Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages / Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

by William A. Alcott

I see no way of avoiding the force of this argument, except by denying the premises on which I have founded my conclusions. But they are far more easily denied than disproved. The probability, after all, is, that my estimates are too low, and that the advantages of an exclusively vegetable diet, in a national or political point of view, are even greater than is here represented. I do not deny, that some deduction ought to be made on account of the consumption of fish, which does not prevent the growth or use of vegetable products; but my belief is, that, including them, the animal food we use amounts to a great deal more than one meal a day, or one third of our whole living.

Suppose there was no crime in shutting human beings out of existence by flesh-eating, at the amazing rate I have mentioned—still, is it not, I repeat it, a great national or political loss? Or, will it be said, in its defence, as has been said in defence of war, if not of intemperance and some of the forms of licentiousness, that as the world is, it is a blessing to keep down its population, otherwise it would soon be overstocked? The argument would be as good in one case as in the other; that is, it is not valid in either. The world might be made to sustain, in comfort, even in the present comparatively infant state of the arts and sciences, at least forty or fifty times its present number of inhabitants. It will be time enough a thousand or two thousand years to come, to begin to talk about the danger of the world's being over-peopled; and, above all, to talk about justifying what we know is, in the abstract, very wrong, to prevent a distant imagined evil; one, in fact, which may not, and probably will not ever exist.

V. THE ECONOMICAL ARGUMENT.

The economy of the vegetable system is so intimately connected with its political or national advantages; that is, so depends on, or grows out of them, that I hesitated for some time before I decided to consider it separately. Whatever is shown clearly to be for the general good policy and well-being of society, cannot be prejudicial to the best interests of the individuals who compose that society. Still, there are some minor considerations that I wish to present under this head, that could not so well have been introduced any where else.

There is, indeed, one reason for omitting wholly the consideration of the pecuniary advantages of the system which I am attempting to defend. The public, to some extent, at once consider him who adverts to this topic, as parsimonious or mean. But, conscious as I am of higher objects in consulting economy than the saving of money, that it may be expended on things of no more value than the mere indulgence or gratification of the appetites or the passions, in a world where there are minds to educate and souls to save, I have ventured to treat on the subject.

It must be obvious, at a single glance, that if the vegetable products of an acre of land—such as wheat, rye, corn, barley, potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, beets, apples, strawberries, etc.—will sustain a family in equal health eight times as long as the pork, or beef, or mutton, which the same vegetables would make by feeding them to domestic animals, it must be just as mistaken a policy for the individual to make the latter disposition of these products as for a nation to do so. Nations are made of individuals; and, as I have already said, whatever is best, in the end, for the one, must also be the best, as a general rule, for the other.

But who has not been familiar from his very infancy with the maxim, that "a good garden will half support a family?" And who that is at all informed in regard to the manners and customs of the old world, does not know that the maxim has been verified there, time immemorial? But again: who has not considered, that if a garden of a given size will half support a family, one twice as large would support it wholly?

The truth is, it needs but a very small spot indeed, of good soil, for raising all the necessaries of a family. I think I have shown, in another work,[23] that five hundred and fifty pounds of Indian or corn meal, or ten bushels of the corn, properly cooked, will support, or more than support, an adult individual a year. Four times this amount is a very large allowance for a family of five persons; nay, even three times is sufficient. But how small a spot of good soil is required for raising thirty bushels of corn!

It is true, no family would wish to be confined a whole year to this one kind of food; nor do I wish to have it so; not that I think any serious mischiefs would arise as the consequence; but I should prefer, for my own part, a greater variety. But this does not materially alter the case. Suppose an acre and a half of land were required for the production of thirty bushels of corn. Let the cultivator, if he chooses, raise only fifteen bushels of corn, and sow the remainder with barley, or rye, or wheat. Or, if he prefer it, let him plant the one half of the piece with beans, peas, potatoes, beets, onions, etc. The one half of the space devoted to the production of some sort of grain would still half support his family; and it would require more than ordinary gluttony in a family of five persons to consume the produce of the other half, if the crops were but moderately abundant. A quarter of an acre of it ought to produce, at least, sixty bushels of potatoes; but this alone, would give such a family about ten pounds of potatoes, or one sixth of a bushel a day, for every day in the year, which is a tolerable allowance of food, without the grain and other vegetables.