AUTHORS: Beecher, Catharine Esther and Harriet Beecher Stowe
PUBLICATION: The American Woman's Home, or, Principles of Domestic Science Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economic, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes. c. 1869. New York : J. B. Ford and Co., 1872.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015014094638&seq=13
Unidentified edition available in text format (with or without images): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6598

Beecher, Catharine E. Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Recipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking: Also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
---.  A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School
Child, Lydia Maria. The Family Nurse
---. The Frugal Housewife

Graham, Sylvester. A Treatise on Bread, and Bread-Making

Kingsford, Anna. The Perfect Way in Diet

 

The authors do not advocate for a vegetarian (or vegan) diet; however, they discuss the health benefits of reducing the consumption of meat noting that Americans eat, on the average, far too much meat, which is damaging to their overall health: “The popular notion, that meat is more nourishing than bread, is a great mistake. Good bread contains more nourishment than butcher’s meat” (133). They assert that for children an “Animal diet [is] to be avoided for the very young” (viii). An entire chapter is dedicated to the benefits of rearing domestic animals with kindness and care, both for the benefit of the animals themselves as well as the people who raise them. They advocate for women to care for domestic animals as a means of financial liberation from dependence on men. While the text does not promote ethical veganism, it does highlight links between a vegetable diet and better health, between treating animals well and better emotional health, and between taking care of animals and women’s rights.

In the chapter “Healthful Food” the authors argue that stimulating foods and condiments keep the body running faster and harder than nature intended, and so the “constitution is worn out just so much the sooner” (131). Thus,

“A person who lives chiefly on animal food is under a higher degree of stimulus than if his food was chiefly composed of vegetable substances. His blood will flow faster, and all the functions of his body will be quickened. This makes it important to secure a proper proportion of animal and vegetable diet. Some medical men suppose than an exclusively vegetable diet is proved, by the experience of many individuals, to be fully sufficient to nourish the body; and bring, as evidence, the fact that some of the strongest and most robust men in the world are those who are trained, from infancy, exclusively on vegetable food. From this they infer that life will be shortened just in proportion as the diet is changed to more stimulating articles; and that, all other things being equal, children will have a better chance of health and long life if they are brought up solely on vegetable food. ... But, though this is not the common opinion of medical men, they all agree that, in America, far too large a portion of the diet consists of animal food. As a nation, the Americans are proverbial for the gross and luxurious diet with which they load their tables; and there can be no doubt that the general health of the nation would be increased by a change in our customs in this respect. To take meat but once a day, and this in small quantities, compared with the common practice, is a rule, the observance of which would probably greatly reduce the amount of fevers, eruptions, headaches, bilious attacks, and the many other ailments which are produced or aggravated by too gross a diet” (131-132).

The chapter “Good Cooking” links American natural resources with those of other countries: “Considering that our resources are greater than those of any other civilized people, our results are comparatively poorer” (167) due to the neglect of America's vegetarian "abundance": “Verily, the thought must often occur that the vegetarian doctrine preached in America leaves a man quite as much as he has capacity to eat or enjoy, and that in the midst of such tantalizing abundance he has really lost the apology, which elsewhere bears him out in preying upon his less gifted and accomplished animal neighbors” (168). In the “Vegetable” section of this chapter the authors note that “their number and variety in America are so great that a table might be almost furnished by these alone” (185), suggesting that very little needs be done to the vegetables to make them palatable.

In “The Care of Domestic Animals,” like Lydia Maria Child, the authors argue that kittens/cats and puppies/dogs make excellent companions for young children because they offer “a constant opportunity to inculcate kindness and care for weak and ignorant creatures” (393). In contrast, larger domestic creatures, such as horses, cows, and poultry allow the parent to “instruct the child in the nature of wants of each, that he may intelligently provide for their sustenance and for their protection from injury and disease” (393). The authors discuss the importance of keeping one’s animals well fed and well sheltered; “Cleanliness is indispensable, if one would keep his animals healthy. In their wild state all our domestic animals are very clean, and, at the same time, very healthy” (395). The care of domestic animals “so often falls to the supervision of woman” (393); indeed, the authors recommend that widows or unmarried women support themselves by raising domestic animals, “So that if a woman chooses, she can find employment both interesting and profitable in studying the care of domestic animals. … It is hoped a time is at hand when every woman will be trained to some employment by which she can secure to herself an independent home and means to support a family, in case she does not marry, or is left a widow, with herself and a family to support” (401, 402).