Meat Not Needed as a Food (1895)
AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard
PUBLICATION: "Meat Not Needed as a Food." Chicago Daily Tribune 29 April 1895: 4 (col. 6-7).
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/349497686/
KEYWORDS: animals, food
---. Vegetable Diet
---.“What We May Eat”
Allen, James Madison. Figs or Pigs? Fruit or Brute?
---. Thirty-Nine Reasons Why I am a Vegetarian
Freshel, M. R. L. “Some Reasons Against the Carnivorous Diet”
Rumford, Isaac B.
Trine, Ralph Waldo. Every Living Creature
SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
In this short article, Moore promotes veganism for both ethical and health-related reasons. He writes that no one should be perturbed by “the rise in the price of meat,” because it is not needed to sustain humans and, in fact, human “physiological integrity may be much more accurately sustained by a judicious diet of fruits and vegetables” (col. 6). He advertises the Vegetarian Eating Club of the University of Chicago, noting his own ethical veganism and debunking the notion that a vegetarian diet is monotonous and lacking in variety. “The variety of fruits and vegetables is so bewildering,” he writes, “and the modes and possibilities of their preparation are so nearly numberless that the most exacting epicure may be satisfied” (col. 7). He describes luscious sample menus before noting that “[t]o one living on such a beautiful and ample diet for a few weeks or months, the flesh tearing performances he sees around him become not only unnatural but disgusting and horrible” (col. 7). The vegan diet is equally suitable to “the student” and “the manual laborer”; is more economical, and provides more than enough energy, as testified to by “the peasantry of Russia, Germany, and even of Norway and Sweden,” as well as the “Turkish longshoremen,” “the dauntless Bedouin, the courageous Japanese, and the redoubtable Chinese” (col. 7). In nutritional value, plant-based food exceeds animal food, as “there are vegetables, nuts, and grains which far exceed mutton chops and steaks” (col. 7). “[V]egetal oil,” too, “is so much superior to animal fats” (col. 7). The vegan diet conveys “a feeling of elegance and superiority, of buoyancy and crispness,” Moore contends. “Your brain will be more obedient, you will be heartier and healthier, can sleep better, and do more work than ever before” (col. 7). Moore emphasizes that despite all the health-related advantages of veganism, he is “a vegetarian not so much for the benefit of myself as for the benefit of the creatures whose corpses I would otherwise gnaw” (col. 7).