Plain Facts for Old and Young (1910)

AUTHOR: Kellogg, John Harvey

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The book promotes a vegan diet as a countermeasure against excessive sexual desire and general sexual immorality. A comprehensive guide on sexual hygiene, the book discusses appropriate sex education for boys and girls and the sexuality of adults. It includes chapters on anatomy and physiology, reproduction and the reproductive organs, unchastity, chapters explicitly directed at different age groups of men and women, on marriage, a series of (sexual) diseases, general health tips, and midwifery and the care of infants.

Kellogg emphasizes the importance of diet as a preventative of and remedy for excessive sexual desire. He claims that stimulants like “pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, and condiments generally, together with tea and coffee, and an excess of animal food” are likely to induce early puberty. Conversely, he is “positive” that “a cool, unstimulating vegetable or farinaceous diet would deter the development of the sexual organism for several months, and perhaps for a year or two” (119). In general, Kellogg is convinced that the “[m]odern modes of life, improper clothing, the forcing system of cramming in schools, the immodest example of older persons, and especially the irritating, stimulating articles of diet which are daily set before children, as well as older people, undoubtedly have a powerful influence in stimulating the development of the sexual passions” (147-148). He thinks the influence of diet on sexual desire is underestimated, even though it is clear “that unwholesome food, especially such stimulating articles as spices and other condiments, and the excessive use of flesh food, pastry, and highly seasoned viands, is one of the most active causes of impurity in modern times” (199-200). Thus, a simple predominantly vegan diet, results in both better health and a more virtuous life: “Simplicity in diet, dress, and in all the habits of life is most conducive to virtue” (200), Kellogg writes.

He describes the unwelcome influence of stimulating foods and drinks in the following way: “Flesh, condiments, eggs, tea, coffee, chocolate, and all stimulants have a powerful influence directly upon the reproductive organs. They increase the local supply of blood; and through nervous sympathy with the brain, the passions are aroused” (217). The same holds for tobacco. While Kellogg suggests specific dietary measures for a series of diseases and conditions, almost all of his suggestions consist in particular combinations of “fruits, grains, and milk, with abstinence from flesh food” (469). A “vegetarian diet” also helps to cure alcoholism (752). As to clothing, particularly in the case of girls and women, “[i]mproper dress, by causing local congestion, often predisposes to secret vice by occasioning local excitement” (451) and hence should be avoided.