Fausto
HST Expert
I keep thinking of our friend fruitarian, surely his protein intake could not have been that high, but his body really looked good, solid in fact, which raises the question...do we really need that mcuh protein?
Allow me to introduce just a little research:
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Results from Experiments
Every movement we make, every thought we think, every heartthrob, involves waste and the expenditure of energy. There is a constant breaking down of our tissues; and the food ingested is the source of the material for repair. By this digestion, assimilation, and oxidation, energy is liberated for life's varied activities.
The idea has long been current that superior qualities of body and mind come from eating flesh food; but the verdict of science, after long observation and careful investigation and various experiments, is rapidly reversing this opinion. The experiments of Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, president of the American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, are convincing. His elaborate investigations, extending over long periods of time, prove that persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, occupation and constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical vigor while subsisting upon a diet containing but one half the usual amount of protein, and in which the flesh is reduced to a minimum or is entirely absent.
The subjects of the first experiment were three physicians, three professors, and a clerk men of sedentary and chiefly of mental occupation. For a period of six months they were required to reduce the amount of meat and other protein foods by one half. "Their weight remained stationary; but they improved in general health, and experienced a quite remarkable increase of mental clearness and energy."
For his next experiment, Professor Chittenden used a detachment of twenty soldiers from the hospital corps of the United States Army, "representing a great variety of types of different ages, nationality, temperament, and degrees of intelligence." For a period of six months, these men lived upon a ration in which the protein was reduced to one third the usual amount, and the flesh to five sixths of an ounce daily.
There was a slight gain in weight, "the general health was well maintained, and with suggestions of improvement that were frequently so marked as to challenge attention." "Most conspicuous, however," remarks Professor Chittenden, "was the effect observed on the muscular strength of the various subjects. . . . Without exception, we note a phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation." There was an average gain in strength for each subject of about 50 percent.
For the third experiment Professor Chittenden secured as subjects a group of eight leading athletes at Yale, all in training trim. For five months they subsisted upon a diet comprised of one half to one third of the quantity of protein food they had been in the habit of eating. "Gymnasium tests showed in every man a truly remarkable gain in strength and endurance."
Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy at Yale University, concluded a series of experiments testing the endurance of forty-nine persons, about thirty of the number being flesh abstainers. The first endurance test was that of "holding the arms horizontally." The flesh eaters averaged ten minutes. The flesh abstainers averaged forty-nine minutes. The longest time for a flesh eater was twenty-two minutes. The maximum time for a flesh abstainer was two hundred minutes. The second endurance test was that of "deep knee bending." The flesh eaters averaged 383 times, the flesh abstainers 833. Professor Fisher explains the results on the basis that "flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue poisons produced in the body."
Professor Fisher remarks: "These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne; Metchnikoff and Tisier of Paris; as well as Herter and others in the United States, seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion."
Professor Rubner, of Berlin, "one of the world's foremost students of hygiene," read a paper before the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography on the "Nutrition of the People," saying:
"It is a fact that the diet of the well-to-do is not in itself physiologically justified; it is not even healthful; for on account of the false notions of the strengthening effects of meat, too much meat is used by young and old, and this is harmful."
In the long-distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have invariably been easy victors. Upon this point, Professor von Norden, in his monumental work on "Metabolism and Practical Medicine," says:
"In Germany, at least, in these competitive races, the vegetarian is ahead of the meat eater. The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long-distance walks. The vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats."</div>
Allow me to introduce just a little research:
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Results from Experiments
Every movement we make, every thought we think, every heartthrob, involves waste and the expenditure of energy. There is a constant breaking down of our tissues; and the food ingested is the source of the material for repair. By this digestion, assimilation, and oxidation, energy is liberated for life's varied activities.
The idea has long been current that superior qualities of body and mind come from eating flesh food; but the verdict of science, after long observation and careful investigation and various experiments, is rapidly reversing this opinion. The experiments of Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, president of the American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, are convincing. His elaborate investigations, extending over long periods of time, prove that persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, occupation and constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical vigor while subsisting upon a diet containing but one half the usual amount of protein, and in which the flesh is reduced to a minimum or is entirely absent.
The subjects of the first experiment were three physicians, three professors, and a clerk men of sedentary and chiefly of mental occupation. For a period of six months they were required to reduce the amount of meat and other protein foods by one half. "Their weight remained stationary; but they improved in general health, and experienced a quite remarkable increase of mental clearness and energy."
For his next experiment, Professor Chittenden used a detachment of twenty soldiers from the hospital corps of the United States Army, "representing a great variety of types of different ages, nationality, temperament, and degrees of intelligence." For a period of six months, these men lived upon a ration in which the protein was reduced to one third the usual amount, and the flesh to five sixths of an ounce daily.
There was a slight gain in weight, "the general health was well maintained, and with suggestions of improvement that were frequently so marked as to challenge attention." "Most conspicuous, however," remarks Professor Chittenden, "was the effect observed on the muscular strength of the various subjects. . . . Without exception, we note a phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation." There was an average gain in strength for each subject of about 50 percent.
For the third experiment Professor Chittenden secured as subjects a group of eight leading athletes at Yale, all in training trim. For five months they subsisted upon a diet comprised of one half to one third of the quantity of protein food they had been in the habit of eating. "Gymnasium tests showed in every man a truly remarkable gain in strength and endurance."
Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy at Yale University, concluded a series of experiments testing the endurance of forty-nine persons, about thirty of the number being flesh abstainers. The first endurance test was that of "holding the arms horizontally." The flesh eaters averaged ten minutes. The flesh abstainers averaged forty-nine minutes. The longest time for a flesh eater was twenty-two minutes. The maximum time for a flesh abstainer was two hundred minutes. The second endurance test was that of "deep knee bending." The flesh eaters averaged 383 times, the flesh abstainers 833. Professor Fisher explains the results on the basis that "flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue poisons produced in the body."
Professor Fisher remarks: "These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne; Metchnikoff and Tisier of Paris; as well as Herter and others in the United States, seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion."
Professor Rubner, of Berlin, "one of the world's foremost students of hygiene," read a paper before the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography on the "Nutrition of the People," saying:
"It is a fact that the diet of the well-to-do is not in itself physiologically justified; it is not even healthful; for on account of the false notions of the strengthening effects of meat, too much meat is used by young and old, and this is harmful."
In the long-distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have invariably been easy victors. Upon this point, Professor von Norden, in his monumental work on "Metabolism and Practical Medicine," says:
"In Germany, at least, in these competitive races, the vegetarian is ahead of the meat eater. The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long-distance walks. The vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats."</div>
I believe the church used it during the crusades.