VEGETARIAN CRUSADE: THE RISE OF AN AMERICAN REFORM MOVEMENT

摘要

Although a recent Gallup poll indicates that only 5 percent of adults in the United States consider themselves vegetarians, plant-based eating pervades American food culture, popularizing "Meatless Monday" campaigns and fueling public knowledge of tofu and veggie burgers, if not their consumption. In The Vegetarian Crusade, Adam Shprintzen, assistant professor of history at Marywood University, traces the history of meat-free eating in the United States, taking the vegetarian movement as his unit of analysis. Drawn to the subject by his own conversion to vegetarianism, Shprintzen seeks to properly historicize the American dietary movement, as not "a product of twentieth-century modernism" (1), an example of ethical consumption, or a dietary choice motivated by health, but rather a political and ideological reform initiative with roots firmly planted in the nineteenth century.