1. People ate flesh food before the flood
Ellen White (1827-1915): “People who lived before the flood ate animal food and gratified their lusts….They would have flesh meats, although God had given them no permission to eat animal food” (Counsels on Diet and food, p.373, 1938; 4aSG, p. 121, 1864).
William A. Alcott (1798-1859): Cites R.D. Mussey (1780-1866): “…In all probability, animal food was not permitted, though used, before the flood; and that its use, contrary to the wish of the Creator, was probably one cause of human degeneracy” (Vegetable Diet as Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in all ages”, p. 153, 1838).
John Smith (1798-1888): “St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and other ancients, as well as moderns, maintained that all animal food was strictly forbidden before the Flood: but long before the event they had transgressed the law of God; and there can be little doubt that the flesh of the animals had, for some time previously, formed a material part of their diet” (Fruit and Farinacea the Proper Food of Man, p. 23, 1845).
2. Flesh food was permitted to shorten life span
Ellen White (1827-1915): “And he permitted that long-lived race to eat animal food to shorten their sinful lives. Soon after the flood the race began to rapidly degenerate in size and in length of years” (4a SG, p. 121, 1864).
John Smith (1798-1888): “Immediately after the Flood, animal food was permitted as an article of diet, the average period of life was reduced to four hundred years” (Fruits and Farinacea, p 34, 1845).
3. The effects of eating meat
Ellen White (1827-1915): “Flesh meat is not necessary for health or strength….Its use excites the animal propensities to increased activity and strengthen the animal passions. When the animal propensities are increased, the intellectual and moral powers are decreased. The use of the flesh of the animals tends to cause grossness of body and benumbs the fine sensibilities of the mind” (2T, p. 63, 1871).
Ellen White: “I was instructed that the use of flesh meat has tendency to animalize the nature…” (Letter B 135, 1902; TSDF, p. 76).
Ellen White: “A meat diet changes the disposition and strengthens animalism” (HL, p. 101, 1896).
L .B. Coles (1803-1856): “The objection, then, against meat-eating are threefold: intellectual, moral, and physical. Its tendency is to check intellectual activity, to depreciate moral sentiment, and to derange fluids of the body” (Philosophy of Health, p. 45, 1848).
Sylvester Graham (1794-1851): Said [in 1839], Flesh meat, “ Especially when consumed along with pure stimulants, flesh “develops and strengthens animal propensities and passions”, which makes humans more violent and strongly inclined to be fretful and contentious.” (A Candid Hominid: A History of Vegetarianism).
Sylvester Graham (1794-1856): “…flesh-meat…diminish the sensorial power of the nervous system, and then impair the pure healthy energy and activity of the sentiments, and the delicate power of the understanding to perceive moral and religious truth; then it increases the relative power of the animal propensities, or the carnal influences….” (Lectures on the Science of human Life, p. 216, 1849).
L.B. Coles (1803-1856): “Flesh eating is certainly not necessary to health or strength…If it is used, it must be used as a fancy…it excites the animal properties to increased ferocity…When we increase the proportions of our animal nature, we suppress the intellectual…the use of flesh tends to create a grossness of body and spirit” (Philosophy of Health, pp. 64-67, 1848).
Rev. Henry S. Clubb (1827-1922): “The consumption of flesh as food has like the use of tobacco and alcoholic liquors, a tendency to deaden the moral and intellectual faculties so as to blind the perceptions to the danger of the practice” (Thirty –Nine Reasons Why I Am A Vegetarian, No. 14, 1854).
The Vegetarian Kansas Emigration Company (1855): The preamble states, “WHEREAS, The practice of vegetarian diet is best adapted to the development of the highest and noblest principles of human nature, and the use of the flesh of animals for food tends to the physical, moral, and intellectual injury of mankind,…” (Kansas Historical Quarterly – The Vegetarian and Octagon, by Russell Hickman, 1933).
4. Students improve in their studies if they avoid meat in their diet
Ellen White (1827-1915): “A meat diet changes the disposition and strengthens animalism…. and eating flesh will diminish intellectual activity. Students accomplish much more in their studies if they never tasted meat” (CD, p. 389, [1938]; Testimonies in Regard to Flesh Foods, 7, 1896).
L. B. Coles (1803-1856): “It is generally admitted among the intelligent people, that eating more flesh tends to animality….If students would make easy progress, they must not indulge themselves with eating much flesh; and the less the better” (Philosophy of Health, p. 41, 1848).
5. Disease transmitted through meat-eating
Ellen White (1827-1915): “Many die of disease caused by meat eating…” (4 Spiritual Gifts, p. 147, 1864).
Ellen White: “The very animals whose flesh you eat are frequently so diseased…You take directly into your system humors, and poisons of the worst kind…” (2 T, pp. 404-405, 1873).
Ellen White: “The practice of eating largely of meat is contracting diseases of all kinds –cancers, humors, scrofula, tuberculosis, and number of other like affections” (MS 3, 1867; MH 313, 1905).
L. B. Coles (1803-1856): “The use of meat is undoubtedly a fruitful source of disease, and a means of enhancing those diseases which are unavoidable” (The Philosophy of Health, p.43, 1848).
Rev. Henry S. Clubb (1827-1922): “The risk of disease of animals, such as cancer, tuberculosis, measles, cholera, etc., being communicated is very great…” (Thirty-Nine Reasons Why I Am a Vegetarian, No.11, 1854).
Anna Kingsford (1846-1888): “It is worthy of remark that certain animals eat with impunity herbs or fruits, and yet after death set up symptoms of poisoning of violent character in the human consumer of their flesh” ( referring to Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, July 1844, in her book ‘The Perfect Way in Diet’, 1881).
Anna Kingsford (1846-1888): Anna Kingsford cites, “Dr. Decaisne affirmed in 1876, that many maladies are attributed to the abuse of flesh food, and to the deplorable habits to which parents usually accustom their children”( The Perfect Way in Diet, p. 91, 1881).
Rev. Henry S. Clubb (1827-1922): “The flesh even of healthy animals, contains…a considerable quantity of decaying material forming uric acid and plomaine poisons that cannot be taken as food without rendering the person so using it liable to most distressing diseases; hence the prevelance of rheumatism, gout, apoplexy, and those many painful symptoms that sooner or later render the life of the consumer of the flesh miserable” (Thirty-Nine Reasons Why I Am A Vegetarian, No. 9, 1854).
William A. Alcott (1798-1859): “The greater part of our bodily disease is brought on by improper food…such as scrofula, consumption, leprosy” (Vegetable Diet, p. 151, 1838).
6. Ellen White’s counsel to the health reformers
Ellen White (1827-1915): “Great efforts are being made to put down intemperance, but there is much effort that is not directed to the right point. The advocates of temperance reform should be awake to the evils resulting from the use of unwholesome food, condiments, tea, and coffee….we invite them to look more deeply into the cause of the evil they war against and to be sure that they are consistent in reform” (MH, pp. 334-335, 1905).
William A. Alcott (1798-1859): “Dr. Benjamin Rush…expressly insisted on a diet consisting simply of vegetables, and prepared without condiments; and he even encourages the disuse of salt” (Vegetable Diet: As sanctioned by Medical Men, p. 129, 1838).
William A. Alcott (1798-1859): Cites Dr. William Beaumont’s conclusions of his experiments on the Physiology of Digestion (1833): “Fat meats, butter, and oily substances of every kind, are difficult of digestion, offensive to the stomach, and tend to damage that organ and induce disease. Spices, peppers, and stimulating heating condiments of every kind, retard digestion and injures stomach, coffee and tea debilitate the stomach and impair digestion.” (Vegetable Diet as sanctioned by Medical Men, p. 169, 1838).