Health in the Household (1884)

AUTHOR: Dodds, Susanna Way

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

Dodds advocates for veganism for health reasons, and provides numerous recipes that accord with the “hygienic diet.” The first sentence of the “Preface” clarifies the aims of the book: “The object of this work is to enable health-seekers to furnish their tables with food that is wholesome, and at the same time palatable. The writer claims that the food products of the earth, properly grown and prepared, should be not only healthful, but to the unperverted palate, relishable, in the highest degree” (vii). Dodds takes plant-based foods to be particularly healthy and tasty if prepared in the right way. Accordingly, the book is predominantly concerned with the proper preparation of a variety of different foods.

The book is divided into three parts: The first part (ca. 100 pages) extols Dodds' predominantly vegan convictions in line with the teachings of hygeio-therapy; the second part (ca. 150 pages) provides recipes that align with these convictions; the third part (ca. 300 pages) contains recipes that do not align with them. The reason for this is pragmatic: these are compromise dishes (the section is titled “The Compromise”) included to satisfy “popular demand” (259), not least because the “hygienic diet … differs so materially from that in common use” (1). The compromise dishes, too, need to be prepared in such a way as to be most conducive to health. Dodds admits that much of the material in the book's second part is taken from “The Hygeian Home Cook-Book, by the late R. T. Trall, M.D.; the Health Reformer's Cook-Book, Battle Creek, Mich.; and How to Prepare Food, by Mrs. Lucretia E. Jackson, Dansville, N. Y.” (viii).

As to the constituents of the hygienic diet, Dodds clarifies that:

• “the products of the vegetable kingdom are better suited to man's needs than are those of the animal kingdom” (2);
• “we must place first in the rank of nutritious foods, the various preparations of wheat; then the other grains, some of which are better adapted to our wants than others. Fruits, as a class of foods, are ranked higher than vegetables by hygienists, and some fruits higher than others; while among the vegetables proper, there are certain kinds that are better suited for human food than others” (3); and
• “admixture, if confined to one class of products, for instance the grains, would not be amiss; but the plan of putting together in the same dish, fruits and vegetables [...] is a practice that can not be too strongly condemned” (5).

As to the advantages of the hygienic diet, Dodds claims that:

• it is “far more healthful and nutritious” (2);
• it “contains no stimulating or abnormal substances, to tax the vital powers in getting rid of them; no salt, pepper, spices, or other irritating condiment” (2):
• whenever and wherever “people [are] remarkable for long life, strength of body and fine proportions, combined with rare personal beauty and good complexions, their dietetic habits have been relatively simple, and the food itself restricted for the most part to the products of the soil” (17);
• similarly, cultures are intellectually and morally “in the zenith of their power at a time when for successive generations the habits of the people, dietetic and otherwise, had been simple and healthful. On the other hand, the decline and downfall of these nations came not until after they had departed from their plain and frugal ways” (79).

As to the disadvantages of animal food and stimulants Dodds writes:

• “Animal foods [...] are exceedingly unstable, not to say impure, in their best estate; whence their character as inflammatory food. All animal products, as butter, eggs, cheese, etc., partake of this character, in a greater or less [sic!] degree. Beef and mutton are perhaps the best of the flesh foods. Fish, fowls, oysters, etc., belong to lower orders of animal life, some of which are infested with vermin or animalculae, and all of which feed upon less inviting food substances than do the nobler animals” (3-4);
• “many animals are afflicted with acute or chronic diseases, and are often rushed into market in that condition. This is particularly true of swine, and often indeed of cattle” (4);
• “the perspiration, and indeed all the excretions of meat-eaters, are more offensive than those of persons living upon fruits and grains, and other products of the soil” (43).
• “The habit of murdering animals is of itself degrading” (43-44).
• “At the present rate of increase of the human family, the surface of the earth will, in a few centuries, be far too densely populated to admit of the raising of animals to be used as food. For it has been shown that it would require more than forty times as much land to feed a man on meat, as it would to feed him on grain” (44).
• “The presence of certain parasites in animal foods, is another strong objection to their use” (45).
• Overall, “[a]nimal foods, of all others, should, if eaten, be selected with the utmost care; the animals themselves should be well fed, well housed in winter, and allowed to graze from open pastures in summer. No animal or fowl should ever be stall-fed, or sty-fed; and none with carnivorous or omnivorous habits, should be used as food” (51).
• “The ill effects of stimulants in food, are manifold; they send an increased quantity of blood to the base of the brain, causing congestion of the cerebellum. This congestion creates excitement or preternatural action of the animal propensities, inducing in the individual a desire to fight, commit murder, and do all sorts of immoral or unlawful things. […] So that murder, theft, and all manner of evil doings, are the legitimate results of the introduction into a community of stimulating foods and drinks” (80).