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General Health

The heath institutions nowadays are on the verge of collapse. Despite ever more costly gadgetry and a host of small improvements in medicine, the majority of all ailments are still incurable. They are mainly made up of diseases of civilization; among which are heart and circulatory diseases, cancer, diabetes (mellitus), overweight, Alzheimer's, rheumatism, osteoporosis[1], allergies, neurodermitis, AIDS, asthma and many others. Even though most of these diseases are called incurable by official medicine, a great number of them can be cured or at least prevented.

Meat is a piece of live energy
- as long as it is alive.
M.L. Holzer-Sprenger

The most important step towards this goal consists in eliminating animal protein from human nutrition. There are already enough scientific studies, mainly from the U.S. and in Germany, to have proved this point - e.g. at the University of Giessen, the Cancer Research Center of Heidelberg and the Ministry of Health in Berlin, all in West Germany. They all unmask doubts concerning vegetarian nutrition as simple prejudices, easy to refute by objective research. I therefore restrict myself to one quotation only, from Prof. Dr. Claus Leitzmann and Rosemarie Schönhofer-Rempt of the Institute for Alimentation of the University of Giessen:

"[vegetarian nutrition] does not lead to any deficiency, either concerning protein nor iron[2], calcium or vitamin B12. (...) All in all, the vegetarian way of life, comprising a fair amount of exercise besides a healthy diet and the avoidance of addictive substances, must be called state-of-the-art. It would be desirable that this insight be taken seriously not only by the population, but also by all the decision-makers responsible for the health of people"[3].

More and more investigations come to the conclusion that, by his biological nature, Man is a plant eater; this makes clear the enormous heath hazards induced through human consumption of animal foodstuffs. One of the leading scientists[4] of the most comprehensive inquiry into health and nutrition[5] ever carried out in China puts it as follows: "After all, we are a race of vegetarian animals and should therefore eat a more extensive variety of plant foodstuffs, minimizing the animal side of our alimentation"[6]. This study revealed, among other things that villagers eating less fat and meat suffered significantly less from anemia (through lack of iron) and osteoporosis (a bone ailment linked with lack of calcium) than their fellow countrymen in the cities, eating more meat. In spite of these findings, even today most doctors still continue to recommend eating meat to prevent these illnesses! It is the pressures from meat and milk industries that have prevented this information from becoming more widely known.

Apart from meat, every person eats an average of 20 grams (1.5 ounces) of butchery fats which have been added to other food products (e.g. to bakeries).

If there should remain any doubts concerning natural food tendencies of mankind, try the following experiment: give an apple and a rabbit to a child. It will certainly never play with the apple and eat the rabbit. Even with adults the natural propensities towards or against certain eatables have not been lost altogether. Try working for a few weeks in a slaughterhouse and then help a farmer with his fruit harvest. Where will you feel better?

Abandonment of meat and a moderate (or no) consumption of milk and milk products would provide a good solution to the problems in health care nowadays, easy to accomplish - if a huge amount of purely economic interests of certain people did not stand aganist it (the yearly turnover of meat and meat products is over 7 billion Swiss francs, only for Switzerland!). On top of this, the aggregate value in political economy of a healthier population is evident beyond any doubt. As an example for Switzerland, the costs in political economy for osteoporosis patients is estimated at over 400 million Swiss francs per year![7]
In spite of these facts, on average 84% of the Swiss Government's agricultural subsidies are spent on assisting meat, milk and egg production, which leaves a mere 16% for plant food production[8].

Footnotes:

For this point, see the SVV flyer No. 24: How to prevent osteoporosis. The term osteoporosis designates bone atrophy to a pathological degree. It often shows up with old age; especially women, and leads to frequent fractures and deformations of the skeleton. (return)
For this point, see the SVV flyer No. 17: Iron. (return)
Excerpt from: Spiegel der Forschung No. 3-4 / 88 (return)
Colin Campbell of Cornell University (return)
Diet, Life-Style and Mortaliy in China: A Study of the Characteristics of 65 Chinese Counties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); see also: Chinas Long March to Longevity in: New Scientist, Dec. 8, 1990. (return)
Quoted in: State of the World 1992, New York Times, May 8, 1990. (return)
Knochen und Osteoporose (Bones and Osteoporosis), information booklet NFP 18, Biomedizinische Technik des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds (Biomedical Techniques, issued by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research). (return)
Average values of the years 1986 to 1988; the yearly agricultural subsidies amount to 7,2 billion Swiss francs per year. Source: Cash, August 3, 1990. (return)

General Health

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