It is well known to everybody that the medical profession has for ages urged upon the public the dangers of excessive flesh-eating, yet has it never clearly stated why eating too much meat is so far more injurious than eating too much bread or vegetables. But the explanation is really very simple.
Meat is more readily soluble and digestible than farinaceous foods. If you fill your stomach with meat, all of it will be digested; practically the whole of it will get into the blood, and there being in excess of what is needed, it gives the various organs of the body great trouble to get rid of it.
On the other hand, if you take a big meal of cabbage, only a very small proportion of it is digestible, and so very little will get into the blood. After eating excess of vegetables or farinaceous food you will probably be sick, and there is an end of the matter.
But besides nourishment, meat contains a large quantity of extractives—substances which are waste products of vital action; which are practically animal poisons, and which enter the blood without requiring digestion, but which are useless to the animal economy, and have to be got rid of at once.
It is to extractives that meats owe their flavour, and the more tasty and succulent your dishes are, the greater is the amount of extractives that they contain.
It is in the _entrée_ that meat flavourings are carried to their highest pitch, and it is the _entrée_ which is usually the most harmful course at the dinner.
If the _entrée_ were discarded in favour of a vegetable course, it would indeed be a blessing. If you have _entrées_ at all, let them be absolutely simple, such as the one which has been chosen for our specimen dinner.
You may be surprised when we say that meat is more digestible than farinaceous food, and yet that when treating dyspepsia we avoid meat as far as possible. But the apparent contradiction is readily dispelled.
Indigestion is usually due to disease of the stomach, and failure of its power for digestion. Meat is digested practically only in the stomach; farinaceous foods are not digested in the stomach, but lower down in the alimentary canal. It is only when indigestion is due to failure of the stomach that it is benefited by the avoidance of meat. In many forms of dyspepsia a farinaceous diet gives the greatest trouble of all.