Daniel's Diet

According to the first chapter of the Book of Daniel, Israel's captive whiz kids " well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in all knowledge, and understanding science" (verse 4) after subsisting on just vegetables and water for ten days, impressed the Babylonian king as far superior to all the magicians and astrologers " in all matters of wisdom and understanding" (verse 20). Many ideological vegetarians credit vegetables for group's physical and mental improvement (see "A 'Biblical' Alternativist Method"). A more credible proposition is that abstention from drinking wine caused the improvement, which the story ascribes to God.

In an interview on the school's Christian radio station in the mid-1970s, an LLU nutrition graduate student (who was not an SDA) claimed that vegetarianism produced superior intellects. To make her case, she stated:

Linus Pauling says that vitamin C improves intelligence. Vegetarians get more vitamin C in their diets than meat-eaters. The probable reason why George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy were brilliant was because they were vegetarians.

The interviewer agreed, extolling the health and intellect of vegetarians. That Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian went unmentioned during the interview. Also unmentioned was that Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and other eminent moralists were not vegetarians.

Animal behavioral scientists have noted that, to survive, meat-eating predators must outsmart their vegetarian prey. However, I believe that all such theories break down because of the difficulty of defining intelligence.

SDAs note that meat-eating predators such as wolves and lions have tremendous speed but lack endurance. However, Arctic sled dogs that run the 1200-mile Ididarod cover more than a hundred miles per day a feat no horse, mule or ox can accomplish.