{"id":457,"date":"2007-12-16T10:08:50","date_gmt":"2007-12-16T14:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/?p=457"},"modified":"2007-12-16T10:08:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-16T14:08:50","slug":"457","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/16\/457\/","title":{"rendered":"Thought for the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The first argument, as to the superior digestibility of flesh, is flatly denied by food-reformers on the plain grounds of experience, the notion that Vegetarians are in the habit of eating a greater bulk of food, in order to obtain an equal amount of nutriment, being one of those amazing superstitions which could not survive a day&#8217;s comparative study of the parties in question. My own conviction is that the average flesh-eater eats at least twice as much in bulk as the average Vegetarian; and I know that the experience of Vegetarians bears witness to a great reduction, instead of a great increase, in the amount of their diet. As for the second medical argument, the unwisdom of rejecting any of Nature&#8217;s bounties, it ignores the very existence of the ethical question, which is the Vegetarian&#8217;s chief contention; nor does this appeal to &#8220;Nature&#8221; strike one as being very &#8220;scientific,&#8221; inasmuch as (ethics apart) it might just as well justify cannibalism as flesh-eating. We can imagine how the medicine-men of some old anthropophagous tribe might deprecate the newfangled civilised notion of abstinence from human flesh, on the ground that it is foolish to refuse the benefits which &#8220;Nature&#8221; has abundantly provided.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) Excerpted from &#8220;The Humanities of Diet&#8221; (Manchester: The Vegetarian Society, 1914), serialised on The Grumpy Vegan and available in full at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.animal-rights-library.com\/index.htm\">Animal Rights Library<\/a>. Learn more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.henrysalt.co.uk\/index_old.html\">Henry Salt<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first argument, as to the superior digestibility of flesh, is flatly denied by food-reformers on the plain grounds of experience, the notion that Vegetarians are in the habit of eating a greater bulk of food, in order to obtain &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/16\/457\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinking","tag-thought-for-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grumpyvegan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}