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Counsels on Diet and Foods
Strengthens the Baser Passions
683. If ever there was a time when the diet should be of the most
simple kind, it is now. Meat should not be placed before our children.
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Its influence is to excite and strengthen the lower passions, and has a
tendency to deaden the moral powers.—
Testimonies for the Church
2:352, 1869
684. I was instructed that the use of flesh meat has a tendency
to animalize the nature, and to rob men and women of the love and
sympathy which they should feel for every one. We are built up from
that which we eat, and those whose diet is largely composed of animal
food are brought into a condition where they allow the lower passions
to assume control of the high powers of the being ....
We do not mark out any precise line to be followed in diet. There
are many kinds of wholesome food. But we do say that flesh meat
is not the right food for God’s people. It animalizes human beings.
In a country such as this, where there are fruits, grains, and nuts
in abundance, how can one think that he must eat the flesh of dead
animals?—
Manuscript 50, 1904
685. If things were as they should be in the households that make
up our churches, we might do double service for the Lord. The light
given me is that a most decided message must be borne in regard
to health reform. Those who use flesh meat strengthen the lower
propensities and prepare the way for disease to fasten upon them.—
Letter 200, 1903
686. Your family have partaken largely of flesh meats, and the
animal propensities have been strengthened, while the intellectual have
been weakened. We are composed of what we eat, and if we subsist
largely upon the flesh of dead animals, we shall partake of their nature.
You have encouraged the grosser part of your organization, while the
more refined has been weakened.—
Testimonies for the Church 2:60,
61, 1868
687. We want the pervading truth of God’s word to get hold of
every one of our people before this conference is over. We want them
to understand that the flesh of animals is not the proper food for them
to eat. Such a diet cultivates the animal passions in them and their
children. God wants us to educate our children in right habits of eating,
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dressing, and working. He wants us to do what we can to repair the