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George Bernard Shaw and the dreaded salad—being a vegetarian, then and now
By Roberta Attanasio The ingenious playwright George Bernard Shaw was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty.” He was a fervent vegetarian, and the same traits that characterized his work can be found in his staunch defense of vegetarianism. At a meeting of the University of London Vegetarian Society, held in 1923, he said: “Sages and saints and a few others recoil from eating meat.” He himself was a sage; and probably after a decent interval he would be made a saint. During the same meeting, he brought…
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Pythagoras, the first campaigner for ethical vegetarianism
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Pythagoras, the first campaigner for ethical vegetarianism
By Roberta Attanasio An article published almost 120 years ago in the New York Times (1907) focused on several questions delving on “what and how a normal person should eat.” The article detailed the resulting debate, which included the voices of many scientists. One of the discussion points was vegetarianism, and a related question was: “Should we, then, being busy New Yorkers, and having no time to waste, and no energy to spare, drop meat and eggs from our diets, and substitute other foods?” The answer was “No, emphatically No!” It was given on the basis that “the arguments in favor of vegetarianism were mainly ethical or sentimental, becoming nearly…
