MODERN VEGANISM By
FREY
R.
ELLIS,
M.D. (Lond ), M . C . Path., AND Ph.D., F . R . I . C . , F . B . S .
FRANK W O K E S , B . S C . ,
Vegetarianism as defined when the parent society was established in 1847 involved the exclusion of all flesh foods from the diet but left it to the individual vegetarian to choose whether or not to exclude also dairy produce—milk, butter, cheese and eggs. Exclusion of all animal food from the diet has been tried by many individual vegetarians since J847, not always with success. Many of these earlier attempts must have passed unrecorded. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of the Seventh-Day Adventists who had recently adopted vegetarianism attempted to exclude dairy produce also from their diet. Mrs. Ellen White, an early Adventist leader, has described in her book " The Ministry of Healing", some illness encountered by these pioneer vegans, who went back to milk and eggs to restore their health. She prophesied that foods which would satisfactorily replace milk, butter, cheese and eggs would gradually become available. We shall see how this prophecy is slowly being fulfilled. Despite these earlier failures a few individual vegetarians persisted in trying to live on diets free from all animal foods, finding this less difficult as they became older. The poet Robert Graves seems to have met one of these in France in 1915. In his book " G o o d b y e to All T h a t " he describes " a kindly retired schoolmaster with a bright eye and white hair who lived entirely on vegetables and gave him a vegetarian pamphlet entitled " Comment Vivre Cent Ans ". The key to the problem of finding a satisfactory diet containing no animal food lies mainly in cows milk and its products butter and cheese. These have long served as a main source of protein and of fat to most vegetarians. Frank Wokes, in a pre-war study of the food eaten by vegetarians during a week's stay at the Vegetarian Society's holiday centre in Exmouth, found them to be consuming more dairy produce than the average meat eater in this country. This finding, published in his war-time Penguin " F o o d — T h e Deciding F a c t o r " , was discussed with the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, and helped to secure a larger cheese ration for British vegetarians during World War Two. The finding was confirmed in a post-war study at another vegetarian holiday centre. Butter during World War Two was largely replaced in the national diet by margarines based mainly on vegetable fats. These margarines had been developed between the two world wars by manufacturers who had added to them vitamins A and D derived from vegetable sources. These vitamins were not available in World War One when the margarines in the national diet were 25