Well said. A good warning and admonition Brother.

I use a lot of coconut oil. It is a very good oil. Very healthy indeed. The MCTs it contains do some very good things to our bodies. All coconut products do the same thing for the same reasons.

I think, though, it needs to be said that butter isn't intrinsically unhealthy. Every quote I have ever read where Ellen White talks about the why of giving up butter, milk and eggs is related to the fear of these products coming from diseased animals, not that the products themselves are intrinsically unhealthy. She does, however, condemn cheese as being intrinsically unhealthy, not fit for food.

I see margarine as being intrinsically unhealthy, just like cheese, pork, etc....

Butter certainly cannot be classified an "health food".
From the book, The Ministry of Healing, chapter 23, Diet and Health:

If milk is used, it should be thoroughly sterilized; with this precaution, there is less danger of contracting disease from its use. Butter is less harmful when eaten on cold bread than when used in cooking; but, as a rule, it is better to dispense with it altogether. Cheese is still more objectionable; it is wholly unfit for food. {MH 302.1}

So - "as a rule", it is best to give up butter. That is clear not only from EGW.

When will you learn to get some balance to your points of view? Here is a statement from Ellen White that says exactly what I said above.



She also talks about people who do not get proper nutrition because they gave up milk, eggs, cream and butter without replacing the vital nutrients those foods contain in their diet. The very clear implication of such statements is that there are nutrients in milk, eggs, butter and cream that are required by the human body to remain healthy. Those nutrients are healthy or the body would not require them. The body cannot work correctly without them. So to say that butter is intrinsically unhealthy is an extremely one-sided point of view that rejects a portion of the health message.

Is butter a "health food"? No, of course not. But that does not mean it is intrinsically unhealthy either. If it was intrinsically unhealthy discarding it without replacing its vital nutrients in the diet would not, could not, be a cause of not getting the nutrition the body requires.

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here, but this sounds a lot like urging one's own criteria for others to follow.

You know you can be easily disproved. All it would take is for one missionary in your situation to eat a non-animal diet and still maintain his nutrition and health. All it would take is for one to demonstrate that the available nutrition is not impoverished but can be found. And all it would take is for one to demonstrate that a source of sulfur (or any other detoxifying substance) can be found through other means than eggs.

You have yet to show how much B12 are in eggs, how many you would need to eat to get enough. Maybe, that's what the true situation is there, is that you only think you are getting enough to maintain brain health.

Source, please.

Gary, to me "so far as possible" means so far as possible ALL should: To make effort, to make it a goal, to strive towards.

What or how does the following reflect in your life?

It is a most difficult matter to unlearn the habits which have been indulged through life and have educated the appetite. The demon of intemperance is not easily conquered. It is of giant strength and hard to overcome.
{CG 408.3}

The first great evil was intemperance in eating and drinking. Men and women have made themselves slaves to appetite. They are intemperate in labor.
{CD 149.4}

To deny appetite requires decision of character. For want of this decision multitudes are ruined. Weak, pliable, easily led, many men and women fail utterly of becoming what God desires them to be. Those who are destitute of decision of character cannot make a success of the daily work of overcoming. The world is full of besotted, intemperate, weak-minded men and women, and how hard it is for them to become genuine Christians. {CD 165.2}

Sometimes I just have to laugh, because the alternative is not some place I want to go....

Do you have any idea how many people there are who have to make a decision between a couple of pairs of socks and something to eat? There are 10's of millions of people who completely dropped out of the labor force because they finally just gave up looking for work because jobs just don't exist. They aren't counted in the unemployment numbers because they are no longer registered with the state employment agencies as looking for work. The official unemployment numbers were doctored by the Obama administration 4 or 5 times, and every time they made a change the unemployment rate dropped. Just like magic.... No more people were working, but the unemployment rate dropped. My entire life up until half way through the Obama administration someone working less than 30 hours a week was not considered fully employed. Now? If you work 15-20 hours a week you are not counted on the unemployment roles. Who can survive on that? Who can afford to give up the nutrition found in eggs and milk on that kind of income as it is expensive to eat vegan food?

Ellen White would be telling those people get your milk and eggs from places you can trust, if you can find them, and if not, she would understand. She understood in her day that a lot of people just couldn't afford the increase in expenditure required to eat healthily. She said that those people would actually harm themselves by changing their diet. The same is true today, only people like you and apl cannot, or refuse to, understand that. I doubt either of you have ever been dirt poor. If you had you wouldn't be so extreme in your views because you would realize that there are people who simply cannot afford to eat the way you do.

Ever looked at the difference in nutrition between a plate of scrambled eggs and a plate of crumbled/scrambled tofu? Tofu is the loser by a wide margin.

I have been in the position millions of people are in today, and I sympathize with them. I know what it's like to have to make really hard choices because you don't have enough money to make good choices. You simply accuse of being a slave to appetite. What a jerk.

I think the difference here isn't a matter of condemning people who are unemployed and existing on whatever the food bank (or other charitable source) will give them, the issue is rather -- people who are not in such dire straights and have the resources to eat healthy, tend to use the exceptions EGW makes for those who are unable to obtain good food, as their excuse to continue eating foods that indeed we should learn to cook without.

The introductory post ( 03/22/17 03:06 ) on this egg/milk topic started out with a post telling us "Mrs. White said we should not give up milk and eggs before God revealed it was time to do so. Many are rejecting her testimonies on this point,"

The same person wrote (03/24/17 12:01 ) " Mrs. White tells us plainly not to give up milk and eggs until God reveals that it is time....As for them having "gone off the deep end," that is exactly what veganism is. It is the "deep end." Mrs. White uses the term "extremist" to refer to vegans"

That was the general message at the beginning of this conversation-- (notice the "we" and "us" references) which was clearly implying that anyone (like us) adopting a vegan or near vegan diet was "running ahead of God" and "rejecting EGW" and an "extremist" and courting death.

Later that poster back peddled, saying he didn't say that, he was just saying "don't teach others to be vegans", but the poles were already set.

Of course, when food is scarce one must do the best with what is available to them. There are people who live on food they find in the garbage bins. They do the best they can to stay alive.

However, when taking all EGW's writings in consideration, we ARE to teach people to learn to cook without milk and eggs as far as possible.
This "learning" is progressive.
Milk and eggs aren't cheap either. A person can cook a lot more meals using the same money to buy bags of dried beans, lentils, rice, and other grains, and if you have a garden out back with fresh greens and vegetables, one can live quite healthy without a large expenditure.

True, for some it is not possible, but how many use that for an excuse to just push the warnings and admonition that we should learn a different way of cooking, away, and happily eat a diet rich in milk, milk products, and eggs simply because that's how they like to eat and cook?

Poverty I know. Hard choices must be made. People can only do the best they can with what they have available. I believe in doing the best I can with my diet and hope to do better.

But, I believe dedication gave the best answer. When people make excuses based on the exceptions rather than the norm.

I don't have a single problem with what you just said at all. I feel the same way about things. I just abhor, though, the idea that we must be so hard headed about things that we cannot even acknowledge the truth about the nutrition available in those products and the why for abandoning them. Ellen White made it obvious that the only reason for abandoning dairy and egg products was because of the risk of disease coming from the animals that produced them.

When we refuse to even acknowledge that there is something really wrong. And when we make blanket judgments on others based upon our own financial position and the assumption that others must be in the same position it's even worse. That is what Ellen white called health deformers.