History reveals savory/unsavory vegetarian connections
Aug 2019 – Have you ever wondered why nonvegetarians consider our meals tasteless? I’ve learned in that our North American history religious and ethnic roots played important roles in this misconception.
This month Vance Lehmkuhl, founder of the Philadelphia Vegan History Tours, both entertained and enlightened his audience at Sulzer Library, 4455 N Lincoln Ave. As a guest of the National Vegetarian Museum, he revealed that some European immigrants used vegetarianism as a tool to further their beliefs. He highlighted three men who adopted vegan practices to support causes and live upright lives.
British colonist Benjamin Lay was disowned by a few Quaker congregations because he believed he was morally right to harass the wealthier church members for owning slaves; he lived in a cave with his wife and would not wear leather. His persistence triumphed in 1758, when Quakers were finally forbidden to own slaves. He died in 1759.
Minister Sylvester Graham was a European American who advocated clean living, which meant avoiding meat, alcohol, stimulants, spices, chemical additives, and stressful activities. His followers equated flavorful food and the lack of sexual restraint as distractions to a balanced, moral way of life; they provided evidence that his diet was healthier than the meat diet advocated by contemporary medical experts. After he died in 1851, his bland loaf of Graham bread was replaced by the commercially more flavorful cracker we have today. Until the 20th century, most English-speaking vegetarians in the US were called Grahamites.
Union Army volunteer Henry Clubb was first exposed to vegetarianism, the temperance movement and planned vegetarian communities in England. Once in the United States, he maintained his ties with the British Vegetarian Society. He gained a reputation as an abolitionist newsman and became involved in the Octagon Settlement, a short-lived vegetarian utopian community in Kansas; he was joined by 40 vegetarian abolitionist families after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. After the Civil War, he became president of the American Vegetarian Society, whose members included women suffragists. In 1893 he convinced the Vegetarian Federal Union to host an exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
A few from the audience met with Lehmkuhl at museum founder Kay Stepkin’s home to further discuss different aspects of his presentation. Family medicine doctor Ashwani Garg revealed that indentured workers from India changed the flavor of Caribbean vegetarian cuisine in the 19th century. Lehmkuhl pointed out that suffragists did not always agree. Frederick Douglass, who had originally supported both women’s and black men’s suffrage, later prioritized black men’s suffrage. When I added that northern white feminists dropped black members in order to attract southern white women, TV critic Aaron Barnhart and history scholar Diane Eickoff supported me. We also agreed that African American Ida B. Wells ignored the organizers’ instructions to move to the rear.
Do you think that these historical revelations explain the stereotype about bland vegetarian food? Do you see any connections between participating in social causes and eating vegetables?