Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty First Annual Meeting
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Northern Nut Growers Association >> Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty First Annual Meeting
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If the American people are really suffering for lack of meat the efforts
of the Meat Board of Chicago should be regarded as a noble philanthropic
effort to correct a national fault and to avert the dire consequences of
the physical collapse which must necessarily result from a deficiency
diet. But if it is not true that the average American eats less
beefsteaks, chops, sausage, etc., than he needs, but as a matter of fact
is actually suffering notable injury because of the great consumption of
flesh foods of all sorts, then this persistent appeal to the American
stomach to render economic service as well as to do its work of
digestion, is not only a most extraordinary business anomaly but a grave
menace to the health and welfare of the American people.
The discussion of this question is germane to the objects of this
convention, since nuts are the vegetable analogues of meats, and hence
we cannot reasonably ask nor expect that more nuts will be eaten
simultaneously with an increased consumption of meat. And so I shall
undertake to give in this paper some of the reasons why we may properly
urge the people of this country to eat more nuts and less meat.
Nut meats are the real and original meat. Says Prof. Henry C. Sherman,
of Columbia University in his admirable textbook, "Food Products":
"To speak of nuts as 'meat substitute' is natural under the present
conditions and reflects the prominence which has been given to meat
and the casual way in which nuts have been regarded for some
generations. Looking at the matter in evolutionary perspective, it
might be more logical to speak of meats as 'nut substitute'
instead."
Evidently Professor Sherman believes, as do many other eminent
scientists, that nuts were a staple in the diet of primitive man.
Professor Elliot, of Oxford University, in his work, "Prehistoric Man,"
calls attention to the fact that in the early ages of his long career,
man was not a flesh eater; and the famous Professor Ami, editor of the
Ethnological History of North America, and other paleontologists, hold
that man began the use of meat only after the glacial period had
destroyed the great forests of nut trees on which he had formerly
feasted.
This, however, likewise agrees with Holy Writ. We read in Genesis 1:29:
"And God said, behold I have given you every herb yielding 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." So the real
meat grew on trees and herbs. Beefsteak and chops are poor substitutes
for the real meat, which still constitutes the food of the human race,
for with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon race and a few savage tribes,
meat forms no substantial part of the human diet. The teeming millions
of India and China, which constitute nearly half of the whole human
race, eat practically no meat. The thronging millions of Central Africa
thrive on corn, nuts, bananas, peanuts, manioc, sweet potatoes and
melons. The same is true at the present time of the natives of Mexico,
Central and South America, who find in maize, beans, potatoes and
various tropical fruits ample and satisfying sustenance.
The average American consumes 165 pounds of meat a year; the Japanese,
four pounds; the people of South China less--practically none at all.
Taking the human race as a whole, meat fills only a very insignificant
place in the world's bill of fare. Bread is the staff of life, and nuts,
the real meat, are gradually recovering their old prestige. It is only
in comparatively recent years that meat has entered so largely into the
bill of fare of civilized nations. Major J. B. Paget, a writer in the
_English Review_, calls attention to the fact that there has been in
England a deterioration in stature and otherwise since the Peninsular
War, the reason for which he thinks "is not difficult to discover. We
are the same race with the same climate and the same water. The only
difference is our diet."
According to Wellington's Quartermaster General's Report, the rations of
the men who fought the Peninsular War under the Iron Duke, was one pound
of wheat per day and a quarter of a pound of goat's flesh. But they had
to catch the goats who ran wild in the mountains and so they seldom got
that part of their ration.
According to General Sir William Butler these soldiers were "splendid
men with figures and faces like Greek gods." And he adds with regret,
"Such men have passed away."
Major Paget tells us that the Spaniards were greatly impressed by the
fine teeth of these English soldiers and especially of their wives who
accompanied them. Of their diet the Major says:
"These men before they enlisted were nearly all agricultural laborers
who were brought up on a hard, wholemeal bread, garden produce, and
apparently very little meat, as the consumption of meat was then _three
pounds per head per annum_."
It is to be remembered also that nuts form a substantial part of the
diet of that large and interesting family of vertebrates, the primates,
represented by the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan and the
gibbon, animals that do not eat meat, and that man is also a primate. No
authority has ever offered any reason why man's diet should differ from
that of other primates.
Man is not naturally a flesh-eater. Infants usually evince a dislike for
flesh when it is first given them.
Adults who use flesh foods are attracted by their flavors rather than by
the nutritive elements which they supply. As a matter of fact, more and
better food material is supplied by plant foods and at a far less cost.
Meats are notably deficient in vitamins, while nuts are rich in vitamin
B, some, as the hazel nut, containing one-fifth as much as dry yeast.
The precious vitamin A, found in only very meager amounts in meats, is
found in the almond, the pine nut, coconuts and peanuts.
The minerals, too, are found in better proportions and in larger amounts
in nuts than in meats.
The deficiencies in essential elements in a lean meat diet are so
pronounced that when Chalmers Watson fed rats on meat they became
deformed and sterile, their mammary and other sex glands degenerated and
in three generations they ran out completely. Watson attributes the
steady and very pronounced lowering of the birth-rate in Great Britain
to the increased consumption of meat in that country, which has risen in
a little more than a century from 3 pounds to more than 100 pounds per
capita, while the birth-rate has fallen until it closely approximates
the mortality rate. The same thing has happened in the older sections of
this country, especially the New England states.
According to Newburgh, of the University of Michigan, the large
consumption of meat in this country may be responsible for the high
death rate from Bright's disease, which is mounting higher every year.
And the same is true of diseases of the heart and blood vessels, which
now claim more lives annually than any other cause. He finds that when
rabbits are fed meat meal mixed with flour in bread, they soon become
diseased through changes in the bloodvessels and die of old age before
they are a year old.
Hindhede, of Copenhagen, a physiologist of world-wide renown, and food
commissioner for Denmark, in a notable paper read before the Race
Betterment Conference at Battle Creek, January, 1928, remarked as
follows:
"One notices the terrible death toll in America due to Bright's
disease. I can no longer doubt that the high meat diet ruins the
kidneys, especially in view of Dr. Newburgh's experiments, proving
as they do that we may, with mathematical certainty, produce
Bright's disease even in rats by placing them on a high meat diet.
"I feared that you might doubt my statistics, and might consider me
merely another 'crank,' so I placed my figures before Dr.
Sundwall, Professor of Hygiene of the University of Michigan, and
asked him to check their correctness. Dr. Sundwall and Dr. Newburgh
recalculated the data, and authorized the publication."
Hindhede found the number of deaths per 100,000 from six
causes--alcoholism, apoplexy, disorders of digestion, cirrhosis or
hardening of the liver, nephritis (Bright's disease), and diabetes--to
be in this country 255 and in Denmark on a low meat diet, 112. He
calculates that the adoption in this country of the Danish diet, which
would eliminate more than half our meats, would save the lives of not
less than 200,000 of our citizens annually. And yet there are vested
interests which continually clamor for the increased consumption of
meats. Fortunately the American people are becoming enlightened on the
subject of diet and are using less meat and more green vegetables, with
less bread and cereal breakfast foods and more milk and potatoes.
Nutrition researches are daily teaching us new lessons in dietetics,
some of which are of commanding importance. One of the most significant
of these is the necessity for taking account of the nature of the ash
left by a foodstuff in the body. There are basic or alkali-ash foods and
acid-ash foods. Foods of the latter class when freely used cause
acidosis. Meats are high up in the list of acid-ash foods. It is for
this reason that such animals as the lion and flesh-eating men have
little endurance. The American team made a poor showing at the last
International Olympic meet, in the writer's opinion because of their
excessive meat-eating. According to Roosevelt, a vegetarian horse, with
a heavy man on his back (Teddy), was able to run down a lion in a mile
and a half.
Thousands of short-winded, asthmatic people who are tired all the time
and take cold at every change of the wind and think they are overworked
because they find it so hard to work, are victims of acidosis from a
heavy meat diet. If such persons will eliminate meat from their diet and
add a pint of milk or buttermilk, they will experience an immediate
physical uplift which, in some cases, will seem almost incredible.
Meat contains poisons, the natural wastes of the body. By its use, the
labor of the kidneys is more than doubled.
Besides, fresh meats are always swarming with bacteria, and not the
harmless sort that are found in buttermilk but the pernicious germs
which have their headquarters in the colons of animals. Meats always
become infected with these filthy colon germs in the process of
slaughtering and the longer it is kept the more numerous the colon germs
become, for they multiply amazingly fast, and this is the reason the
meat becomes more tender when "hung" for a long time.
I was consulted not long ago by the manager of a large popular hotel who
wanted suggestions about feeding his guests. I recommended special care
in the selection of meats and the choosing of that which had been most
recently killed.
"Oh!" said the manager, "my chef is on to that. He is very particular.
You know our hotel meat usually has a beard of green mold on it an inch
long. My chef is very careful. He never allows the beard to be more than
a quarter of an inch long."
Another hotel manager told me they often had to cut away nearly half of
the meat because it was so green and rotten.
This is not pleasant information but it is simply commonplace, every-day
fact. Sausage, hamburger steak and "game" with a high flavor, are little
if any better than carrion, and the poisons which such foods introduce
into the body must all be detoxicated by the liver and eliminated by the
kidneys, and thus they are worn out prematurely by overwork.
"As sweet as a nut," is an old bon mot which hides no such repulsive
picture. The nut, inside its germ-proof shell, is solid nutriment of the
purest sort, the very quintessence of nutrient value, sunlight in cold
storage. The nut represents food energy in its most delectable and
concentrated form.
From an economic standpoint, the nut leaves flesh foods so far behind
that they are almost out of sight.
Experiments to determine the digestibility and nutritive value of nuts
were conducted several years ago by the eminent Professor Jaffa of the
University of California. His researches conducted over many months,
using human volunteers as subjects, showed that nuts were well digested
and created no intestinal disturbances. Later experiments confirmed and
extended the observations of Professor Jaffa. These experiments,
conducted by Professor Cajori of Yale University in the Yale laboratory
and in the laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, have finally
definitely settled the question.
Says Professor Cajori, with reference to his results: "A few years ago a
rather extensive series of digestion experiments were inaugurated at
Yale University in an effort to settle the question of the
indigestibility of nuts and also to test out some of the commercial nut
products to find what effect roasting, boiling, and other processes that
nuts are subjected to had on their digestibility. Through the courtesy
of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, it was possible to follow up these
experiments with a series at Battle Creek. It is of the result of these
tests that I wish to speak."
* * * * *
"Our digestion experiments show the following results: For protein
digestion of nuts--almond 89%, pecan 84%, pine nut 89%, English walnut
83%, Brazil nut 88%, and coconut 88%."
"How, then, explain the undoubted discomfort that many people experience
after eating nuts? I believe the explanation rests on the fact that our
common American way of eating nuts is not the rational way. We would not
consider topping off a heavy meal with eggs, meat, or cereals, or eating
these in large quantities between meals without realizing that we were
exposing ourselves to possible digestive discomfort. No more, then, can
we expect to eat nuts, which are even more concentrated or "heavy" than
meats or eggs, merely as an adjunct, without occasional discomfort.
Unpleasant results from so eating does not condemn the nut as
indigestible; rather it condemns our mode of using that nut. Further, we
must recognize that a nut is a hard compact substance, and that unless
completely masticated is not readily penetrated by the digestive juices
of the alimentary canal. This was very well brought out in our
experiments with dogs. The dog bolts his food and where there were large
fragments of the nuts in the food they appear unchanged in the feces,
while if the nut was ground fine before feeding it was readily digested.
Comparisons of nut butters and nut pastes with the whole nut also
brought out this point. The completely comminuted nut butters showed
consistently higher degrees of digestion than the whole nut."
Nuts should be used as a food staple, a major element in the bill of
fare, rather than as a dessert, and special care must be taken as to
thorough mastication, which is almost equally true of apples, bananas
and numerous other fruits which possess a firm flesh.
To overcome the objection that some people are unable to masticate nuts
properly on account of defective teeth, and to insure the proper
assimilation even if not properly chewed, the writer some forty years
ago conceived the idea of converting the nuts by crushing and grinding
into a paste, in other words, chewing the nuts by machinery. The peanut
was first utilized in this way and rapidly won its way to public favor.
Now, many scores of carloads of that nut are eaten under the name of
"peanut butter."
Almonds were next used, and were found to make a delicious nut paste, or
butter, which by the addition of water and a little salt, became a most
delicious cream. In the form of almond cream or milk nothing could be
conceived in the way of nourishment which the body can more easily
appropriate and more fully utilize.
As regards the necessity for eating meat, this question was definitely
settled by the Inter-allied Scientific Food Commission which met during
the war, without doubt the most authoritative body on the subject of
food and nutrition that was ever brought together.
The question of a minimum meat ration was discussed by the Commission,
and it was decided to be unnecessary to fix a minimum meat ration,
since, in the words of the commissioners in their report, "no absolute
physiological need exists for meat, since the proteins of meat can be
replaced by other proteins, such as those contained in milk, cheese and
eggs, as well as those of vegetable origin."
Quite in line with this official action was an editorial in the _Journal
of the American Medical Association_, which states that "man's health
and strength are not dependent on the assumed superior virtues of animal
flesh as a dietary constituent."
A supreme advantage of nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free
from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut,
the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for
parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or
any other disease which may be communicated to human beings.
Speaking of his childhood diet, Professor Stephen Mizwa says: "We had
chicken, too, but I rarely tasted one unless I was sick and the chicken
was sick." The voluntary eating of sick animals may be less common in
this country than in Poland, but the eating of the flesh of diseased
animals may nevertheless be much more extensive.
Within the year 1918 there were slaughtered in the United States a
hundred million beeves, sheep, pigs and goats, one whole beast for every
man, woman and child in the United States. Of this vast multitude of
animals the Federal inspectors examined nearly two-thirds (60,000,000)
and found one and a half per cent so badly diseased that the whole or
part of the carcass was condemned. In other words, nearly a million
(900,000) carcasses were found seriously diseased. But there were
40,000,000 other beasts killed and eaten which were not inspected; and
they were without doubt much more badly diseased, a fact which was in
many cases, most likely, the reason why no inspection was made. Allowing
that three per cent of these were diseased, which is a low estimate, the
total number of diseased animals found in the 100,000,000 slaughtered
was not less than 2,000,000, or one in fifty of the total number. And
most of these were eaten by human beings either wholly or in part.
If we should abandon meat eating in favor of nuts we would not have to
worry about what our victuals died of.
By the substitution of nuts for meats all dangers associated with flesh
eating may be avoided; hence their use should be encouraged in every
practical way. National and state legislators should make liberal
appropriations for the study of the soil and climatic conditions best
suited to nut culture, and otherwise encourage this infant but most
important industry.
* * * * *
MR. BRICKER: Have any of you come in contact with a black
walnut, seemingly deformed, in which there is only one lobe in the
shell?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Deming, what is your observation of the
Stabler with one lobe?
DR. DEMING: 50% are one lobe.
MR. HERSHEY: Mr. Bixby found, I think, 60%. We don't know why
there should be nuts with one lobe.
DR. SMITH: In my observation of the Stabler, the percentage of
one lobe nuts is very small, not more than 5%.
MR. BRICKER: Also there is a large black walnut at Atalissa,
with a very thin shell. I have seen some of them, however, that were not
very well filled last year.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that a little town in Iowa?
MR. BRICKER: Yes. Below Iowa City, east of West Liberty.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Wilkinson has something interesting to tell
us about the discovery of a black walnut valued for its lumber.
MR. WILKINSON: Possibly Professor Smith knows more about that
than I do. The first I knew of it Mr. Lamb wrote that he had found an
unusual figured walnut. He had already sent scions to Dr. Morris and Mr.
Bixby, and Dr. Morris suggested he send me some. When the log came Mr.
Lamb found it unusually highly figured. He traced it to where it was
loaded. They went to the fields and chopped into the tops until they
found the tree by the figure of the wood. It had been cut two months and
the wood was entirely dry. Mr. Bixby sent me two very tiny grafts. The
tree sawed out something over 60,000 feet of veneer that sold from 16 to
18 cents per square foot; quite a large tree. It sawed out five logs and
the stump sawed out 500 feet. Several thousand dollars for the tree. I
saw several pieces of the tree last year. The most beautiful thing I
ever saw. Most highly figured log that ever came into the mill at
Chicago.
DR. ZIMMERMAN: Prof. Lake sent me scions named the Lion.
DR. DEMING: The figure is not in the scion wood.
DR. ZIMMERMAN: The scion wood I put on was quite curly.
DR. SMITH: Does the curly character show in the sap wood or the
heart?
THE PRESIDENT: You have to go away from home to know what is
going on there. It is the first I have known about that very interesting
tree. I would like to get some trees of that curly type. Mr. W. K.
Kellogg is very much interested in having us propagate that type.
DR. ZIMMERMAN: Mr. Link told me Mr. Linton had some.
MR. HARRINGTON: It seems to me very strange that the stump
didn't sprout.
MR. WILKINSON: The stump was used.
DR. DEMING: There must have been roots.
THE PRESIDENT: Sometimes it is difficult to get them to grow.
MR. WEBER: Three miles northwest of Blufftown there is a
natural hybrid between the white and chinquapin oaks. There are some
samples out on the table. We picked up some of the nuts and found them
edible. No trace of any bitterness whatever. You come out of Blufftown
on No. 30. About a half mile above the town you turn to the left and go
about a mile or more. It is at the intersection of the Erie Quarry road.
It has a wire fence around it.
DR. SMITH: How do you know it is a hybrid?
MR. WEBER: From Richard Leber. It was discovered by a man by
the name of Williamson, and he suggested that the state acquire the land
in order to preserve the tree.
DR. SMITH: It will be another source of carbo-hydrate food.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Zimmerman is a specialist on chestnut
blight, and particularly on inducing immunity.
INDUCED IMMUNITY TO CHESTNUT BLIGHT
_Dr. G. A. Zimmerman, Piketown, Pa._
Several years ago I started out to get rid of the chestnut blight. On
several occasions before this notable body I told of the successes and
failures I had encountered, still believing that I was on the right road
and insisting that an antigen would be absorbed in sufficient amount to
stimulate immunity. Science has since vindicated that assertion and men
are now injecting all sorts of chemicals, and even dyes to stain the
grain of the wood.
I have been very cautious in the past and perhaps should be more so now,
in view of the fact that only a comparatively few years have elapsed
since I began my work on plants. Still, after having used vaccines on
human beings and animals for twenty-one years, and observing that plant
life reacts to an antigen in a similar manner, I am at least entitled to
the same conclusions. This gives me an opportunity of knowing years in
advance just what to expect.
While my work is still going on as an experiment I have no hesitancy in
saying that I can and have put as much active immunity to the blight
into the chestnut in five years as nature has been able to place in
perhaps four or five thousand years by her usual method. However it is
only fair to state that such results cannot be accomplished by mere
oratory. Injections must be made and the antigen must go into the
plants, not in single doses, if you please, but by the thousands.
In recent years there has been considerable discussion relative to the
chestnut coming back. This simply means further delay. The chestnut will
come back but not before from 25 to 150 years yet. There are few roots
that will stand mutilation for that period, and the few plants that do
survive will have taken the shrub form like the chinquapin, and the nuts
will likely be as insignificant. I have plants from a tree that holds as
much immunity in the natural way as any I know, being rated at 2X, and
these plants have inherited an immunity equal to the parent, no more and
no less. I have, however, a lot of seedlings from Paragon and Champion
trees rated at from 6X to 7X. These seedlings may confidently be
expected to perform as their parents and produce many plants of equal
resistance.
I shall not discuss the antigen or its method of administration. That
has been covered rather carefully in former papers. I do want to say a
word, however, about root stock. In a blight region it is preferable to
have chestnuts on their own roots. The nearest to own-rooted plants is a
graft on their own seedlings. The Chinese and Japanese chestnut in my
hands has made a very poor root stock for the American chestnut or its
hybrids. The European chestnut is only fair, with the chinquapin
somewhat better, but having the disadvantage of being troublesome to get
from the seed. The American chestnut, or its American hybrids, is by far
the best, providing we can get one with immunity. I think the Rochester
will shortly fill this need.
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