Vegetarians and Vegetarianism.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 485, 2 July 1890, Page 6

Vegetarians and Vegetarianism.

It is said that vegetarianism has been increasing rather rapidly of late, and, so long as such a change is the result of free and unfettered choice, no reasonable man would dream of objecting to it. Medical men of eminence have often declared that a good many Englishmen habitually consume an excess of animal food, and that they would be better in health if they ate less meat and more vegetables. The question, however, as to the proportion in which a man’s diet should consist of animal and vegetable products, is eminently one that depends on personal tastes and idiosyncrasies. Any attempt to dictate to the British public in the matter would be regarded as a monstrous piece of assumption. To tell the British working man that he shall never eat another meat dinner would be to raise a rebellion. But to do vegetarians justice, they have never yet gone so far as this. They have wisely contented themselves, so far, with advocating their peculiar hobby by appeals to reason and argument. In this these food reformers present a favourable contrast to the drink reformers. Vegetarians have not proposed to give a majority of the ratepayers of a district the power to shut up all the butchers’, fishmongers’, and poultry dealers’ shops, and to force an unwilling minority to live on lentils and potatoes.