238 Diet and Health
canal silt. The pit was in a field in which clover, with its peculiar power of taking nitro-
gen from the air, was in blossom. This was to be cut and piled to a height of five to eight
feet upon the compost in the pit, and also saturated layer by layer with canal mud. It
would then be allowed to ferment 20 to 30 days, until the juices set free had been
absorbed by the winter compost beneath and until the time that the adjacent land had
been made ready for the coming crop. The compost would then be distributed by the
men over the field.
At another time he saw a compost pit within a village in which had been placed all
the manure and waste of the households and streets, all stubble and waste roughage of
the fields, all ashes not to be applied directly, mixed up with some soil. Sufficient water
was added to keep the contents of the pit saturated and to promote their fermentation.
All fibres of organic material have to be broken down, which may require working and
reworking, with frequent additions of water and stirring for aeration. Finally the mix-
ture becomes a rich complete fertilizer. It is then allowed to dry and is finely pulverized
before it is spread upon the land.
Every foot of land, says King, is made to provide food, fuel, or fabric. ‘The wastes
of the body, of fuel and fabric, are taken back to the field; before doing so they are
housed against waste from weather, intelligently compounded and patiently worked at
through one, three or even six months, in order to bring them into the most efficient
form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop.’These then are the five peoples^7 which either still enjoy an exceptional measure of
health, or else until very recently have done so. What have they in common?
Not race, for the groups include white, brown, red and yellow races.
Not climate – there could hardly be greater contrasts than between the plains
and hills of rural China or the prairies of North America and the precipitous
mountain crags of the northern provinces of India, or than between the frozen
north and the luxuriant warmth of Tristan da Cunha.
Not diet – in the ordinary sense – for these range from the lacto-vegetarian diet
of the Hunza to the almost purely carnivorous diet of the Eskimo, with almost
every variant in between.
Not methods of preparing their food either, for though there are certain resem-
blances – as between Hunza and Chinese for example – no methods are common
to all five.
In fact it seems clear that it is not in kind at all that we must look for our com-
mon factor, but in quality.
All five groups have good air to breathe, but that cannot by itself be the secret
of their health, or our own hill and country dwellers would have health to compare
with theirs, which, unfortunately, they have not.
The only discernible common factor, other than good air, seems to be that the
diets of all five groups are ‘whole’ diets in the full sense of the word. That is to say:
(a) every edible part contained in the diet is consumed; (b) in every case the foods
are grown by a system of returning all the wastes of the entire community to the
soil in which they are produced. For the sea, too, is a ‘soil’ in this sense, supporting