“There is no question, in view of our results, that people ordinarily consume much more food than there is any real physiological necessity for, and it is more than probable that this excess of food is in the long run detrimental to health, weakening rather than strengthening the body, and defeating the very objects aimed at.... One-half of the 118 grams of proteid food called for daily, is quite sufficient to meet all the physiological needs of the body, certainly under the ordinary conditions of life; and with most individuals, especially persons not living an active outdoor life, even a smaller amount will suffice.”[19] [19] “Physiological Economy in Nutrition,” pp. 274-275. The figures and calculations throughout his works, however, show that the proteid intake may be reduced to fully one-third of that said to be necessary in standard physiologies, with nothing but increased health and strength. In summing up this question of the necessity of meat-eating, one important fact must not be lost sight of, which, in a sense, may be said to settle the argument in favour of the vegetarian dietary without further additional evidence of any kind. It is this: That the bodies of all animals are built from vegetable foods, and consequently, when we eat those animals, we merely eat the vegetable foods, upon which _they_ have subsisted, at second hand! We appropriate or obtain the _same_ chemical elements in organic compound that they originally obtained from their food, _but we obtain nothing else_. Animals have the power to create nothing. The single fact that all nutritive material is formed by vegetables—animals having the power to appropriate but never to form or create food elements—is proof positive, to my mind, that we can derive all the nutriment we need directly from the vegetable world, and that the best food, and that which is most conducive to man’s highest development—bodily, mentally and spiritually—is found in the use of these vegetables themselves. Those who eat animal food do not get a single element of nutrition, save that which those animals have obtained from vegetables. Hence man, in taking his nutrition indirectly, by the eating of animals, must of necessity get the original nutriment more or less deteriorated from the unhealthy conditions and accidents of the animal he feeds upon—with the impurities and putrescent matters mingled with the blood and in the viscera of animal substances, which are invariably present. Apart from this aspect of the problem—which is one rather of hygiene than of chemistry, and hence will be discussed in the following chapter—it is evident that man can derive no single element of nutrition from the bodies of animals, which he cannot also obtain from suitable vegetable foods. He need not eat grass and herbs, as do the cows and sheep, in order to obtain this material—since chemical analysis of the foods will readily show us that these same elements are contained in fruits,