Vegetarianism
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a system popularly designated as limiting the human diet to foods obtained from the vegetable kingdom exclusively, and abstaining from all foods obtained from the animal kingdom. This is an approximately correct definition of what was meant by the word when the Vegetarian Society was founded in Manchester, England, in 1847. It was not long, however, before it was discovered that there was as great a need of discrimination in the use of the various products of the vegetable kingdom as there was cause to abjure the use of flesh. Vegetables are not all equally wholesome, some are absolutely poisonous. There is a great difference between the stalks and leaves and the seeds of plants. Cooked and uncooked foods differ greatly. The study of food leads to the study of equally im-ay the channel by which they enter the portant laws. Eggs, milk, cheese, butter (animal products) differ from the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Many of the arguments against the use of flesh do not apply to the use of fish. Vegetarianism has spread so extensively that in addition to its pledged adherents it has a still greater number who practice abstinence from flesh to a greater or lesser degree in obedience to medical advice, for the curing or relieving of disorders of digestion, gout, and rheumatism. The Catholic Church enjoins abstinence from flesh during Lent, and on some other days during the year. Many religious orders (e. g., the Trappists) abstain wholly from flesh. Brahmins also abstain from flesh and eggs. The Vegetarian Federal Union was formed in 1889. It offices are in London. To it are affiliated the Vegetarian Society, the London Vegetarian Society, a considerable number of other English societies, and those of the United States (founded in 1850), Germany, and Australia. An international congress was held in Cologne in 1889, and in London in 1890. There are now vegetarian restaurants in many large towns.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 treated eggs, milk and cheese as a grey area, noting they "differ from the carcasses of slaughtered animals" — that distinction now has names, with lacto-ovo vegetarianism set against veganism, a word and a society coined by Donald Watson in Britain in 1944. The nutritional argument the old societies could not settle was closed by science: vitamin B12 was isolated in 1948 and is the one nutrient a plant-only diet cannot supply, so supplements or fortified foods are standard advice, and major dietetic bodies now judge well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets adequate at all stages of life. The motives have shifted too, from the digestion, gout and rheumatism Collier's listed toward animal ethics and, since the 2000s, livestock's share of greenhouse-gas emissions. Where 1921 could point to a handful of vegetarian restaurants, supermarkets now stock engineered meat substitutes, and lab-grown meat was first approved for sale in Singapore in 2020.
Written for this edition, 2026.