Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1901 — VEGETARIAN DIET. [ARTICLE]

VEGETARIAN DIET.

Seems to Agree Well with the People of Jipan. Baelz gives the results of observations he has made on the Japanese, among whom the lower classes are almost entirely vegetarians, says the British Medical Journal. They are so, not from choice or from principle, however, but from necessity, since whenever they are able they buy a little meat or fish, and regard it as a gTeat luxury. Their main article of diet is not rice, as usually supposed, because this is too expensive, and is used mainly by the well-to-do, but barley and buckwheat and the soya* bean, which contains twice as much albumin as the best beef, and costs onequarter as much, while in addition it contains 20 per cent, of fat. The fallacy of Voit’s dictum that 120 grams of albumen daily are necessary for an adult is shown, for, as evidenced by the habits of the Japanese for generations, it is 20 to 30 per cent, too high, while it is demonstrated that a race may live on an almost exclusively vegetable diet and yet be capable of' vigorous and protracted labor. The' prevailing type of metabolism investi- j gation, in which purely arthmetical! results of analysis of the income and outgo are made, is unreliable and does not give a true idea of the -values of diets, etc., for different condition* may produce almost identical result* in figures. The disposition of the individual and l , therefore, hiscapacity for work may vary widely, and therefore the author proposes a new method of conducting such experiments, which shall include a study of this factor, »nd suggests the designation of ‘capacity balafioe” for jts results.