We are now in the middle of National Vegetarian Week in the UK, so this is some background to it and what is happening elsewhere.

The idea for a National Vegetarian Week (NVW) originated in the UK - following a successful national veg day in 1992 it was expanded to a week in 1993. Both of those were at the beginning of October, but subsequent market research showed that the campaign would be more effective in the UK in the late spring - to tie in with fresh local produce in season - so it moved to May in 1995 and has been there ever since.

This year the UK NVW is May 21-27, with a warm up event in Manchester last weekend - and with the week culminating in the huge Bristol VegFest next weekend, May 27/28.

If you're in the UK see: www.nationalvegetarianweek.org or www.facebook.com/nationalveggieweek

This is coordinated from Parkdale (photo above), the HQ of the Vegetarian Society UK, where they have lots of staff turning it into a major national event. There will be hundreds of businesses and local groups running activities up and down the country, with the big advantage of far more media coverage on a concentrated week.

In 2007 the Australian Vegetarian Society decided to run their own NVW, and also agreed that it would be best in the spring - which if course in the Southern Hemisphere means back to October. See: www.facebook.com/nationalvegetarianweek

More recently another veg week has started for the USA, running in April, see: usvegweek.com

The original UK national veg day was probably arranged to tie in with World Vegetarian Day on October 1. That was invented in the USA in the 1970s - proposed at the IVU World Veg Congress in Maine in 1975, and formally launched by NAVS (North American VegSoc) in 1978. However, it didn't really take off outside the US until the age of internet made it so much easier for the whole world to share these things - see: www.worldvegetarianday.org

As a result of discussions around the IVU World Veg Congress in Germany in 2008, Centro Vegetariano in Portugal launched International Vegetarian Week. This is for the first seven days of October, to turn the world veg day into a week, and they say that 18 countries joined in last year. You can find that one at: www.vegetarianweek.org

The whole of October is sometimes known Vegetarian Awareness Month, and in 1982 the IVU World Veg Congress passed a resolution "that October of each year henceforth shall be known as Reverence for Life Month."

In 1994 The Vegan Society (UK) rounded off the month (and celebrated their 50th anniversary) by launching World Vegan Day on November 1 - www.worldveganday.org - and some groups are now expanding that into a week and The Vegan Society is now promoting November as vegan month - - see: www.facebook.com/WorldVeganMonth

So whether you want your national veg week in the Spring, October or November, or all together if you're in the southern hemisphere, they do have an impact, so how about getting your nation to join in?

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion 

I took the photo below on Bali, Indonesia, 2010:

At some point our ancestors moved out of the jungle/garden and, with less easy food to hand, they dug for roots, and gradually expanded their bug eating to bigger prey, though probably very little of it until they discovered how to cook it, and even then far less than many flesh-eating anthropologists just assume. The ability to eat anything is valuable when food is scarce, but humans have never actually needed to eat other animals at times of plant-food plenty.

So we went through some thousands of years of culinary complications, some of it designed to make the flesh look a little less erm… fleshy, but most people still ate mostly plant-foods. Until very recently it was only the rich that could afford to eat much meat, and the symbol of wealth and power became far more important than any nutritional value. Meat eating became the equivalent of big houses and flash cars, hence the city-dwelling Chinese wanting more of it these days, and for the same reasons.

The culinary complications were fine for those with chefs to do the cooking, but it was always really too time consuming for most other people, only a minority really enjoy complicated cookery (beyond watching TV chefs). And modern fast food is taking the rest back to the jungle, though in a very unhealthy form.

The modern equivalent of the jungle trees are the supermarket shelves, just reach out and grab whatever fatty, sugary food you feel like eating. The difference now of course is that the humans take it back to the nest, then put it in the microwave.

And if even that’s too much hassle, then the fast-food ‘restaurants’ make it easier still. You can get a beef-burger in a bun in a couple of minutes, and it is similar in size and shape to a large piece of fruit, just minus much of the nutritional value.

So no knives or forks needed, and no table manners, our primeval fruit grabbing hands are fine. A hot dog is just a junk version of a banana, and a slice of meat pizza is nothing more than a large leaf with some tasty bugs on it.

All those sugary snack bars fit the banana shape too, simply peel back and eat. This also reflects something of a return to the continuous grazing pattern of the jungle, but with dangerous health consequences in some of these modern substitutes.

Some people really are trying to return to the original healthy fast-food – just grab some fruit, nuts and leafy greens and eat them raw, though most of us still prefer a few beans and whole grains in the mix too, and those do need some basic cooking.

In many countries all branches of Burger King and McDonalds do bean-burgers, and they would be adequate (minus cheese, plus wholewheat bun…) – if they didn’t come from BK and McDeath. Though personally I’m pleased they do them anyway, not so much for the existing vegetarians, more to encourage their meat-eating customers to at least try something different – and someone must be buying them…

Right: top - how a healthy bean burger can look, and below a rather sad BK ‘bean burger meal’...

So will humans eventually evolve beyond this processed imitation phase, and return to the original fast food of the jungle?

Back in the 1980s I remember Margaret Thatcher being asked if she would encourage people to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. She was totally against it, her priority was to reduce unemployment (hence improve her election prospects) so she was promoting ‘value-added’ (i.e. processed) food, because that created jobs in the processing factories.

And of course when the customers get ill from eating all that junk, it creates even more jobs in the medical and pharmaceutical industries. A win-win for the big businesses and their political puppets (When Thatcher left office she joined the board of British-American Tobacco . . .).

But yes, we should all get back to more of the original fast food. That’s some of ours below, all from our own garden, but there is still plenty of it everywhere else.

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

In November 2009, the Indonesian Vegetarian Society (IVS) hosted the 4^th Asian Veg Congress, on Batam Island near Singapore. I had tried to persuade them to combine it with the World Veg Congress which they were also hosting the following year. It seemed too much to do two, when they had never done one before – but I was wrong of course.

I wanted to go to Batam, but it was too far from England for just a weekend event. Then our Chinese webmaster in Beijing told us about a Veg Food Fair being planned in Xiamen, on the south-east coast of China. This would be the first major veg event on mainland China and George Jacobs (IVU Chair in Singapore) and Susianto Tseng (IVS President and IVU Regional Coordinator) were interested in going.

The Xiamen event was just two days after Batam, which would be perfect for me to go to both and justify the long haul flight. The usual problem was how to pay for it all, when IVU doesn’t have the funds to help any of us for these things.

The Indonesian VegSoc generously offered to cover my costs on Batam, George would look after me in Singapore – and to our surprise the Chinese organisers offered to cover all expenses for three of us to go from Singapore to Xiamen and back. So I just had to pay for the return flight to Singapore myself, and the trip was on.

What made this so different was the unexpected scale and quality of what the veg*ns in Indonesia and China were able to do, way beyond anything I had seen in the west.

Thursday Nov 5 – to Singapore via Dubai. I was met by George at airport, then to Raffles Hotel for a drink at the historic hub of the eastern British Empire.

Friday Nov 6 –  met up with Shankar Narayan, IVU Coordinator for India & SW Asia. George took us on a whistle-stop tour of several of veg restaurants (they have a lot of them in Singapore), and the city museum.  

Right:  a sculpture in the museum contrasting old and new…

We took the ferry to Batam Island, checked into the hotel, then a bus ride to the venue for the opening ceremony. Just seeing what was happening at that opening made it obvious that the Indonesians were perfectly capable of handling two huge events in successive years.

Sat/Sun 7/8 – the 4th Asian Veg Congress got under way in the hotel, and I was given the honour of the opening talk, with an estimated audience of about 1,000. For the rest of the weekend we had single sessions in the big hall in the morning, then parallel sessions with four speakers in smaller rooms in the afternoons.  The food, all vegan of course, was outstanding, and there seemed to be no problem feeding so many people at the same time.

Right: the question session after my talk (with a translator) and the view from near the back.

In between listening to some of the other talks I was drafted into a round media interviews and endless photo calls. The involvement of local media was impressive, the word about this event went well beyond those lucky enough to be there in person.

Monday 9 –  we were taken a bus tour of Batam Island, where I was the only European on the bus, apart from Katharina who has lived in Thailand for years anyway. I felt totally at home with a bus full of people from all parts of Asia, there is something about their temperament that suits my laid back approach to life perfectly.

Tuesday 10 – back to Singapore on the ferry, and a bus tour of the city. In the evening George had put the word out via the local veg meetup group and we had a great gathering at yet another veg restaurant.

Wednesday 11 – a four hour flight to Xiamen, my first visit to China. George decided not go himself and asked Song Mau Lee to represent the Singapore VegSoc, which he did extremely well. Our Chinese webmaster, Genggeng, was setting up an IVU stall at the huge veg food fair, but needed some leaflets in Chinese.  The Singapore group donated a big batch which we stuffed into our bags, hoping the security people didn’t see them as suspicious (we were on tourist visas). The guy on the scanner commented on me having  ‘a lot of books’ in my bag, but didn’t bother to check.

We were met at Xiamen airport by two young ladies from a professional PR agency, complete with a driver and a people carrier, and were taken to an amazing 5-star hotel.  As soon as we’d settled in, it was down to the auditorium for a full rehearsal of the talks planned for the following day. We had five speakers from five different countries, and we ran thru everything to check the timing, sound and visual equipment, even the lighting.

Thursday 12 – I was on the platform with a group of businessmen for the opening ceremony of the event. It was a combined Buddhist Craft Fair and Vegetarian Food Fair – with attendances expected in ‘tens of thousands’.  We had a tour of the vast exhibition hall, and found the IVU stall which had been superbly created.   Below: the IVU stall in full swing.

Lunch was with the translators, everyone in the audience would have headphones so they wanted a briefing of what we would be saying. In the afternoon I gave the opening talk at the forum, as far as I know this was the first talk ever given at a large international veg event in mainland China.
Below: my talk at the forum:

Friday 13– we were taken on a tour of the nearby university, and into the temple next door for an amazing lunch (for photos of that, see www.vegsource.com/john-davis/food-as-art-in-china.html ). Sat  14– more local sightseeing.  Sun 15 – back to Singapore and home via Dubai.

Those ten days left me with a lot to think about, and changed my views of the way we do things in the west.

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

Veganism is not just about food. It is an ethical position which rejects any use of animals for any purpose, including clothing, research and entertainment, as well as diet. (Someone once described the term ‘dietary vegan’ as the equivalent of a ‘secular Catholic’.)

So what do we call someone who only eats food entirely derived from plants, but still wears leather or even just wool? One increasingly common term is ‘total vegetarian’.

Vegetarianism is a diet which may be adopted for reasons of health, ethics, the environment or religion.

The word ‘vegetarian’ was first used by a small group of people in the London, UK, area around 1840, but it only came into more common usage with the founding of The Vegetarian Society on September 30, 1847.

The Society was founded jointly by two distinct groups, one of which included eggs and dairy products in their diet, the other relied exclusively on food derived from plants. It was this latter group which first called themselves ‘vegetarian’ – people who just lived on vegetation – and much as some of us might like to return to that original meaning, common usage and dictionary listings will make that difficult.

The first objectives of the Society simply required members to ‘abstain from the flesh of animals’, leaving it to individuals to decide whether to use other animal products. Thus, from 1847, there was always more than one type of vegetarian.

Today we can define three common types:

1 – Ovo-lacto-vegetarian (plant foods plus eggs/dairy) – still the most common form in the UK any many other countries.

2 – Lacto-vegetarian (dairy but not eggs) – this is the predominant type of vegetarian in India, and therefore relevant around the world, where there are now significant numbers of vegetarians of Indian ethnicity.

3 – Total-vegetarian – a term becoming increasingly common in the USA which is also helpful elsewhere, meaning a diet entirely of plant-foods – a total-vegetation-eater.

In the later 19^th century there were attempts to use ‘pure vegetarian’ or ‘strict vegetarian’ to separate these from the eggs/dairy users, but they ended up just being used to describe anyone who was pure or strict about not eating flesh. It is possible that ‘total vegetarian’ could end up suffering the same misuse, but maybe we can avoid that by promoting it.

In 2011 the International Vegetarian Union conducted a ballot of 120 member organisations worldwide, and they agreed, by a 95% majority, to a new definition, consistent with everything above:

IVU defines vegetarianism as a diet of foods derived from plants, with or without eggs, dairy products, and/or honey.

The placing of the first comma is an important division. This definition does not consider why anyone becomes vegetarian, merely what they eat. There are, of course, many smaller variations as well as the three above, including whether honey is used.

Many vegetarians hold a variety of ethical positions, but there is no overall consistency due to the different reasons for becoming vegetarian, as well as the different types of vegetarians.

Vegan

The word ‘vegan’ was invented in the UK in 1944 to provide a name for the first Vegan Society. That Society’s current definition:

Veganism denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable— all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for  the benefit of humans, animals and the environment.

Comparing that with item 3 above, we can say that a vegan follows a total vegetarian diet, but total vegetarians are not necessarily vegan.

The relevance of all this to vegans is that there has, for many years, been an increasing tendency for people who only eat plant foods to call themselves vegan, whilst continuing to wear leather shoes or use other animal products. This has been a particular trend in North America, and is very frustrating for those trying to promote genuine, fully ethical, veganism.

If the term ‘total vegetarian’ becomes more widely accepted, it could just prevent the word ‘vegan’ from continuing to decline into the same sort of confusion that overtook ‘vegetarian’.

Of course we will continue to refer to ‘vegan food’, I do too because it’s shorter than ‘total vegetarian food’, but if we can make them interchangeable then it could at least help to clarify that veganism is more than just food.

In the French language they have three terms – the original ‘végetarien’ dating back to 1878, then in 1920 they added ‘végetalien’ for an exclusive plant-eater, only much later adding ‘végane’ for those of an ethical persuasion.

We need this clarity in English . . . something between ovo-lacto and vegan. ‘Total Vegetarian’ fits – but will it catch on enough before it gets corrupted?

See the North American Vegetarian Society: ‘What is a Vegetarian?’
 - www.navs-online.org/faq
- like most vegetarian organizations today, everything NAVS does is Total Vegetarian. 

For more on the real origins of the word 'vegetarian' see:
http://www.vegsource.com/john-davis/vegetarian-equals-vegan.html
and the Vegetus Myth at:
http://www.vegsource.com/john-davis/the-vegetus-myth.html
- both have a link to a much more detailed account with all sources.

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

I started teaching guitar full time in late 1970, and the following year was invited to teach an adult evening class, the money was good so I went for it. Looking through the regional brochure I saw that several other centres had vacancies for a guitar teacher, and was promptly booked for five nights a week.

Each course had to run for ten two-hour sessions, with about a dozen adults in each class, so I needed a very structured plan of what we’d do each week. I wasn’t happy with any of the tutor-books on the market at that time, so I put together a set of A4 sheets which I could hand out, and they could take home for practice.

The explanatory text was done on a manual typewriter, but I also insisted that they learn to read music right from the start, and that was a problem as there was no way of typing musical characters.

I found a system called ‘Letraset’, which consisted of symbols on plastic sheets. Those on the right have mostly letters, but they made some with all kinds of symbols, including musical notation. The individual character had to be held over the exact position required on the paper, then rubbed with a blunt pencil end, and it transferred to the paper. After repeating for each character, it took a long time… a very small section of one of my actual efforts is on the right, it eventually filled two 32-page books. . .

This was before any of us in the UK had ever seen a photocopier, so we used a ‘Roneo’ machine, which involved making a special stencil which was wrapped round an ink-drum, turned by a handle. Another long, slow, and often messy process, but once set up it could run off a lot of copies.

After a while I was also invited to run an after-school course at the local teachers’ centre – teaching teachers so they could go back and make some music with the kids. The centre had a reprographic workshop with various machines for duplication, binding and laminating materials for teachers.

Printing both sides was even more tricky, but could be done, then there was a binding machine which punched holes and put plastic rings down one edge, all hand operated again. The result was a useful bundle of papers, so we agreed that if added a cover I could sell them to all my students to cover the costs.

I came up with a simple graphic cover design, printed them on thin card, then ran them through the laminating machine to cover it with a plastic film. It looked OK and everyone was happy to buy their entire 10 week guitar course in a book. That’s one of the original hand-made volumes on the right.

That went well enough, so I thought about getting it published, but the owner of the local music shop suggested I publish it myself and he’d sell them for me. I found a printer who could work from my existing templates, and he ran off 1,000 of them, all professionally printed, and with staples instead of the plastic binders.

It was rather nice to be able to tell my students to buy a copy of my own book from any of the local music shops, before they attended for the first class. The photo right is from an early edition, I got a little less hairy as the ‘70s wore on.

That got me into sales mode, visiting any suitable shop within travel distance and selling them direct. Eventually I got orders from other guitar teachers in cities up to 50 miles away and sent batches by post.

By 1975 I’d sold over 3,000 books that way, but I was changing my ideas about what I wanted to teach, and it was a bit odd not wanting to teach from my own books any more, so I decided to bring it all to an end.

Now we can do all that in a matter of minutes using desktop publishing, and distribute it anywhere in the world via the internet. But there is still something nice about a bit of old fashioned hand crafting.

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

All we know about most people from the 19^th century is what has survived in print. The veg*ns wrote a lot of propaganda about the benefits of their diets, but rarely, if ever, made detailed records of any problems they experienced. Death records were very limited and, by today’s standards, also often misdiagnosed.

A useful comment on Wikipedia: “Historically, it's been easy to get B12, because until recently we didn't live in a sanitized environment. Plants pulled from the ground and not washed scrupulously may contain remnants of B12 acquired from the bacteria present in the surrounding soil. B12 is also found in lakes, before the water is sanitized.”

I’ve seen that view elsewhere, and it seems reasonable, but I’m not recommending eating unwashed vegetables or drinking dirty water! Those trying to follow a totally plant-food diet today should, of course, ensure an adequate source of B12, either through supplements or fortified foods.

The numbers of ‘vegans’ in the 19^th century was probably very small, but if they were suffering from B12 deficiency they should have had enough contact with each other to at least realise they were getting similar symptoms, and we have no record of that.

The other likely reason we have no deficiency reports was just a lack of consistency in their diet. Many people today support the idea of veganism but, for whatever reason, are not very perfectionist about it, and it doesn’t take much of an occasional animal product to get the very small amount of necessary B12.

But being ‘vegan’ in the 19^th century was much harder than it is today, so a lower level of perfectionist consistency was inevitable, and we can see this in many that we know about. Some examples:

Dr. William Lambe changed to a diet solely plant-foods and distilled water in 1806, when he was 40. He lived to be 82 and was reported as being in very good health near the end. However, after he died his daughter told his biographer that the women, and presumably servants, in the family, could never manage to make cakes and pastries without any animal products. As Lambe knew nothing about cookery they just put in as little as possible and told him there was none. Whether he guessed this we’ll never know, but it might have been enough for the very small amounts of B12 that were needed.

Percy Bysshe Shelley joined Lambe’s circle of friends in 1812, and in the spring of 1813 spent a few months living in a ‘commune’ that was trying very hard to be completely vegan. They had the same struggle with some foods – margarine was not invented until decades later, and soy products were unknown – but they seem to have been determined to do the best they could. After a few months Shelley moved on and the records are not sufficiently detailed for us to know how long he kept to his ‘vegan’ diet, though given the endless difficulties it was probably not long. The body can store B12 for a long time, and just a few months without it are unlikely to cause long term damage.

Over in the USA Bronson Alcott also spent maybe a couple of years as what we would now call a strict abolitionist vegan in the 1840s. He probably never gave up on his ideal, but the endless social pressures would have made it extremely difficult to maintain after his attempted commune failed.

His friend Henry David Thoreau also tried to give up all animal foods, but never quite managed to drop the fish, saying he felt guilty about eating it.

William Horsell, who did more than anyone to promote ‘veganism’ in London in the 1840s and 50s, eventually died in West Africa in 1862. He was buried in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s hard to imagine him maintaining a perfect diet on that trip.

We can see similar patterns in all of our 19^th century ‘vegans’ – some managed to keep close to their diet over a long time, but only rather inconsistently, others were deeply committed for a short period, but then drifted back to including some animal products.

So if we try to find a ‘perfect vegan’ in the 19^th century, we will be searching in vain. Their historical value is not in what they were able to do – it is about where they were trying to go. They knew what they wanted, but struggled to maintain any degree of long term consistency in getting there.

This is in stark contrast to those whose vision was a promised land “flowing with milk and honey” (and eggs), and saw that as an essential part of their diet.

Of course we see exactly the same in many people who support the idea of veganism today. When I attend vegan events I often talk to people, quietly and privately, about how consistent they are in their veganism. My impression has been that a high proportion of them are not entirely consistent, not through any lack of shared ideals, but because of all the difficulties, and relentless social pressures.

The 19^th century wannabe ‘vegans’ demonstrated that individual perfectionism is not the priority in the course of history. There are many routes to veganism and many people at different places along the route. Most of us today manage much better than they could in the 19^th century, and future generations will do better again.

So if we want a vegan future it is not so important how perfect any individual manages to be. What matters is agreement about the ideal of a vegan world - where we are collectively trying to go is more important than where any of one of us is right now.

Some final notes:

Vegan nutritionists recommend that vegans either consistently eat foods fortified with B12 or take a B12 supplement. Vitamin B12 deficiency can potentially cause severe and irreversible damage, especially to the brain and nervous system.

In Europe, especially in the North West, there had been many strong ovo-lacto-vegetarian societies for more than a hundred years, and their events could be problematic for the vegans. Eggs and dairy were and integral part of the menu, and any vegan items were often poorly labelled.

So in 1981, Kirsten Jungsberg, in Denmark, decided to organise a separate International Vegan Festival (IVF). The President of the British Vegan Society only heard about it two weeks beforehand, but went along and was delighted to find strong vegan groups from Sweden, and other countries, even France, among the 50 delegates.

That might have started as a one-off, but in 1985 Kirsten arranged a 2^nd IVF in Denmark, then there was a third in Germany in 1987. After that some of the European vegans began an informal network known as ‘Vegans International’ – there was no formal committee, just a contact for each country who tried to keep the others informed of anything of interest (this was all pre-internet of course).

More IVFs followed - 1989 Sweden; 1990 Holland; 1992 England. By this last one the UK Vegan Society had finally caught up with the idea from the continent, and put on the biggest IVF so far, with 150 attending.

The 7^th IVF was in Spain 1993, organized by Francisco Martin, using the occasion to launch a new society, and coin some new words for his language:– ‘vegano / vegana / veganismo’, hence his Asociación Vegana Española. The Festival was acclaimed as a huge success, but Francisco came in for some criticism from the more ‘separatist’ vegans because he was also on the council of the International Vegetarian Union (IVU).

Francisco had spent many years working in Canada, and preferred the NAVS style of veganizing from within, rather than screaming abuse from without. A few years later he was proved right, but things got worse in the meantime when the 1994 IVU Congress in the Netherlands became embroiled in yet more divisive arguments and food problems.

In contrast the 8^th IVF, held in San Diego in 1995, was another huge success, attracting more than 400 visitors for the week. It was jointly supported by the American Vegan Society and VUNA – Vegetarian Union of North America (both members of IVU) - which was also completely vegan, just like almost all the ‘vegetarian’ groups in North America (though technically ‘total-vegetarian’ would be more accurate as veganism is an ethical lifestyle, not just a diet, and many American groups are not involved with animal ethics).

This was followed by the 1996 IVU Congress, rescued by NAVS at short notice and combined with the Summerfest. NAVS insisted on their usual ‘total-vegetarian’ menu, making it the first IVU Congress to be completely vegan. The result came as a surprise to some Europeans, and EVU News reported of the chef: “His meals were even better than announced and probably made some lacto-vegetarians forget that the ‘Vegetarian’ Congress actually was a ‘Vegan’ one.”

The point was well made, and the IVU Council, with Francisco Martin now as General Secretary, soon informally agreed that all food at all future Congresses should be ‘entirely derived from plants’ (later formalized in the completely new IVU Constitution and Bylaws of October 1999).

Meanwhile ‘Vegans International’ (VI) ran into its own internal conflicts and effectively ended in 1997. The IVF planned for that year never happened. The Australians tried to keep it going with a small IVF in 1999, but that was the last for many years.

The former editor of the VI Newsletter went to the 2000 IVU Congress in Toronto, possibly expecting the worst, but wrote what can only described as an ecstatic report for The Vegan back in the UK: “This was really a World Vegan Congress.” He reported all the speakers promoting a plant-food-only diet, and making his own contribution on animal rights.

Since then the requirement for food ‘entirely derived from plants’ has been extended to regional congresses and any other events supported by IVU.

Meanwhile, back in Denmark, Kirsten decided to re-start the IVFs with the 10^th in 2006. The Vegan reported an attendance of ‘about 50’, half from the UK and most of the rest from Denmark. But as the IVU Congresses were only held every two years, there was interest holding IVFs for the intervening years.

In 2007, Shankar Narayan, IVU Coordinator for India & SW Asia, held the 11^th IVF in India (Shankar 2^nd right in the photo). Two years later Marly Winckler (with yellow star behind the banner), IVU Coordinator for Latin America, staged the 12^th in Brazil. The latest was back to our old friend Francisco Martin, previously IVU General Secretary, who arranged the 13^th in Spain in 2011.

There was now some confusion around all this as we had alternate years of entirely plant-food ‘Vegetarian Congress’ and ‘Vegan Festival’, with no difference between the two, especially when the 39^th ‘congress’, in Indonesia, added a huge food fair making it more of a festival, and the 13^th ‘festival’ in Spain consisted almost entirely of lectures.

In 2011 the IVU Council decided to resolve this by supporting an annual event ‘combining features of congresses and vegfests’. 2012 will be in California; 2013 in Malaysia; 2014 in Africa; 2015 in Latin America, and so on, rotating around the six regions – and all completely vegan of course.

We now have a huge number and variety of ‘VegFests’ around the world, all vegan with some attracting visitors from other countries, IVU will be publicizing as many as we can.

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

How long they were there depends what you call a vegan. The dietary-only types had been munching their plant foods for 150 years, but the ethical species were very rare, even endangered, and needing outside help.

In 1957, 23 year old Jay Dinshah decided to be an ethical vegan. He was born in New Jersey to a lacto-vegetarian family of Jains, immigrants from India. By the late ‘50s he was a board member of the plant-food-only American Natural Hygiene Society, but they were solely concerned with health, and he wanted to do something more for the animals.

He had been reading the journal of the Vegan Society from England, and in a 1959 issue he put his name forward as a contact for the ‘Vegan Correspondence Bureau’. The introductory note in the magazine said he “wishes one day to find a vegan wife!”

He found her in 18 year old Freya Smith from England, whose family were active members of the Vegan Society. In February 1960 Jay founded the American Vegan Society (AVS), and married Freya in August of the same year.

There had been some brief attempts to start vegan societies in California, Germany and India, but none had amounted to much and were soon gone again. The Vegan magazine in England recognised the potential of this one and devoted an entire editorial page to announcing the new AVS. They were right of course, it is still going 52 years later.

The Dinshahs set off across America to give talks and recruit members then, in 1965, they attended their first IVU World Vegetarian Congress. That one was held in Derbyshire, England, where they met members of the UK Vegan Society, including Freya’s mother, Grace Smith, who was now assistant treasurer.

The 1967 IVU Congress was held in India, and the Dinshahs were there too, now in Jay’s parents’ home country. The official delegates for the UK Vegan Society were Brian Gunn-King and his fiancée Margaret Patching (they married the following year). In the photo right they were meeting Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India.

By the end of that Congress, Brian had become the IVU General Secretary, the first vegan ever to hold the post, and Jay Dinshah was co-opted to the Executive Committee. The Vegan noted the potential of having two members in such influential positions.

In 1971 the Vegan Society held its AGM in London close to the next IVU Congress in the Netherlands. The Dinshahs and Gunn-Kings were at both, and Jay was elected as a Vice President of both the Vegan Society and of IVU.

We don’t know exactly when the idea of an IVU Congress in America was first discussed between the four of them, but at the 22nd IVU Congress, 1973 in Sweden, the delegates formally voted to hold the 23rd in the USA in 1975, with Jay Dinshah as the main organizer.

1975 – the vegans have landed – in Maine

“Arguably it was the most important gathering of vegetarians in the United States in the twentieth century." - Vegetarian America, a History. Karen and Michael Iacobbo, Praeger, 2004

And, of course, it was all being led by vegans . . . There were lots of individuals and small, city-based, veg groups across the region, so the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) was launched to bring them together and promote the Congress. Jay Dinshah was elected the first President. They hoped for 1,000 attending, but got 1,500 at the first ever World Veg Congress in America.

Freya was in charge of catering, and wrote a ‘total-vegetarian’ (i.e. vegan) cookbook for the event (original version top right), a version is still available today. The food for the Congress was also all-vegan - but with separate, clearly marked, small containers of milk and cheese for those that insisted on adding them (we don’t bother with that these days of course).

Margaret Gunn-King (above right with child) was an official delegate for the UK Vegan Society, along with Grace Smith, Freya’s mother, now their treasurer.

Right: the famous American comedian, Dick Gregory, with Brian Gunn-King and Jay Dinshah, handing over money collected for the charity VegFam.

So the women were doing the catering and child-care, whilst the men managed the business – well it was still 1975, and we have improved on that these days too . . .

Bottom right: Jay and Freya Dinshah at the ‘Indian Night’ during the Congress – which evolved into the annual NAVS Summerfest.

Full details of the Congress
– and some long term impacts of the event at:
 IVU and the NAVS Summerfest
and:
 IVU and the American Animal Rights Movement

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

For the first couple of years the journal was entirely about the UK, but things were stirring elsewhere and the first glimpse we get was in the Autumn 1946 issue which stated that there were members “both in this country and abroad”.

In the next issue, we get the first overseas letter from the Bircher-Benner Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland. There had been some discussion about feeding babies and the clinic said they had been successful making their own infant milk from almonds and fruit. A few years later the magazine ran a double page report from the clinic, described as ‘near-vegan’, with a collection of their vegan menus.

In the summer of 1947 there was a two-page article from the President of the Vegetarian Union of Germany, Herr W. F. Adolf Briest: ‘Towards Veganism in Germany’. In 1953 there was a new society - Deutsche Vegan-Gesselschaft – but it faded away again within a couple of years, certainly gone by 1955.

The major international event of the 1940s was the 11^th IVU World Vegetarian Congress, held in England, and the new Vegan Society sent several delegates. The lengthy and enthusiastic report in the The Vegan for Autumn 1947 noted other delegates from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Eire and America (right: the Congress hall).

They reported: “Special interest was shown in veganism, Mr. Donald Watson [President] having been invited to speak on the subject”, and a four page summary of his talk was added in the magazine. Apparently the talk generated some lively discussion which had to be adjourned until they had all cooled down a bit . . .

The independent Scottish Vegetarian Society was also present, and it was noted that they had formed a vegan section, rather than a separate society. The vegans in England had originally wanted to do the same, but the Vegetarian Society had rejected the idea.

Several of the other speakers were mentioned as being of interest to vegans, especially the IVU General Secretary, Mr. Bolt from the Netherlands, who “recommended that, as a practical measure, the I.V.U. should encourage the production of vegetable milk and non-leather shoes.” The report concluded: “At the Congress, The Vegan Society was formally accepted as a member of the International Vegetarian Union. It is most encouraging to realise that, as a result, we can now work in direct co-operation with the various vegetarian movements throughout the world.”

The benefits seem to have already begun by the time the report was printed, further on in the same issue were letters from readers in California, New York, Singapore and South Africa. Including one from a Dr. Liber of New York, who had written a plant-food-only book in 1934, suggesting that “the lacto-ovo-vegetarians should have had the trouble of finding another name for themselves, on the ground that we are the true vegetarians.”

In Summer 1948 there was an article showing that in France there had been a similar problem with words. Way back in 1920 Dr. Jules Lefevre had invented ‘végétalien’ for people who ate a plant-food-only diet (distinct from Végétarienne for ovo-lacto) – but this was purely health-related, not concerned with animal ethics. By 1953 there was a monthly plant-food journal from Paris called ‘La Vie Claire’, and some years later a chain of health food stores with the same name. Many further years on the French added ‘Végane’ for an ethical vegan – so at least they have some clarity, whilst English speakers still argue about ‘dietary’ vs. ‘ethical’ veganism.

Interest from the USA developed further in the Autumn of 1948. There was some discussion printed between The Vegan Society and Rubin Abramowitz, of Oceano, California, on the question starting a local vegan group. We have are reports from elsewhere that this did happen, but it was never reported further in The Vegan. There were more letters from Mr. Abramovitz, with the Spring 1950 issue referring to him as “acting as our representative in the USA”, but that was the last time he was mentioned.

The 1947/48 issues reported the Vegan Society Secretary giving talks in Holland and Ireland. Not long afterwards they heard that the Netherlands Vegetarian Society was proposing to form a vegan section.

1950 brought the 12^th IVU World Congress in the Netherlands. This was reported as being very friendly for the vegans, but they also complained that they were given no opportunities to put their views. The report ended by stating: “Having lost the opportunity offered by the 1950 Congress we must make the most of the next chance in Sweden in 1953.” They clearly saw vegetarian gatherings as the best means of spreading the word about veganism, and they were quite open about wanting to ‘veganize’ IVU. That did indeed eventually happen, but it took another 50 years...

Between 1950-53 there were an increasing number of reports about doctors promoting plant-food-only diets, particularly the hygienists from the USA. This eventually led the editor to propose three classifications of motivations: health, religion and ethics – with only those ethically motivated being entitled to call themselves ‘vegan’. In 1951 the Society had changed its rules to specify that veganism excluded any use of animals or animal products for any purpose.

In 1953 the vegan delegates to the 13^th IVU Congress in Sweden were a lot happier with their participation, and gave considerable praise to the Swedish Vegetarian Society for looking after them so well.

A vegan dinner was arranged in London for some people on their way home from Sweden, including Scott and Helen Nearing from Maine, USA. They were the authors of ‘The Good Life’ about their self sufficiency homestead, and they gave a talk at the dinner. They were described as ‘near-vegan’, but of particular interest as they were the first Americans encountered who gave their primary motivation as not harming any living creatures, rather than the usual concern for their own health.

The Winter1954 issue was a bumper 10^th anniversary edition, which included a lengthy report about the editor’s recent tour of North America. He was given estimates of 3 million vegetarians in the USA, mostly from religious groups such as Seventh Day Adventists, and about 1,000 ‘vegans’. But this was the same editor who had insisted that very few of those 1,000 were really vegan as they were only health-motivated.

There had been more letters and articles from such diverse countries as Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Hungary, India, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, and even China. The word ‘vegan’ was spreading rapidly, whatever they meant by it.

Quite right too, for me ‘hygiene’ has always been more about what I do in the bathroom than the dining room.

Hygeia, right, was the Greek goddess of health and cleanliness, While her father was more directly associated with healing, she was associated with the prevention of sickness. Her name is the source of the word hygiene (note the change of ei/ie spelling). 

In the past, medicine men didn’t  think that food was anything to do with prevention of sickness, many still don’t of course, which might be why most people never did understand the concept of ‘natural hygiene’ as a diet.

The NHA traces its (American-only) history back to Sylvester Graham (1794-1851). He does not appear to have used the word hygiene, though he certainly argued that a totally plant-food diet was crucial to health.

The first clear use of the word was by Russell Trall MD in the early 1850s, when he wrote his first book, and opened his ‘Hygeio-Therapeutic College’ in New York city. His 1874 ‘Hygeian Home Cookbook’ was the first known ‘vegan’ recipe book.

In 1883 Susanna Way Dodds, cited by NHA, published her ‘Hygienic Cookery’, which had a long section drawing on the works of Graham and Trall, fully supporting a plant-food-only diet. But the actual recipes included eggs, dairy and even a section on meat – presumably she thought that was the only way to sell it.

An omission from the NHA records is Dr. Elmer Lee, initially of Chicago, relocated to New York in 1897. He was the editor of the Health Culture magazine which strongly promoted a plant-food-only diet, and in 1910 he published an American edition of the first British ‘vegan’ cookbook ‘No Animal Food’ by Rupert Wheldon. Lee was reported as both a hydrotherapist and a hygienist.

In 1916 J.H. Tilden MD, then aged 65 and cited by NHA as one of four major founders of natural hygiene, published a book on ‘Food’ in which he insisted that some animal food was essential for human health . . . There seems to have been little agreement about the diet at that time, though they do all seem to have agreed with the basic principle that food and lifestyle, not drugs, were the key to health. Prevention not cure.

The major ‘hygienic’ character of the 20^th century was undoubtedly Herbert Shelton, and it was him who first coined the phrase ‘Natural Hygiene’, with fasting central to his ideas. If he had called it ‘Natural Health’ maybe the rest of us might have understood it more easily.

Shelton read the works of Russell Trall and Sylvester Graham in 1911, and had apparently adopted some form of vegetarianism by 1913, age 18, and by the 1930s he was clearly writing against the use of eggs or dairy products, along with tea, coffee and other stimulants.

In 1948/49 Shelton became the first President of the American Natural Hygiene Society (ANHS), probably unaware that a small group in England had also invented their own new word, and started the Vegan Society in 1944. 

By 1948 there was a small vegan group in California, and in 1956 a British Natural Hygiene Society (BNHS) began – apparently still going, but there is also a business in the UK today called ‘Natural Hygiene’, their tagline: - ‘Providing solutions for all of your washroom needs’.

Meanwhile, in 1951, the Vegan Society had clarified that veganism was about avoiding all uses of non-human animals, for clothing, entertainment etc., not just for food. The Hygienists were naturally solely concerned with human health.

By the late 1950s Jay Dinshah, a life-vegetarian from New Jersey, was a board member of the ANHS and went vegan in 1957. He remained totally loyal to Shelton and the ANHS, returning to a leading role 20 years later, but in 1960 he also wanted to do something for the animals, and founded the American Vegan Society (AVS).

Jay Dinshah played a major role in promoting veg*ism in North America for the rest of the 20^th century. In 1974 he co-founded the North American Vegetarian Society, using that as a platform to mastermind the hugely successful first ever IVU Veg Congress in the region, in Maine 1975. That event has been credited by historians as having kick-started much of the organized vegetarian/vegan movement in North America. In the early 80s he briefly returned to ANHS as acting Executive Director. Sadly we lost Jay in 2000, but his English-born wife Freya continues the work with AVS today (see: www.americanvegan.org )

Many of the leading members and supporters of the NHA today are a significant part of the ‘health wing’ of the vegan movement in the USA.

For more about the (American) National Health Association see: www.healthscience.org – if you come to the IVU Congress/Vegfest in California later this year you’ll get to hear, and meet with, many of the most prominent members of both NHA and AVS: www.ivu.org/congress/2012

I’m happy that NHA changed the name. I know a lot of people got used to it, but for me, and I guess for a lot others, ‘natural hygiene’ still sounds like taking a shower under a waterfall . . .

For more about vegan history, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

Russel Thacher Trall M.D. (right) was born in Connecticut, 1812, and was taken by his parents to western New York when he was a child, working for several years on a farm. He later studied medicine and settled in New York city in 1840, where he became a hydropathist.

In 1843 he opened a water-cure establishment, then expanded it in 1853 to include a medical school for both sexes, as the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College, promoting totally drugless health.

In 1850 the first American Vegetarian Society was launched in New York, with Dr. Trall as the Recording Secretary, alongside his friend and mentor, Sylvester Graham, as a Vice President. Their mutual friend Bronson Alcott was a visiting teacher at Trall’s school.

Around the same time he published his ‘Hydropathic Encyclopedia’ in eight volumes – with some volumes promoting a diet exclusively of plant-foods and pure water, but others including eggs and dairy products, though with some hesitation.

In 1854 Trall published the ‘New Hydropathic Cook-Book’, again with many recipes using eggs/dairy, even a section on meat for those demanding it, but describing the use of any animal products as a ‘compromise‘.

This was eventually resolved in 1862, when Trall came off the fence and changed the food at his establishment to consist entirely of plant-food plus water. He also settled on the term Hygeian (Hygeia was the Greek goddess of health), and this became a forerunner of the Natural Hygiene movement.

The change was explained in the Preface to his 1874 book ‘The Hygeian Home Cookbook’ (see below for a link to the complete book). He wrote:

“More than twenty years ago the ‘Hydropathic Cookbook’ was published . . . but for a dozen years past our table has been prepared without milk, sugar, salt, yeast, acids, alkalies, grease [butter], or condiments of any kind.”

He also objected to substituting any other animal products for flesh-eating. A few sample recipes:

RHUBARB TOAST.
Peel, and cut the stalks in pieces, put them in a stew pan, add a little water, some stoned dates, and a few English currants well picked and washed; let them all cook until done, and then pour them over the toasted bread.

BERRY MUSH.
Pick and wash the berries; stew them in a little water, adding a few stoned dates, stirring frequently until well cooked; then stir in very evenly a little Graham flour or oat-meal. Blackberries, raspberries, or whortleberries may be used.

GRAHAM PIE CRUST.
Pour boiling water into wheat-meal and stir to a soft dough; roll out as thin as possible; sprinkle a little meal over the pie plate, and spread this as the bottom crust. Make the top crust by mixing wheat-meal with ice-cold water; add grated cocoanut if desired; knead as quickly as possible to a stiff hard dough; roll very thin; cover and bake immediately.

APPLE PIE.
Make a crust according to either of the above recipes except the last; spread the bottom crust on the plate; on this spread a few dates, stoned and cut into small pieces; sift a little meal over this, and lay on the apples in slices or stewed; if the fruit is very juicy sift on more meal; cover with the top crust; have the fruit extend close to the edges of the crust, which should be wet so that the top and bottom crust will adhere at their edges; with a knife roll the edges under so that they will be smooth; bake immediately, being careful not to have the top crust much browned. As soon as done, cover tight with a dish about two inches deep, and let it steam till cold, when the crust will be very tender.

HYGIENIC BROWN BETTY.
Prepare a quantity of apples for stewing, cleanse some raisins and currants, and stone some dates; the proportions may be according to taste or fancy; cut some Graham bread into thin slices; put into the stewing kettle a layer of the fruits; then a layer of bread, repeating and alternating until the kettle is nearly full, or until a sufficient quantity is prepared; then pour on cold water until it reaches within two inches of the top of the pudding; set it where it will simmer slowly without burning; cook until the bread and fruit are thoroughly soft, when the liquor will be very rich; serve warm or cold. Grated cocoanut may be added if its flavor is desired.

Trall also published at least 15 other books, and edited several journals on a wide variety of medical topics. Here’s the link to the complete earliest known vegan cookbook:
The hygeian home cook-book; or, Healthful and palatable food without condiments – (on archive.org) by Russell Trall, New York, 1874.

For more about early vegans, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

James Pierrepont Greaves was born in 1777, and for his first 40 years he did nothing of any great interest to us. He ran the family drapery business in London, but in 1815 it was bankrupted by trading problems during the Napoleonic wars. That's him below:

In 1817, he read ‘Return to Nature, or a defence of the vegetable regimen’ by John Frank Newton, published in 1811. The book was in his library inventory, he used parts of it in subsequent articles, and it was consistent with everything he did for the rest of his life.

The ‘nature’ that Newton wanted to return to was the Garden of Eden, he quoted the Edenic diet in Genesis 1:29 – “I have given you every herb yielding seed . . .  and every tree, in which is the fruit . . .  to you it shall be for food”. He also wanted non-human animals to share the garden as equals.

Newton wrote about how his four young children adapted to this new Eden at the family home in Grosvenor Square, London – and this seems to have made a particular impact on Greaves. Soon after this Greaves says he read about the work of the reforming educator Pestalozzi, and in 1818 he moved to Yverdun in Switzerland to study with the master. For Greaves the route to Eden was by educating children from a very early age.

In 1821 Greaves’ sister sent a letter of introduction to a friend in Germany that he was visiting, she said: “… he has few needs, eating only soup and potatoes and drinking only water.” We know he did actually eat other plant foods but ‘only water’ was straight out of Newton’s book (ie no milk), which was dedicated to the highly respected Dr. William Lambe FRCP who was giving this ‘vegan’ diet some scientific credibility.

Greaves returned to England in 1825 and co-founded the Infant School Society, becoming its secretary.  Pestalozzi’s approach eventually became the educational standard throughout the western world, but Greaves had a hard time persuading 1820s Londoners to understand it, and gave up after a few years.

During 1832 Greaves was helping his sister with some social work in a deprived village in the west of England, and became acquainted with Sophia Chichester, the wealthy owner of the nearby Ebworth Park estate. Her support was later crucial in funding his school.

Back in London, by 1836 Greaves began calling himself a ‘Sacred Socialist’, and held weekly meetings of his ‘Aesthetic Society’ at his home in Camden. He attracted some very devoted followers, and we know that some of them adopted his diet as well as his particular version of religious mysticism (which then seems to have backdated to 1817).

Meanwhile… over in Boston, USA:

In 1830 a Boston publisher printed a book containing a series of letters from Pestalozzi to ‘a Mr. Greaves in London’. This was read by Bronson Alcott, one of the Transcendentalist group in nearby Concord. Alcott was sufficiently inspired by this to open his own Pestalozzi-style school in Boston, which ran successfully for a couple of years in 1835-36. The picture, right, shows the informal ‘conversational’ arrangement of Alcott’s classroom – very different to the traditional rows of desks.

In London, Greaves was also thinking of opening a school, when a friend returning from America in 1837 gave him two books about Alcott’s school. Recognising a kindred spirit he immediately wrote to Alcott at some length – but he had no way of knowing that by the time he read the books Alcott’s school had already closed due to objections from local religious groups.

Greaves’ letter (which we have in full) was entirely about educational matters, as he also seems to have been unaware that Alcott had adopted the ‘vegetable diet’ after attending a lecture by Sylvester Graham in Boston in 1835. But Alcott had become rather depressed after his school had closed, and failed to reply.

Despite this initial lack of response, Greaves went ahead and opened his school on Ham Common near London, naming it the ‘Alcott House Academy’, funded by his wealthy patron, Sophia Chichester.

The school was in a large building surrounded by four acres of land, and pupils were expected to help with extensive fruit and vegetable gardens to make it largely self-sufficient in food. Dr. William Lambe, now in his 70s, was still working in a London hospital, and we have reports that he visited the school to see his ‘vegan’ ideals put into practice. All animal products were excluded, as well as food.

Greaves remained living London, and was one of several visiting teachers at the school. The 1841 UK census shows that the only people living at Alcott House were teachers and pupils – 31 people in all, the pupils aged 2-14 with some 15 year olds listed as teachers. In the early years it was purely a school, only later becoming a ‘community’, though there were many members of the support network who seem to have stayed occasional nights without living there.

Contact was eventually established with Bronson Alcott, and in 1842 he was able travel to England to spend four months at the school named for him. Unfortunately James Pierrepont Greaves had died a few months earlier, so they were never able to meet.

Alcott House remained open until 1848. For more about how they became the first people to call themselves ‘vegetarian’, and launched the Vegetarian Society see my earlier blog: Vegetarian equals vegan!

For more about Alcott House, and Bronson Alcott, see my free e-book: ‘World Veganism – past, present and future.” It has now been updated to include the above article, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

Most Americans today are familiar with ‘Graham crackers’, though Graham himself never mentioned them in any of his books. They seem to have been a later invention by commercial bakers, originally using what had become popularly known as ‘Graham flour’.  But there was much more to Sylvester Graham than just his baking skills.

He had a difficult early life, a sickly child growing up on a Connecticut farm and largely self-educated. But by 1826 he became a Presbyterian minister and, as Rev. Graham, joined the temperance (anti-alcohol) campaign. This took him down thru Rhode Island and New Jersey, then in 1830 to Philadelphia.

At that time the only organization in North America promoting the ‘vegetable diet’ was the Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia, where members of the BCC from England, led by William Metcalfe, had migrated in 1817. Graham didn’t join their church, but he did adopt their diet, with reservations about their use of eggs and dairy products.

We know he was also studying the 1815 book by Dr. William Lambe, from London, on the ‘Water and Vegetable Diet’. Lambe’s biographer claimed in 1873: “A People’s Edition has been published in America, and it forms the basis of Graham’s Journal, and of Graham’s Lectures.”

Dr. Lambe promoted a diet entirely of plant food plus distilled water, to which Graham added more ideas of his own, especially on bread. In his 1835 book ‘A Defense of the Graham System of Living’, he refers to Dr. Lambe briefly (limited by the anti-British feelings at that time), but took a more flexible approach by acknowledging that most people would continue to use eggs and dairy products, even when they stopped eating animal flesh. He insisted that milk, if used at all, should very fresh, direct from the cow - not very practical for city-dwellers. But he made his own views quite clear:

p.125: “It has been customary from time immemorial to speak loudly in praise of milk . . . nevertheless, I am firmly convinced that it is by no means a wholesome article of diet.”
p.128: “As an article of diet, butter is decidedly pernicious, even when fresh…”
p.131: “As a general rule, all kinds of cheese are difficult of solution in the stomach.”
p.133: “Honey . . . like other concentrated forms of aliment, is improperly used as food.”

He makes similar objections to any animal food, including eggs, along with tea, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, opium, salt, sugar, pepper, mustard, ginger, salad oil and alcohol, insisting that the only acceptable drink is pure water. He also promoted the importance of exercise, sound sleep and cleanliness – all way ahead of his time for 1835.

Sylvester Graham’s next book was the one that perhaps brought him the most attention: ‘A Treatise on Bread and Bread-making’, 1837. He went into great detail about the history of bread and how refined white bread was unhealthy. Whilst insisting on the use of whole-wheat flour he again accepted that most people liked their bread made with a mixture of milk and water, but still made his personal views quite clear:

pp.88/89:  “… the very best and most wholesome bread is that which is mixed with pure soft water.”

This was another reference to the distilled water promoted by Dr. Lambe and his followers in England. We have details of some correspondence between Lambe (now in his 70s) and Graham in 1837, including the full text of Dr. Lambe’s letter of March 20, repeating his insistence on pure water.

By this time Graham’s fame was spreading from his lecture tours, and ‘Grahamite’ boarding houses were being set up in New York and Boston by some of his followers.

In 1839 Graham published his major work “Lectures on the Science of Human Life”. This had a series of numbered paragraphs, and #1291 says: "...though they do better on a milk and vegetable diet than one of flesh and vegetables, yet they do best when they confine themselves to a diet of pure vegetable food and pure water."

This came to the attention of William Horsell, secretary of the first Vegetarian Society, founded in England in 1847. Horsell was also a publisher and in 1849 he brought Graham’s book to the much larger number British vegetarians, where it made a significant impact.

Back in the USA the leaders of the (very ovo-lacto) Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia promoted the idea of an American Vegetarian Society, which was launched in New York in April 1850, with Sylvester Graham one of several Vice Presidents.

In London, Horsell had also been publishing his own journal, the Vegetarian Advocate, which had not gone down well with the Bible Christian President of the British Society, due to its strong ‘vegan’ leanings. In August 1850 his last issue ended with a lengthy article by Sylvester Graham entitled ‘Butter and Cheese’, not surprisingly arguing against the use of these products.

The London ‘vegans’ and the Manchester-based ovo-lacto Bible Christians continued to differ. In 1854 the Manchester journal derisively suggested this was all caused by Sylvester Graham:

“Mr. Graham, in his Science of Human Life, has been the leading advocate of the adoption of the Vegetarian system in dependence upon fruits, farinaceous [starchy] substances, and vegetable products alone, without the addition of animal substances, such as milk, butter, eggs, or cheese . . .”

They don’t seem to have been aware that Graham had died in 1851, or that much of his original inspiration had come from the highly respected Dr. William Lambe FRCP.

For more on William Lambe see my e-book World Veganism – past, present and future,  now been updated to include the above blog, and more. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

He was well known in his own right, but even better known as one of the Newman Brothers. They came from a conventional Church of England family, but elder brother, John Henry, converted to Catholicism and rose to become a famous Cardinal. Meanwhile Francis W. went the opposite way becoming a Baptist and then a Unitarian.

He was also actively involved in many social causes, including the abolition of slavery; equal rights, and votes, for women; support for animal rights including opposition to hunting and vivisection; and he eventually took the step of becoming vegetarian in 1867, at the age of 62.

Newman joined the Vegetarian Society at the lowest point in its history. The first president, the wealthy James Simpson, had died in 1859 leaving the Society with a lack of funds and leadership, it came close folding during the 1860s.

Some new leaders tried to be more progressive and the magazine had been renamed ‘The Dietetic Reformer’, but against opposition they still added the original ‘and Vegetarian Messenger’. The idea was to get away from both the exclusivity and the confusion of the word ‘vegetarian’ – dietetic reform was meant to include everyone interested in a plant-food diet, even if they weren’t there yet. It also avoided the endless problem of whether ‘vegetarian’ included eggs and dairy products, an idea which had never been fully accepted.

At the Society’s 24^th AGM, on October 18, 1871, Francis Newman proposed radical changes. In a later presidential letter to The Times he summed up his position succinctly:

“…our aim is not to found a sect but to influence a nation.”

However, the influential members of the Bible Christian Church, which had played a major role in founding the Society, were never happy with this – they did indeed want to be an exclusive sect – perfection in (ovo-lacto) vegetarianism or nothing.

What Newman proposed was firstly to allow the Society to enrol associate members, based on four categories of pledges:

1. to feed on the fruits of the earth only [pure vegetarian/dietary vegan]
2. to avoid the flesh of animals killed for food [ovo-lacto-vegetarian]
3. to avoid all flesh of land animals and birds [pescetarian/piscerian – fish eater]
4. to avoid flesh-meat so far as circumstances permit. [flexitarian or meat-reducer]

This was a remarkable list as it clearly put the plant-food-only-diet as the ideal, but the Bible Christians were insistent that their ‘promised land flowing with milk and honey’ (and eggs) was the ultimate truth. Newman (deeply but differently religious himself) said elsewhere that there were ‘a large number’ in the Vegetarian Society who did not use eggs/dairy, but this was the first time the Society had officially even acknowledged they existed.

But Newman went even further – he also wanted to change the name of the Society to the ‘Dietetic Reform Society’. As with the journal, this would have allowed the Society to support all those who were moving towards vegetarianism, as well as those who had arrived. If he had succeeded in that then the word ‘vegetarian’ would have been free to return to its original meaning of someone who just eats vegetation, or food derived from plants. There would then have been no need to invent vegans…

However, there were still enough Bible Christians in prominent positions in the Society to block these proposals. Prof. Newman managed to get an agreement for simple ‘associate membership’, but that was all. Even in that he was proved right, there were soon twice as many associates as full members, and the Society’s income more than doubled [for more on all above see 50 Years of Food Reform, Charles Forward, 1897].

Francis Newman said that he used some eggs/dairy himself, but kept them to a minimum and looked forward to alternatives which he anticipated might be one day processed from nuts. In an essay ‘On the Mission of the Vegetarian Society’ he wrote:

But whether we demand more milk or more meat involves the very same results. We cannot have much more milk unless more calves are born. The cows, I believe, have long since been kept in a milch state as long as possible. More milk must mean more cows and calves, more grazing land, more dependence on foreign corn.

. . . [on the use of eggs/dairy] We are in a state of transition. A future age will look back on this as barbarism; yet we are moving towards the higher and nobler development in becoming even thus partial vegetarians.

Just to be quite clear: This was the President of the Vegetarian Society describing eggs/dairy users as ‘partial vegetarians’, and the Society flourished under his leadership.

Soon after most of his proposals were rejected, a more radical group in London founded a Dietetic Reform Society, which then ran nationally in direct competition with the Manchester-based Vegetarian Society. Other ‘Dietetic Reform Societies’ soon followed, some as far away as in New Zealand and California. After he retired as President, Newman (a London Professor) took to referring to the ‘Manchester V. E. M. Society’ (=vegetable-egg-milk).

There were many changes of names and ideals, but the friction between London and Manchester continued for almost another 100 years, before they eventually merged in 1969. But by that time the Vegan Society had filled the gap in 1944.

My e-book World Veganism – past, present and future, has now been updated to include the above blog, a couple of older blogs, videos now working on Apple, and some more entries in the bibliography. You can download it for free, or replace your existing copy at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (now compressed to 5mb)

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion

If you want to go straight to the book, it’s at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf  (5mb) - below is the introduction and contents, with the link again at the bottom:

World Veganism – past, present, and future
By John Davis, IVU Manager and Historian (www.ivu.org)
A collection of blogs © John Davis 2010-12

Introduction (extracts)

Creating this as a PDF e-book has several advantages, especially if you are reading this on a device connected to the internet. For example:

- in the blog about interviews on SMTV, just click on the links to watch the videos
- in the bibliography click to read a complete scan of an original very old book.
- on the contents page click a link to go direct to any item, then click ‘back to top’.
- you can also, of course, use other features such as search, zoom etc. etc.
- a great advance on printed books… 

The blogs were posted weekly from February 2010 and each is self-contained, with the assumption that readers might not have seen any of the others. So feel free to start anywhere, and read them in any order, no need to read from the beginning.

The blogs are grouped into a few sections:

1 – History: It is impossible to consider a history of veganism without putting it in the wider context, so there is a lot that is ‘nearly vegan’ along the way. The word vegan was invented in 1944, but for a long time before that there were many people holding similar, though not necessarily identical views. The real beginning is from 1806, where see a movement that could be considered vegan by today’s standards. Before that there are some thoughts about people moving in the right direction.

2 – Regions and IVU – with histories: Deals with various regions of the world, and includes brief histories of those areas. Most inevitably start out as ovo- and/or lacto-vegetarian, but end up vegan, hence the use of veg*ism, or just veg, as a shorthand.
IVU from 1908 and some highlights along the way – that is also all vegan by the end of the 20th century.

3 – World View: Some recent veg activities and events around the world.
4 – Activism: Ideas for local groups, based on some in the UK which could be adapted.
5 – Directions: A collection of thoughts about where we’re at and where we’re going.

Contents

HISTORY _______________________________________________________

  4 - Were there Vegans in the Ancient World?
  6 - Medieval Mindsets – ‘vegans’ in the middle ages
  8 - Veganism from 1806 - a brief timeline summary of most of this section
11 - Dr. William Lambe - father of vegan nutrition, and his vegan biographer
12 - Dr. Lambe's Rural Roots - his childhood and retirement in Herefordshire.
14 - John Frank Newton - and the 'vegan' commune of 1813
16 -  Shelley - the first celebrity vegan
18 - Lewis Gompertz – Jewish ‘vegan’ and co-founder of the RSPCA in 1824
20 - Sylvester Graham - the original American vegan baker
22 - Taking the Waters - transatlantic pioneer plant-food doctors
25 - The Vegan School that invented Vegetarians
27 - Vegetarian equals vegan!
29 - Bronson Alcott - American pioneer vegan
31 - Henry David Thoreau and the Roots of Plantism
33 - Dr. John Snow - a vegan of genius
35 - The Truth Tester 1846-48 - a vegan journal
37 - The Curious Affair of The Vegetarian Advocate (1848-50)
39 - London Vegetarian Association, 1850s – the world’s first ‘vegan society’
43 - Prof. Francis W. Newman and the attempted ‘vegan’ revolution of 1871
44 - The First Vegan Cookbook - New York 1874
46 - Gustav Schlickeysen – 1875 German vegan, raw-foodist, fruitarian
48 - Was Vitamin B12 a problem for 19th century ‘vegans’?
50 - The Vegetus Myth - an attempt to pretend that vegetarians didn’t just eat vegetation.
52 - Henry Salt - the father of animal rights
53 - Gandhi - and the launching of veganism
56 - The Invention of the Vegans - the first Vegan Society
57 - Vegans are Vegetarians too - early years of the Vegan Society
60 - Vegan Goes Global - the first ten years, 1944-54
62 - Hygiene cleans up - naturally of course
64 - How the Vegans landed in America
66 - The Veganizing of International Veg Events

REGIONS with histories____________________________________________

68 - Learning from the developing world
70 - Go Veg - and see the World!
72 - Veg*ism in India
76 - Veg*ism in Africa
77 - Veg*ism in China
79 - Veg*ism in the Middle East
82 - Latin America leads the Veg World
84 - The Vegfest Phenomena

IVU with histories_________________________________________________

86 - IVU Vegfest/Congress - coming near you soon . . – IVU from 1908
88 - The Beatles and IVU – from 1957
91 - IVU and the NAVS Summerfest – from 1973
93 - IVU and the American Animals Rights Movement – from 1975
94 - IVU and Vegsource - together at last! – from 1998
96 - IVU and the Venerable History of Vegism [Videos] – three interviews on SMTV.

WORLD VIEW____________________________________________________

97 - Food as Art in China - 2009
99 - From England to California – 2010
102 - Jakarta Jamboree – Indonesia 2010    
105 - Meet Sundara - our man down under – Australia 2010
107 - The last leg - Malaysia to India and home – Kuala Lumpur and Bangalore 2010
109 - To Nairobi and Dubai - 2010
112 - The Global Veg Explosion – 2010
114 - Festival Vegano Español – Spain 2011
116 - The First Ever Veg Congress in China - 2011
117 - The China Congress - with pictures – 2011
122 - The Year of the Veg - 2011

ACTIVISM ______________________________________________________

125 - Throwing the lion to the Christians
126 - Living on the Front Line
128 - National Veg Week - does your nation have one? – vegetarian going vegan
129 - Vegan Wolves – free public vegan barbecue in Wolverhampton
131 - Vegan Café 4 the Day - could your group do this?
133 - The Big Veg Weekend
135 - Cruelty Free Christmas - an idea for Christians?

DIRECTIONS ____________________________________________________

137 - Divided by a common language
139 - Are you a positive or a negative veg*n?
141 - Vegetarianism Re-Defined
143 - Flexitarian and Plantatarian - 21st century dimensions
145 - The Plant-food Two-step Shuffle - and Pure Vegetarians
147 - Will there ever be more veg*ns?
149 - Why some restaurants don’t do vegan food – and why they should
151 - The Future of the Movement?

POSTSCRIPT___________________________________________________________

153 - Veg*ism, Wildlife and the Environment - what I see whilst writing these blogs
155 – A Year in the Sky – photos from my office window during 2010.
159 - Read all about it - antiquarian veg*ism – where all this history came from

163 - Bibliography
- Ancient India
- Greece, Rome and early Christian  | - Al-Ma’rri (973-1057, Syria/Baghdad)
- Europe – Middle Ages to 17th Century – The Renaissance
- Europe 18th Century – The Age of Enlightenment
- North America – 18th century
- England: early 19th Century  | - Byron and Shelley
- England – mid 19th century
- USA – 19th century
- Europe – late 19th century | - Henry Salt
- Asia and Pacifc – 19th and 20th centuries
- Europe and USA – 20th century

The complete book (5mb) is at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf

IVU on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalVegUnion