THE MEAT FETISH. 17
applied for months to soldiers, athletes, and professors, was the reduction almost to the vanishing point of the meat ration. We all eat too much, and meat seems to act as an appetiser, making us eat more than is good for us. I have read a learned argument written by the editor of a leading medical review, in which he admits that a meatless diet will furnish all the necessary proteids, but holds that in order to obtain them we must eat a vastly larger quantity of food, containing an excess of starch, which is harmful and produces obesity. This is a fair example of an argument formed a priori in the study and without any observation of actual results; for the fact is that just the contrary is the case. It is a common experience of vegetarians that, after dropping meat from their bill of fare, they eat much less in total quantity than before, and usually their weight diminishes slightly, if they are inclined to corpulence. My own case is typical. I relish my food fully, but almost everyone I dine with remarks how little I eat; and since adopting a vegetarian diet (including eggs and dairy products) my weight has fallen off a dozen pounds, and now tips the beam at about 13 stone. Meat appears to stimulate the appetite of people who already are overloading their stomachs.
There are certain superficial objections to vegetarianism which are always brought forward and which require an answer. What will become of us if we do not kill animals? some say. The world will become crowded with them, and they conjure up a picture of cities packed with sheep or deer, or a countryside overflowing with cows. As far as the domestic animals now raised for food are concerned, it is hardly necessary to say that we deliberately breed them, and that when we cease to breed them they will cease to perpetuate themselves. As for the wild animals, such as become a nuisance will still have to be killed. Vegetarians do not pretend that men can live altogether without taking life. But it is One thing to kill only those animals that invade our property and disturb our
