Health – Defiled Meat/Diseased Meat

Daniel purposed in his heart not to eat defiled meat. Have you purposed just as resolutely in your heart that you will refrain from eating diseased, meat? If you have, you will be sure not to eat any meat at all; for with the alarming increase of disease among cattle at the present time, you can never be sure that you are eating perfectly healthy meat, even if such a thing now exists. The true Christian never strives to see how near he can get to the danger line, but rather how far he can keep away from it.

The God of Daniel inspired him to take a definite stand upon this question. Are you allowing God to inspire a similar definite purpose in your heart with reference to the diet question, or have you sometimes thought it had no bearing upon your physical or moral nature? Again and again during the last few months I have had the opportunity personally to observe the moral effect of a flesh diet upon men and women who were seeking to rise to a higher level. They would struggle to give up the habits of drink and other evils, and fall again and again; but when they came to the point where they purposed in their hearts to adopt the simple diet of Daniel, then God seemed at once to give them power to rise above the other things.

Not only in this sense, but in an economical sense, those who use flesh foods are spending their money for that which is not bread. A pound of meat contains only a quarter of a pound of food, the remainder being water; while either a pound of peas, beans, or lentils, actually contains more of the very same food elements of which meat is composed, and a large part of the remainder of the pound is made up of useful food substances. The same is practically true of grains, only they do not contain so much of the particular food element of which meat is largely composed. A pound of flesh food costs three times as much as a pound of any of these legumes, yet it contains less than a third as much food, and it has ten times more poisonous substances, which is, after all, the most expensive part; for it wears out human energy to dispose of this. Add to all this the fact that disease is likely to be lurking in the meat, and then we certainly ought to purpose in our hearts not to spend our money for that which is not bread.

The Review and Herald, November 28, 1899.