The Ape and the Professor (1913)

AUTHOR: Kellogg, John Harvey

KEYWORDS: animals, diet, health

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this short article, by means of analogy with the eating habits of apes (given that they are “man's nearest relatives in the animal world”), Kellogg maintains that the natural diet of humans is vegan. To this end, the article describes a thought experiment: a fictional professor observes “the big apes in the London Zoological Gardens" in order empirically to bolster his theory “that in the early days of his existence man had subsisted chiefly upon insects – grasshoppers, beetles, flies, perhaps, and various bugs.” According to the professor's reasoning, the big apes are “relatives of his, whose intense conservatism has held them fast to the good old ways of their sturdy ancestors. These forest men will eat to-day just what their forefathers ate” (182). Kellogg presents the ensuing scene:

First on the menu came lettuce. How quickly they seized it and how well they fletcherized the fresh, juicy leaves. Next came oranges. Note the lively blinking of those brown eyes and the little grunts which tell of thrills of gustatory delight. Then bananas, and finally bread. No beef, no chicken, no oysters, no shrimps or crabs or beetles or grasshoppers or worms or snails or other beasts alive or dead? Only lettuce, oranges, bananas and bread? What for that fine theory about man's insectivorousness spun out of the brain of a great professor – “pulled out of his stomach,” they say in Burmah (182).

 “A few lessons in diet from our relatives, the big apes,” Kellogg concludes, “will do us good.”