Substitutes For Substitutes

9. Substitutes For Substitutes

In the transition to a Hygienic diet, some people become concerned and disturbed about finding “substitutes” for animal foods—not realizing that the animal foods are the “substitutes”—a perversion of man’s natural diet. It is not necessary to search for substitutes that look, smell or taste like the animal-source foods. In fact, you can get into worse trouble by preoccupation with such substitutes.

If you eat lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumbers—if you eat bananas, grapes, oranges, melons—if you eat sunflower seeds, pecans, almonds, walnuts—you know exactly what you’re getting. These foods might not be organically grown, they might be sprayed, but they are in their natural form, they have not been adulterated, or robbed of their enzymes or nutritive value.

But if you eat manufactured foods, you really don’t know what you’re getting. All kinds of imitation foods are offered to the public—imitation cheese, non-dairy whipped topping, imitation eggs, imitation butter. If you don’t want to be “ripped off,” read the labels. Of course, much of the time the labels don’t tell the whole story. Better yet, use foods that have not been changed, and therefore need no labels.

Beatrice Trum Hunter reports that meat substitutes labeled “textured vegetable protein” are manufactured through a textile-like process, spinning soy bean fibers that can be shaped into meatlike products. The drastic alkali treatment to which they are subjected reduces the protein value, and an amino acid derivative is formed which is toxic. Levels of sodium are very high, calcium and zinc are less available, and the iron is bound up in a form of low availability to the body. The resultant product is much worse than meat. (Beatrice Trum Hunter, “The Great Nutrition Robbery,” National Health Federation Bulletin, August 1979)

If you want to use soy beans, use sprouted soy beans or Mung beans, or soak dried soy beans overnight and cook them. If you want to eat something that looks and tastes like meat, you’d almost be better off just eating meat itself, bad as it is, because the synthetic product is much worse. But the best plan would be to avoid the meat and the imitation meat products.

9.1 A “Synthetic”Calf

In 1965 the United States Department of Agriculture proudly announced a milestone: the birth of a calf from a cow reared on a totally synthetic diet—urea, corn starch, corn sugar, wood pulp, minerals and vitamins. The calf appeared normal at birth, and during the first fifteen days of its life it gained twenty-nine pounds. On the sixteenth day, it was found lying dead in its pen. An extensive postmortem examination failed to show the cause of death.