Omnivore

“ But as the Food of most Animals is Earth, very variously changed and modified by vegetable or animal Vessels, or by both, and some of it is made wholsome, some poisonous; so that if this doubtful Food should be committed to the Intestines, without Examination, as the pure unaltered Earth is to Roots, there would, in all Probability, be very few Animals living in the World, except there be any that feed on Earth at first Hand only, as Plants do. ”

“ A facetious, philosophical, friend of mine, lately amused me with some remarks, on the nature and properties of different kinds of food. "We know," said he, "that one herb produces this effect, and another that; that different species and varieties of plants have different virtues; and, why may we not infer that the same rule extends to animated nature; that our fish, flesh, and fowl, not only serve as nutriment, but that each kind possesses peculiar and individual properties." ”

“ Every animal by natural selection and the nature of its environment is structurally adapted for the special kind of food which serves for its nourishment, such adaptation being determined by the nature of its teeth, the length and complexity of the digestive canal, the character of the climate of its habitat, and the particular constitution of the animal. Man, by the structure of his teeth and digestive organs, the latter standing midway in length and complexity between the plant-eating animals and the carnivora, is specially adapted for a mixed diet. ”

“ This might entirely support a cow and calf during the summer; all the work done by these animals, as well as all the work which can be done on the beef which they put on, is due to the activity of the grasses on that acre. Moreover it is not only these large animals that are supported, but every mouse, every bird, every insect, and every worm which lives on that piece of ground, derives all its energy from the activity of the plants thereon.
All work which we do with our brains or muscles involves the consumption of food which has been formed by plants under the warm rays of the sun. ”

“ Our forefathers, down to the seventeenth century, or thereabouts, all imagined, in perfectly good faith, that certain vegetable and animal forms gave birth, in the process of their decomposition, to insect life. Thus, if you put a piece of meat in the sun, and allowed it to putrefy, they conceived that the grubs which soon began to appear were the result of the action of a power of spontaneous generation which the meat contained. And they could give you receipts for making various animal and vegetable preparations which would produce particular kinds of animals. ”

“ The flesh and the blood of other animals of all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants, putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the juices of one species of animal. ”

“ It is true that man and many other animals eat [262] fleshy foods and depend upon them for partial sustenance, but the ultimate source of all animal food is plant life, since meat-producing animals live upon plant growth.
Plants get their food from the air, the soil, and moisture. ”

“ The food of human beings, except infants, should be derived directly and wholly from the Plant Kingdom—embracing an almost limitless variety of tree fruits and small fruits, nuts, grains, roots, tubers, tender leaves and stalks, saps, etc., which may be used in their natural state, or when necessary cooked and prepared in simple, wholesome ways, without the use of animal admixtures, or of mineral except perhaps salt.
No food should be used which necessitates slaughter. Even animal milk and its products, and eggs, would better be discarded ”

“ A large part of the whole animal kingdom is so constructed that sustentation requires animal food. The blood, the tissues, the whole substance of some animal structures require to be renewed by similar substances; and although life may sometimes be continued by the assimilation of vegetable substances alone, it is not [Pg 151] the life for which the animal was formed, because it is not always the life which makes the full end of its being, and realizes its best capacity for enjoyment and for the continuation of its species. ”

“ Of this we have a proof in those animals which live solely upon herbage, who, though a substance widely different from their own bodies, draw from it every thing necessary to constitute flesh and blood, and will even exceed in bulk those who feed upon animal food. In taking a more particular view of Nature we find this is not always the case. Height, for example, which is one of the attributes of form, varies in every species according to the difference of climate; as do the quantity and quality of the flesh, two other attributes of form, according to the different kinds of food. ”

“ Changes in food and feeding may thus accomplish degeneration and induce physiological backsliding of the most typical description. It is a familiar fact that the animal organism is of relatively higher nature than the plant, seeing that the animal frame can, as a rule, feed upon and build up its tissues from organic or living matter only. Animals, in other words, demand the substance of other animals or of plants, or of both combined, as a necessity of their commissariat arrangements. ”

“ Many and many a time have I been begged to explain "what would become of the animals" under a vegetarian régime, fears being sometimes expressed that they would drive mankind from off the face of the earth, at other times that they would themselves perish miserably in utter want and destitution! Many and many a time have I been reminded, not as a joke, but as a serious argument, that animals were "sent" us as food! ”

“ We do not always realize that if it were not for the green plants, there would be no animals on the earth. Green plants furnish food to animals. Even the meat-eating animals feed upon those that feed upon plants. How the plants manufacture this food and the relation they bear to animals will be discussed in later chapters. Plants furnish man with the greater part of his food in the form of grains and cereals, fruits and nuts, edible roots and leaves; they provide his domesticated animals with food ”

“ Zoologists seem sometimes to forget these primitive forms of animal life, and yet how little we know of their life-histories! "How the function of nutrition is accomplished, and the nature and condition of the organic material used as food by these minute animals is not yet determined." ”

“ The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent, because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other. ”

“ All nature supplies us with food. The three great divisions of nature are animal, vegetable, and mineral, and from each we obtain food, though most largely from the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Animal food is some part of an animal's body or some product of an animal: examples—meat or fish, milk, eggs. ”

“ True, we cannot instance the automatic performances of the vegetable as identical with the similar endowments of animal life, but still they indicate a sympathy, a harmony existing between the two organizations, and show us how closely the great principles of animal and vegetable life converge. Indeed, as they approach the common centre, the little cell that is the habitation of both, it is perhaps impossible to say, here begins animal and there vegetable life. ”

“ Man, and all domestic animals, may be supported, may even be fattened, upon vegetable food alone: vegetables, therefore, must contain all the substances which are necessary to build up the several parts of animal bodies, and to supply the waste attendant upon the performance of the [Pg 231] necessary functions of animal life. Let us consider what these substances are, and in what quantities they must be supplied to the human body. ”

“ The ourang-outang, on being domesticated, readily learns to eat animal food. But if this proves that animal to be omnivorous, then the Horse, Cow, Sheep, and others are all omnivorous, for everyone of them is easily trained to eat animal food. Horses have frequently been trained to eat animal food, [267] and Sheep have been so accustomed to it as to refuse grass. ”

“ The large majority of the species subsist chiefly on animal food, though many are omnivorous, and a few chiefly vegetable-eaters. The more typical forms live altogether on recently-killed warm-blooded animals, and their whole organization is thoroughly adapted to a predaceous mode of life. ”

“ Animals grow proportionally in all directions, while plants grow upwards and downwards from a collet only. The food of animals is organic, while that of plants is inorganic; the latter feeding entirely upon the elements of the soil and atmosphere, while the former subsist upon the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. ”

“ Animals, on the other hand, are dependent for their food-supply on organic material—that is, on either plant or animal substances; and since they cannot live by taking in each other’s washing—in other words, by eating each other—it follows that the animal world is dependent on the plant world for its continued existence. ”

“ We are carnivorous, as well as granivorous animals, having systems requiring animal, as well as vegetable food, to keep all the organs of the body in tune; and perhaps we need a greater variety than other animals. ”

“ I will now consider vegetarianism from the standpoint of true food science, or the welfare of the physical man. It will be observed that in the lesson entitled [237] "Evolution of Man," one of the first considerations taken up is the scientific Vegetarianism from standpoint of scientific living discussion of man's natural adaptation to the use of flesh foods. By natural adaptation I mean Nature's evolutionary plan of fitting the physiological organism to the food man is able to procure. ”

“ IN my introductory paper I said, "The fact that we use the digestive and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, etc., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory barbarism, to be ultimately superseded when my present subject is sufficiently understood and applied to enable us to prepare the constituents of the vegetable kingdom to be as easily assimilated as the prepared grass which we call beef and mutton." ”

“ If these principles in nourishment fail, the nourishment of the animal will be cut off; if they obtain them, then the grass-feeding animal gets the same principles in his food as those upon which the flesh-eater entirely depends. Vegetables produce in their organism the blood of all beings. So that when the flesh-eaters consume the blood and flesh of the vegetable-eaters, they take to themselves exactly and simply the vegetable principles. ”

“ Darwin and others have established the generalization that members of more than one species of plants derive their nourishment mainly from animal matter, and that these plants thrive better upon such food than upon the ordinary kinds of plant-food. ”

“ The food consists of grain, pulse, acorns, shoots, flowers, roots, tubers, bulbs, and the like, with the occasional addition of small mammals and birds, reptiles, amphibians, worms, insects, and even fish; the members of this Family, however, dislike wading, and only swim under compulsion. Feeding chiefly in the morning and evening, when they post sentinels, as Rooks do, they often stand or doze upon one leg, with the head drawn back upon the shoulders. ”

“ A remarkable fact in this connection is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some other thing that is or has been alive, or is the product of organic growth. The vegetarian may pride himself upon his higher ideals of living, but after all his fruit, vegetables, and cereals belong to the great category of living organisms, and are to a certain extent sentient and conscious, for even the plant will turn to the sun. ”

“ Here many animals whose flesh is fit for human food live and thrive, and here grows, too, a vast variety of nutritious fruits, and roots, and seeds. The physical constitution of the various races of men that inhabit these regions is modified accordingly. In the temperate climes men can live on vegetable food, or on animal food, or on both. ”

“ Therefore, the Hand which has brought the world out of chaos, has varied the nature of this food; it has proportioned this universal nourishment to the necessities and the peculiar organization of the various species which have to derive from it the power of motion and the continuance of their lives. ”

“ Since all the animals obtain their food—either directly, or in the case of the carnivorous indirectly—from the plant kingdom, it follows that we gain nothing, chemically considered, by taking our sustenance at second hand from the animals. ”

“ So then, no grass, no cows, and you would be without milk as well as without bread for breakfast.
And so it is with all the rest of our food. We live on either plants or animals. If there were no plants, there would be no animals, for animals cannot live without plants. ”