The Vegetarian Crusade by Adam D. Shprintzen

Author:Adam D. Shprintzen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2013-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Ad for Protose and Nuttolene in Battle Creek Foods for Health (1920). Courtesy of Recipe Pamphlets, Chef Louis Szathmáry Collection of Culinary Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

The promotion and marketing of these new vegetarian foods fit perfectly in a product-driven society that emphasized comforts, material extravagance, and the continuous consumption of new goods.68 Visitors thronged to department stores and ordered products via mail-order catalogs, seeking validation and improvement through the latest and greatest products. Vegetarians experienced a similar product fascination during this period, visiting the San, purchasing meat substitutes, and seeking other health foods as vehicles to personal gratification and advancement. Simultaneously, vegetarians were crafting a new movement and with it a newfound pride and confidence.

The growth of the Sanitas Nut Food Company and its marketing of the San’s meatless fare changed the nature of the vegetarian diet in the late nineteenth century. Just as important, this culinary shift informed an ideological change for movement vegetarianism. This shift continued through the early decades of the twentieth century. No longer reliant solely on fruits, vegetables, and grains, vegetarians added cereals, nuts, and meat substitutes to their growing list of preferred foods. In response to the growth of the San, the invention of meat alternatives and a general growth of American vegetarianism, vegetarian cookbooks proliferated in the literary market of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, marketing the principles of scientific vegetarianism to enthusiastic middle-class consumers.

The explosion of vegetarian cookbooks illustrated important qualities of a new vegetarian movement. First, it reflected the growth of movement vegetarianism during this period, connected to Kellogg and the popularity of the San. Second, just as Kellogg found a way to commoditize vegetarianism through mail order, cookbook authors (some vegetarian, others not) sought to benefit monetarily by spreading vegetarian information and recipes. These individualized motivations notwithstanding, the growth of meatless cookbooks cultivated and connected a previously geographically disparate American vegetarian community.

Some of these cookbooks came from a logical source: Ella Kellogg. J. H.’s wife and accomplice in the experimental kitchen began publishing a series of cookbooks that spread awareness of Sanitas products while also instructing home cooks on how to best prepare unfamiliar dishes efficiently while maximizing nutritional value. Her first cookbook, appropriately titled Science in the Kitchen, aimed to promote the San’s vegetarian regimen. The book touted the science behind vegetarianism, the “observation, research, and experience.” Reflecting the ordered, rationalized working ethos of the time, Ella Kellogg vowed that this new cookery would “bring order from out the confusion . . . which surrounds the average cook, by the elucidation of the principles which govern the operations of the kitchen.”69

Science in the Kitchen offered practical tips on the chemical properties of food, the use of kitchen equipment, cooking techniques, and the negative effects of unhealthy diets. Nutritious food was necessary, but so were proper techniques to render “good food material more digestible.” In a time of vast technological advancement, the Kelloggs’ new cookery emphasized science and machinery’s ability to optimize food’s health potential, ideals that also produced new foods in the San’s experimental kitchen.

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