Rethinking Diet

By Chris Schaefer

Diet is the important element of human survival after breathing, yet very little is known about the best diet for human beings. There is a secret history on proper diet that has been hidden from us. It is within the ancient philosophers and physicians going back thousands of years. Read with an open mind and change your diet according to your new knowledge from this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Schaefer
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215259122

Book preview

Chapter 1

PYTHAGORAS. 570–470 BC

"Refrain to pollute your bodies with abominable food. There are the fruits which bear down the branches with their weight, and there are the grapes growing on the vines; there are the sweet herbs; there are those that may be softened by the flame and become tender. The lush Earth produces her gentle foods and offers you nourishment without blood and slaughter. Animals satisfy their hunger with flesh. And yet not all of them; for the horse, the sheep, the cow and pig subsist on grass; while those whose deposition is cruel and fierce, the tigers and the raging lions, and the wolves feast on their bloody diet.

"What a monstrous crime it is that one gluttonous body should grow fat on others which it stuffs into it. That one living creature should live by the death of another living creature! In the presence of such a vast abundance which the Earth produces does, indeed, nothing delight you but to chew like a savage the sad result of the death you inflict? Can you not satisfy the hunger of a greedy and unregulated sense of appetite unless you first destroy another being? Yet that golden age, was blessed in the produce of the trees and in the herbs which the earth brings forth, and the human mouth was not polluted with blood.

"Then the birds moved their wings through the air free from suspicion. The rabbit, without fear, wandered in the open fields. Then the fish did not fall a victim to the hook and its own gullibility. Every place was free of deceit and there was no fear of injury. All things were full of peace. In later times someone, whoever he was, snubbed pure and simple food and engulfed in his greedy belly flesh from a carcass. He opened the road to that wickedness. I believe that the steel of a blade, since stained with human blood, was first dipped in the gore of savage wild beasts; and that was lawful. We hold that the bodies of animals that seek our destruction are put to death without any violation of the sacred laws of morality. But although they might be put to death, they were not to be eaten as well. From this time the abomination advanced rapidly. The pig is believed to have been the first victim destined to slaughter, because it munched up the seeds with its snout, and so ended the crops. For gnawing the vine the goat was led to slaughter.

"But how have you deserved to die, you sheep, you harmless breed that have come into existence for the service of men? You who carry milk, who give your wool as soft coverings for us and who assist us more by your life than by your death? Why have the cattle deserved this? These beings without scheming and without deceit, innocent, mild and born for the endurance of labor? Ungrateful, indeed, is man, and unworthy of the bountiful gifts of the harvest who, after unyoking his cow from the plough, can slaughter the tiller of his fields. He who can strike with the axe that neck worn bare from labor, through which it had so often turned up the hard ground, and which had produced so many harvests.

From where such a hunger in man after unnatural and unlawful food? Do you dare, to continue to feed on flesh? Do it not, I implore you, and take note of my warning. And when you present to your taste buds the limbs of slaughtered cattle, know and realize that you are feeding on your servants - the tillers of the ground."

PLATO 428–347 BC

"‘The working class will live, I suppose, on barley and wheat, baking cakes of the meal, kneading loaves of the flour, spreading these excellent cakes and loaves upon mats of straw or on clean leaves, and themselves reclining on rude beds of yew or myrtle-boughs. They will make merry, themselves and their children, drinking their wine, weaving garlands, and singing the praises of the gods, enjoying one another’s society, and not begetting children beyond their means, through a prudent fear of poverty or war.’

"Glaucon here interrupted me, remarking, ‘Apparently you describe your men feasting, without anything to relish their bread.

"‘True,’ I said, ‘I had forgotten. Of course, they will have something to relish their food. Salt, no doubt, and olives, and cheese, together with the country fare of boiled onions and cabbage. We shall also set before them a dessert, I imagine, of figs, peas, and beans: they may roast myrtle-berries and beech-nuts at the fire, taking wine with their fruit in moderation. And thus, passing their days in tranquillity and sound health, they will, in all probability, live to an old age, and dying, bequeath to their children a life in which their own will be reproduced.’

"Upon this Glaucon exclaimed, ‘Why, if you were founding a community of pigs, this is just the style in which you would feed them up!’

"‘How, then,’ said I, ‘would you have them live, Glaucon?’

"‘In a civilized manner,’ he replied. ‘They