the far richer and larger continuous sprouting fruits and grains, gathered without toil on the part of man. Then there was no rain, but growth was watered by heavy mists rising from the ground (GENESIS 2:6 – the rainbow is not mentioned till after the Deluge was over). The earth was surrounded by a watery canopy, called the “firmament,” and it was the collapse of this canopy that produced the Deluge (GENESIS 7:11). This great dome of water, high above the earth, rendered the world tropical from pole to pole, heated like a great hothouse. This is proved by fossilised plants found in now arctic regions, the modern species of which grow today only in the tropics.
The Deluge over, Noah and his family came forth to an entirely new order. The world-wide tropical condition, with its luxuriance of vegetation, such as can still be seen on a smaller scale in the tropics, had passed. The great physical upheavals that accompanied the Deluge also brought about a change in the earth’s axis, and the seasons were thereby produced. (GENESIS 8:22). From that time began the labour of sowing, digging and harvesting, and the seasonal work attached to agriculture labour aggravated by extremes of climate and temperature, heat and cold, which were then added as a curse to man’s toil. Thus, man was compelled to fight the very elements if he would exist upon earth.
WE’VE HURT THE LAND
God’s law lays it down that the land shall be normally used for six years and then allowed to rest for the whole of the seventh year:
“Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof, but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.” – (LEVITICUS 25:3-5.)
The seven-year cycle of Leviticus must be rigorously applied to our husbandry, for the operation of this law is absolutely necessary for the healthy production of our food and the well-being of our people. And to supply the Reeds of the people during the seventh year (while the land is lying fallow and until it can bring forth its fruits again), the promise is given — a promise that will again be brought into operation — that in the sixth year
“It shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.” – (LEVITICUS 25:21-22.)
The practice of man, however, particularly in more recent times, as increasing world population has thrown a correspondingly greater strain upon our agricultural resources, has been to use the land to its fullest possible extent without giving it rest. In order to do this, artificial stimulation has been employed in the endeavour to maintain fertility. But while such stimulation may succeed for a time in increasing production, yet the process impoverishes the soil, at first gradually and then rapidly.
We need not go outside of our own island [Britain] to see the inevitable consequences of this policy. Large — and before the war — growing tracts of land have had their powers of crop-production exhausted and have gone sour and useless. And in North America, where this procedure has been followed on a mass scale, it has resulted not only in huge tracts of land becoming useless, but in large quantities of valuable soil being stripped from the earth’s surface, with resultant widespread dust storms and floods.
Now, while these artificial methods of stimulating crops may result, temporarily, in increased bulk, yet they have impaired the essential nutritive qualities. A greater quantity of food has therefore to be absorbed into the human body to maintain equal nourishment. The Law of Fallow was introduced in order that the nutritive values of the crop might be restored by the normal action of nature’s agents, and to purify the soil of harmful bacilli.
Thanks, mainly, to man’s greed and desire to make money at the expense of his fellow men, we have been following precisely the opposite methods to those laid down by Almighty God in the use of His land – “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (I CORINTHIAN10:26, quoting PSALM 24:1) — and it is essential for the national well-being of ourselves and our estates to return to the Divinely-given methods and principles, which must become universal if they are to operate truly beneficially.
PERMITTED AND FORBIDDEN FOODS
Animals allowed for food must both “part the hoof and chew the cud” — that is, be of the ruminating species
(LEVITICUS 11:3). This includes the ox, sheep, goat, stag (venison), chamois and antelope. The characteristics given of permitted animals (which term is employed in the Scriptures in its widest sense to include birds, fish and creeping things) are merely the marks whereby they may be recognised from those forbidden, and are not the reasons why they are allowed, nor why they are prohibited when these are absent.
While the flesh of these animals was allowed, certain parts of a beast were prohibited. Thus, kidney, an internal organ, is definitely forbidden (LEVITICUS 3:15), for reasons fairly obvious in virtue of its function in life, and also because it has blood in it. For the same reasons, liver, and all internal organs, are also forbidden. Yet how people love liver and kidney! And it is from these forbidden things that our tasty dishes, our savoury soups and our gravies are made. On the other hand, ample demonstration has been given that appetising and varied dishes can be readily produced from ingredients, mainly vegetables, which are allowed and have been provided by the Giver of All Things.
Why, for example, should housewives continue using the abomination of lard and suet for their puddings and pastries? Suet, being from internal fat, is specifically forbidden; while lard comes from the unclean pig and is therefore doubly anathema. Instead of these impure fats, we have olive and vegetable oils available — or even margarine or butter.
All fat is prohibited: “Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat” (LEVITICUS 7:23). Some writers assert that the Scriptural prohibition applies only to internal fat (LEVITICUS 3:8-9), but on this point the prohibition in Leviticus 7 seems emphatic enough, and we can leave the reader to decide for himself. Certainly, most healthy people have
a natural antipathy to fat of any kind.
With regard to birds, many are enumerated as unclean; but the modern application of some is doubtful, names being included which are difficult to identify. Duck, goose and all sea birds, and all fowl with webbed feet are clearly prohibited food, also the plover (lapwing species LEVITICUS 11:19), including the eggs of such.
Game birds, such as pheasants, grouse, partridge and the like, are all clean birds if killed according to Leviticus 17:13, which shot birds are not.
All creeping things are unclean and “an abomination” (LEVITICUS 11:41), a definition which includes worms (often found in fruit), snails, winkles, whelks, crabs, oysters, shrimps, and all shellfish.
Fish having fins and scales (LEVITICUS 11:9), whether sea or fresh-water fish, are good for food. This includes practically all fish that ordinarily appears in a fishmonger’s shop — cod, haddock, herring, hake, halibut, plaice, pollack, smelt, whiting, salmon and trout.
THE DIETARY LAWS ARE FOR ALL TIME
Now not only were these laws among the first to be given to the Israelites, but they were proclaimed to be “a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings” (LEVITICUS 3:17) — that is, they were valid for all time, and everywhere. Yet, in spite of this very clear statement, the great majority of the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples, who are modern Israel, in order to excuse the virtual nonobservance of these laws today, will say that they were given to the ancient Israelites (or Jews, as usually stated) merely as part of their religious ritual, and do not apply to Christians now.
And to support this idea, various passages will be quoted from the New Testament as purporting to set aside the food laws of Leviticus. They are thus regarded either as obsolete or else as not applying to people living in colder climates.
The passage most frequently cited is Peter’s vision in Acts 10: 9-16, wherein he saw a sheet let down from heaven containing all manner of animals and creeping things (“every creeping thing shall be an abomination” LEVITICUS 11:41), accompanied with the command to “kill and eat.” The point is ignored however, that Peter did not kill and eat, because he knew no vision could set aside the law of the Scriptures. On the contrary, he wondered what the vision could mean, and later gives the answer himself:
“God hath shewed me that I shall not call any man common or unclean.”
In other words, the vision had nothing directly to do with the eating of meats. The food laws are here used to teach an entirely different lesson by analogy.
Another reference that may be quoted in this connection is Mark 7:15-19 (which, in the Revised Version, has the misleading translation: “This he said making all meats clean,” the words, “This he said,” being in italics as not in the original Greek). The correct translation is that given by Ferrar Fenton: “That which enters the man [food]., passes into the bowels, which eliminate all foods” — these last four words being those translated in the Revised Version: “making all meats clean,” clearly a rendering made to agree with what the translators thought our Lord should have said. It would have been better if the Authorised Version
rendering — “purging all meats” — had been retained, as this (like Ferrar Fenton’s) is the proper meaning of the Greek, although, of the two, Fenton’s is the better.
Our Lord is here rebuking the Pharisees for their lip-service to God’s commandments while making a great to-do about custom and tradition, citing their table etiquette as an instance. They made a great fuss about what they should eat or drink and the manner of their eating and drinking, but what is of far greater importance are the evil thoughts which have their seat in a man’s heart, and literally “come from within and defile the man” (Verse 23). A man may eat unwholesome food, and even poison himself, but nature will eliminate it. An evil mind, however, cannot thus be cleansed. Such, briefly, is the lesson conveyed by these verses, which have little to do with the food laws as such. Like Peter’s vision, they are used as an illustration, and certainly cannot be quoted as setting the food laws aside.
Similarly I Corinthians 10:25 has been quoted as another instance of permission to eat any food clean or unclean, allowed or prohibited under the law. This reads: “Whatsoever is sold in the shambles [market-place], that eat, asking no question for conscience sake.” Both Authorised and Revised translations imply a command on the part of Paul to eat anything sold in the public markets. The whole point is overlooked that the forbidden meats were not sold in the markets, but meats offered to idols were. Hence his warning in verse 28. Paul then goes on to say that you should, out of courtesy to your host, even if a Gentile and not an observer of the Mosaic food laws eat what he puts before you, but if warned beforehand, “This is meat offered in sacrifice to idols,” and therefore unclean, then it should not be taken.
Paul, both here and in Romans 14:13-23 (also in Colossians 2:16, another text often wrongly cited in this same aspect), is setting forth the law of charity and tolerance toward other people in respect of what is doubtful, including the attitude to be adopted regarding what another person may prefer to eat and drink.
Those who quote passages such as the foregoing, in order to find excuses for indulging in wrongly acquired tastes, lose sight of logic and common sense. In his make-up and constitution, man of the fifteenth century B.C., the approximate date of the Mosaic laws was identical with man of today; likewise the various animals used for food. If, therefore, the consumption of such, in certain cases, was harmful to man then, it is harmful still; neither have since undergone any radical change to justify any alteration in the laws of diet. On the contrary, if any change has taken place at all, it has been one of deterioration, so that the observance of these laws is thereby made more important then ever.
If, also, the foregoing (and other) passages annulled certain laws in the Old Testament, then we would have a Bible apparently contradicting itself. A fallible book would not be Divinely inspired, nor a true guide as to conduct. People have, in fact, complained that there is no really clear definition of what food is, or is not, permitted, and that there is much ambiguity. This, however, is in a great measure due to man’s erroneous understanding of the Scriptures
CONFIRMING THE LAW
“An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory” Quite apart from the probable meaning and application of certain passages in the Scriptures, practical experience has shown that the vital dietary laws apply as much today as they ever did. This has definitely been proved by the experience of those who, as far as present conditions of living will allow, have put them into practice. The experience of such people is a sufficient answer to the assertion that the dietary laws were merely Jewish ritual observances – and therefore not applicable to Christians — or that they have been abrogated in the New Testament. (The ceremonial instructions we find attached to them were, of course, for the purpose of impressing their importance upon the people and so insuring their regular observance.)
Our Lord, when referring to the laws of the Old Testament, said, “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (MATTHEW 5:18), thereby ratifying them. All things are not yet fulfilled; therefore all the Old Testament commandments, statutes and judgments remain in force.
When our Lord made the rebuke, “ye have the poor always with you” (MATTHEW 26:11), it was not only a rebuke against the wrong system under which the people of that day were living, and under which we are still living, it was also a rebuke against broken law. If we kept the law in all matters, and particularly those of diet, we would have no sick or poor in our midst.
Daniel (1:8-20) provides us with a practical instance of the result of conforming to God’s laws in the matter of living. Daniel and his three companions, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, declined to eat the king’s meat because it was not killed and prepared according to the Mosaic law. The result, we are told, was that “at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children that did eat the portion of the king’s meat.” And if they were better in bodily health, so also were they “in matters of wisdom and understanding … ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers” in the king’s realm. Mens sana in corpore sano — a sound mind in a sound body.
WRONG EATING
Study of this question from the Biblical point of view has long convinced the writer that practically all diseases, and particularly the scourge of cancer, are primarily due to breaking the food laws of the Bible and, in particular, to the consumption of forbidden meats. Millions have been spent in research in the effort to check cancer, but the results, in proportion have been almost negligible because we seek a cure instead of looking for the cause. The cause lies in a wrong diet, and particularly in the eating of forbidden meats.
If the reader will turn to Deuteronomy 28, he will find listed therein nearly every disease that afflicts modern man, every one of which is due to infraction of the health laws laid down by Moses. Consumption and cancer, for example, are specifically referred to in verses 22 and 27, the latter described as “a sore botch that cannot he healed.” And in efforts to cure cancer, once it has got a hold, even the surgeon’s knife, *and radium, have generally proved futile.
Approximately 75,000 to 80,000 people die of cancer in England and Wales every year, a number that increases annually. To state the cancer mortality in another way, in the year 1929, notable for a severe influenza epidemic -the heaviest since the worldwide scourge following the close of hostilities of the first world war in 1918— the mortality from the latter source equalled 734 per million living, but that from cancer reached a figure almost double, at 1,437 per million.
The growing mortality from cancer is a fact too well known to need statistics to prove it. Consequently it is not surprising to learn that, unless some means of really checking this deadly scourge is discovered, future generations are destined to become its wholesale victims. On the authority of Dr. Robert Bell and Mr. Ellis Barker, cancer is a self-inflicted and therefore preventable disease.
In the Established Church service we constantly repeat the words: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws …“ ending up with the inevitable conclusion: “and there is no health in us.” Yet no one stops to enquire what these laws are, against which we are constantly offending, or to discover why it is there is so little health in us. In short, these words have become a mere weekly formality to clergy and congregation alike, who continue to “follow the devices and desires of their own hearts”, at least as far as eating is concerned.
God created man a body of living cells. They need not, and would not, die, so long as the bloodstream, which is life itself (LEVITICUS 17:11, “the life of the flesh is in the blood”), is uncontaminated. Death is an enemy, brought into the world by man himself through eating forbidden food and through breaking away from the order of feeding which his Creator laid down for him (GENESIS 2:17; 3:19).
CONDITIONAL ON OBEDIENCE
The Bible makes it clear that life unending was promised to man, a gift to Adam on condition of obedience to the commands of his Maker, but when Adam sinned, he lost his lien on life and became subject to death. God, in His infinite mercy has offered mankind an avenue of escape from the results of Adam’s fall from grace, the atoning sacrifice of His Son, that all who believe in Him might have eternal life (JOHN 3:16).
In this connection-the original life of man and its future restoration, the following remarkable statement has been made by Professor Crew of Edinburgh, in the course of an address given a few years ago at Cambridge. ‘It is of the utmost importance,’– he said, ‘that we should free ourselves, one for all, of the notion that death is a necessary attribute or an inevitable consequence of life. Science, as well as religion, affirms that, in the future, mankind may, if it be so desired, not only remain permanently youthful, but may also live forever!’
Such restoration of the ideal lost in the Garden of Eden is foretold in Isaiah 65:20, a chapter on the New Age introducing the Millennium:
“There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die an hundred years old, but the sinner, being an hundred years old, shall be accursed.”
A life of great age, albeit a permanently youthful one, is thus a stepping stone to that time of immortality which John pictures for us in Revelation 21:4, a vision of the new earth and new cosmos after the Millennium, when all things are restored to their original perfection as recorded in GENESIS 1:31:
“God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
MAN BECOMES A FLESH-EATER
When God created man, He ordained him to eat the fruits of the earth — a vegetarian. Likewise all animate nature (GENESIS 1:29-30). This was the First Food Law under the Adamic Covenant.
After the Fall, the Second Food Law was given under the Noahic Covenant, wherein all living creatures were allowed to man for food, with the provision that the blood must not be eaten (GENESIS 9:34).
Permission to eat animal meat was confirmed in the Third Food Law of DEUTERONOMY 14:3-21, under the Mosaic Covenant, but of clean animals only. Today, however, owing to the unnatural and artificial methods of feeding our herds, Scripturally clean animals are virtually nonexistent.
Now Almighty God, knowing that the unbridled lusts of man and the indiscriminate eating of animal flesh using the term in the sense of Genesis 9:3 would eventually lead to the extinction of the race, gave under the Mosaic Covenant the law restricting the use of animals for food.
“These are the beasts which ye shall eat amongst all the beasts that are on the earth” (LEVITICUS 11:2).
The instructions that follow were not given, as some people argue, merely as a religious ritual for a small, and in those days insignificant, body of people. They were given through that people so that they might carry them eventually to the whole world for the benefit of the human race at large. Unfortunately, except for a very small remnant of that people — the orthodox Jews
— they not only failed to do so, but have forgotten these laws themselves. The religious aspect of these laws was to impress their importance upon the mind and to ensure their strict observance failure to do so has resulted in universal disease and a much shortened span of life.
God warned the Israelites, when giving these laws, that if they ate the flesh of prohibited animals, “the diseases of Egypt,” that is, of the unclean-eating nations, would come upon them (DEUTERONOMY 7:15). (See also DEUTERONOMY 14:21, and the eating of prohibited flesh by the “alien.”) Is it surprising, in view of the enormous mass consumption of bacon, ham, pork, rabbit, hare-all meats specially and rigorously condemned in the Scriptures — that cancer, influenza (which is merely the human form of swine fever) and other scourges take the toll they do?
The writer is convinced that if we returned to a proper diet as God has laid down, and forsook the false, the result would quickly bring about a restoration of the health of the nation. For in keeping His laws He has promised to remove all sickness from our midst as the reward thereof (EXODUS 23:25). Conversely there is His admonition of “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (NUMBERS 14:18; EXODUS 20:5). If, therefore, we return to His laws, we may well assume that, by the fourth generation, there would be no more sickness amongst us. What a vast difference that would make to our national economy!
MAN’S SPAN OF LIFE
With the extension of permitted foods under the various food laws however, penalty was exacted in the gradual reduction of the span of life. Today, owing to the almost universal inclusion in the ordinary diet of the white man of many prohibited foods, the average span of life has fallen to between thirty-five and forty years. This compares with the 120 years of Genesis 6:3, following Adam’s lapse from grace, and reduced by David’s time to seventy years. But even in the time of Moses, man still kept all his physical powers to the last, for of Moses himself it is said that, dying at the age of 120, “his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” Today, however, man’s powers begin to wane at thirty and, by forty-five or fifty, he is usually dubbed too old for further productivity.
From the purely biological aspect, man should live to the 120 years of Genesis. The proper span of life for man, as for all other mammalia, is five times the age at which full physical development is reached. In the case of man, this is attained between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-five. Other mammals, such as the horse, dog and cat, to mention only domestic animals, conform to this law. Man, due to the abuse of those very powers that are supposed to place him above the brute creation, falls lamentably to reach more than an average of one-third of his proper span. What a comment this provides upon his boasted
intelligence and civilisation!
“Modern civilisation is tending more and more to promote the survival and propagation of the unfit and to discourage fertility on the part of the fit.. Nothing could be more stupid than the fact that neither time, money, nor interest, has been spent on the question of heredity in regard to humanity, whereas any amount of energy and thought — as well as millions of money has been expended on the same subject with regard to animals and vegetable life.” — Sir Farquhar Buzzard, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford (reported in Daily Telegraph of March 15,1938).
Governments supply farmers and cattle-breeders with much valuable information gained from experience in experimental farms, but the mothers of our future citizens, whose responsibility is to bring up healthy children, are virtually left to fend for themselves. These are said to be days of enlightenment; but it is only now dawning upon our darkened minds how appalling is the number of children who are the victims of malnutrition. In many cases this state of undernourishment permanently affects
their physical and mental life.
It is not so much insufficient quantities of food that is the cause of this malnourishment as its deficient quality. Ignorance in the home is not alone responsible; commercial greed is also accountable through the marketing of over-refined and consequently devitalised foods, as well as the use of chemical additives and preservatives. As one observer has put it, bread, which was formerly called the staff of life, has become, through devitalisation, the “club of death.”
God has spoken in His Word concerning this vital subject, and the echoes of His voice may be heard today in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
SPAN OF LIFE
People often attempt to disguise the facts to which we draw attention by asserting that people are today living longer than formerly. This assertion loses most of its effectiveness by reason of certain considerations being overlooked or ignored. As a matter of fact, the average natural span of life has not lengthened appreciably in recent years.* When people speak of the apparently longer lives some attain in Britain, they are really referring to the unusually large proportion of elderly people in the population-survivors of the large families of the Victorian era. As these pass, the average age will fall, since their places are not being filled by the generation of smaller families after them.
The low physical condition of large numbers of the elderly should also be taken into account in this connection, as made clear in the following excerpt from Our Food Problem , by F. de Gros Clark and R.M. Titmuss. These writers point to the extraordinarily high proportion of people over fifty-five among the total population, coupled with a big decline in the child population. It is this great disparity in the percentages of the age groups of the population-the present abnormal predominance
of the elderly that gives rise to the erroneous idea that people are today living longer than formerly.
“Many continue to survive on a truly debased level of health and endurance.” They do not die because we are more efficient at combating death than were our fathers or our fathers’ fathers. But we have created in our minds a distinction between death and decay that is impermissible we can save lives, but we leave stamina to look after itself; and it is even possible for a country’s death-rate to decline while its average stamina-rate, if that could be measured, is as steadily decaying. This is a startling suggestion, but seems to us nevertheless a true one. Yet the remedies are close to our hand, if we would only make use of them.”
FOOD LAW REFORM
We must indeed make use of them, and the first remedy to be applied is a reform of the laws governing our food, from its source in field and farm to its sale in the shops-and even in its cooking. We should not only reform these laws, but be far more strict in carrying them out. Our meat, for example, should be just as strictly inspected as that intended for Jewish consumption, which Home Office Reports clearly indicate is by no means the case.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that, among civilised nations, Great Britain is the least careful of the food it eats. It tolerates conditions which other countries would not countenance for a moment. In this respect, Britain is a long way behind the United States, yet it has access to the best food obtainable and in the greatest abundance. Its curse is ignorance, apathy and
indifference, which breed slackness in officialdom, whose business it is to stop these conditions.
Mindful of the needs of created mankind, Almighty God has prescribed rules for living and eating. Unfortunately, in the mass, man has forgotten or ignored these directives. The consequences are only too obvious, for it is daily true that multitudes are
“digging their graves with their teeth.” If you would be whole — or “holy,” which has the same derivation — do
everything within your power to follow the dietary regulations contained in the Law of the Lord.
Courtesy: Destiny Publishers
*Britain’s Health, by S. M. Herbert, p. 185.
