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Counsels on Diet and Foods
The Swine Especially Condemned
693. God has given you light and knowledge, which you have
professed to believe came direct from Him, instructing you to deny
appetite. You know that the use of swine’s flesh is contrary to His
express command, given not because He wished to especially show His
authority, but because it would be injurious to those who should eat it.
Its use would cause the blood to become impure, so that scrofula and
other humors would corrupt the system, and the whole organism would
suffer. Especially would the fine, sensitive nerves of the brain become
enfeebled and so beclouded that sacred things would not be discerned,
but be placed upon the low level with common things.—
Testimonies
for the Church 2:96, 1868
694. The tissues of the swine swarm with parasites. Of the swine,
God said, “It is unclean unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor
touch their dead carcass.” This command was given because swine’s
flesh is unfit for food. Swine are scavengers, and this is the only use
they were intended to serve. Never, under any circumstances, was
their flesh to be eaten by human beings.—
The Ministry of Healing,
313, 314, 1905
695. Pork, although one of the most common articles of diet, is one
of the most injurious. God did not prohibit the Hebrews from eating
swine’s flesh merely to show His authority, but because it was not a
proper article of food for man. It would fill the system with scrofula,
and especially in that warm climate produced leprosy, and disease of
various kinds. Its influence upon the system in that climate was far
more injurious than in a colder climate. But God never designed the
swine to be eaten under any circumstances. The heathen used pork
as an article of food, and American people have used pork freely as
an important article of diet. Swine’s flesh would not be palatable to
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the taste in its natural state. It is made agreeable to the appetite by
high seasoning, which makes a very bad thing worse. Swine’s flesh
above all other flesh meats, produces a bad state of the blood. Those
who eat freely of pork can but be diseased. Those who have much
outdoor exercise do not realize the bad effects of pork eating, as those
do whose life is mostly indoors, and whose habits are sedentary, and
whose labor is mental.