Millennium Food Company

“Curtis Freshel founded the Millennium Food Company to produce non-animal foods and to let vegetarians express their identity and their moral presence through their consumer purchases. Its most successful item was Bakon Yeast, a seasoning whose hickory smoked flavor made it an appealing addition to foods. 'Millennium Extract' and 'Millennium Meat' made their way into markets, and the company sold its products mail-order through notices in humane publications” (Bernard Unti, “'Peace On Earth Among The Orders Of Creation': Vegetarian Ethics in the United States Before World War I.” The Routledge History of Food, ed. Carol Helstosky. New York: Routledge, 2014. 190). For example, “Millennium Extract” was advertised in The Vegetarian Magazine  Vol. 14 No. 3 (1910): 66.

Caroline Earle White's editorial article in the June 1912 edition of the Journal of Zoöphily promoted this Extract as “hardly distinguishable in appearance, taste and smell from ordinary extract of meat … though it is entirely vegetable” (340). In the same article, White mentions a conference of Antivivisectionists held at the Belleview Hotel in Boston, indicating that the luncheon was hosted by “Mrs. M. R. L. Sharpe, author of the Golden Rule Cook Book,” using materials from the Millenium Food Company to provide an entirely meat-free meal.