A cholera epidemic reached Europe after starting in India and spreading to Asia by land and sea routes. Cholera is an infectious disease caused by bacteria that thrive on rotting food and drinking water contaminated by human waste. Infection occurs mostly in the small intestine. Symptoms included nausea, cramps, vomiting, and severe one-liter-an-hour diarrhea. Victims became so dehydrated that severe cases died the same day they were infected.
A Closer Look at Sylvester Graham, the 17th Child of a 72-Year-Old Preacher
Three years later, the cholera pandemic crossed the Atlantic Ocean
It landed in Quebec, Canada and headed down the East Coast of the United States all the way to Mexico and Cuba. No one knows how many were killed, but it must have been many millions because it attacked victims all over the world for four straight years.
Reports from India said it killed so many people that it was impossible to bury them all
Terrified Americans were told they’d be safe from cholera if they avoided vegetables, ate lots of meat, and drank plenty of Portuguese wine
Hogwash, said Sylvester Graham, the 17th child of a 72-year-old father
Daddy was a preacher man* and Sylvester followed in his footsteps for a while, then made bigger footprints of his own. He had strong ideas about certain foods being bad for us, so he became a dietary reformer, built some boardinghouses, set up an institute, and traveled all over, giving lectures and spreading his own gospel.
According to Reverend Graham, it was God’s opinion that we eat no meat
Sylvester went on to say that eating meat encouraged gluttony, one of the seven cardinal sins of Christian theology. He said meat also brought on lust that would result in severe illness.
Graham believed the things Americans were eating weren’t just unhealthy, they were causing a society-wide moral failure, too. Disciples who followed Graham’s diet would be healthy, sure, but they’d also be living a morally superior life.
The Father of Vegetarianism
That’s what many people called Graham, then and now. Regular readers know to be skeptical of such proclamations.
You could just as easily say Graham was The Father of Bran Bread
Graham believed people should eat only whole-grain breads. He told everyone who would listen how commercial bakers stripped the important parts away, leaving their flour with less fiber and fewer nutrients.
Bran bread was not what we know today, not by a mile
It was more like the hard, dry bread sailors ate on ships and cowpokes gnawed on around the campfire. Called hardtack, it was a heavy, dense cracker made of flour, water, and salt. It was cheap and lasted a long time in the days when all foods were perishable. The second part of its name, tack, meant bad food, food for animals.
Graham said God wanted us to drink no alcohol, either
So he emphasized abstaining from strong drink, which tied him in with the Temperance Movement. Sylvester took abstinence so seriously that he baked his bran flour and bran bread without yeast. Why? Because yeast produced that demon, alcohol.
Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson called Graham “the prophet of bran bread”
Bran bread was not in 1890 what it is now. Back then bran bread was as dense, heavy, and easy to chew as a fireplace log. Even Euell Gibbons wouldn’t have eaten it unless forced to.
The website restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com says this about Graham
“He believed the perfect consumables were bread and water, assuming the bread was unbuttered, made of whole wheat flour, and baked by a female family member, not by a servant or commercial baker.”
Sylvester’s followers were known as Grahamites
They were told to never eat cucumbers, mustard, gravies, pastries, cakes, coffee, tea, or any spices. Mashed potatoes were forbidden – get this – because they required no chewing.
Graham’s prescribed diet went far beyond providing just physical health
He said it also promoted spiritual and moral health. An important part of his philosophy was that people should restrain their sex drive because intercourse depleted the body.
Graham’s ideas about whole grain foods were spot on, making him an early voice for healthy eating
He was only in his fifties when he died of complications after receiving doctor-prescribed opium enemas.** When no medicine was able to help, Graham panicked. He threw his core beliefs overboard and called for liquor and meat, thinking they might cure him. This put a real cramp in Grahamism and the movement soon died out.
Graham’s lasting contribution was making flours, breads, and crackers from whole grains
One of his crackers had bits of molasses, honey, and cinnamon as flavoring – but not enough for sexual stimulation. The crackers went viral. The National Biscuit Company (today’s Nabisco) started manufacturing and selling Graham’s crackers at the turn of the Nineteenth century and still sells them today.
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* “Billy Ray was a preacher’s son and when his daddy would visit, he’d come along.” Dusty Springfield recorded Son of a Preacher Man in 1968. Rolling Stone has it on their list of the greatest songs of all time.
** Medical science at work. If you didn’t want the enema, physicians were happy to blow tobacco smoke directly into your rectum. And yes, it’s the origin of someone blowing smoke up your ass.
Bonus
Euell Gibbons was a natural food advocate some called a crackpot. When he prepared and ate an entire dinner from edibles he found inside New York City’s Central Park, the interweb broke and Gibbons was booked onto all the talk shows. He’d eat pine cones, twigs, bark, leaves, and grasses as the studio audience gasped, groaned, and gagged.
Post hired Gibbons to appear in their Raisin Bran ads. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) banned advertisements that said any wild plants can be edible. In yet another episode of Follow the Money, who had more pull with lawmakers – a handful of hippies or thousands of food manufacturers and grocery stores that sell foodstuffs to tens of millions of shoppers every day?
Gibbons resented how most interviewers portrayed him as some sort of weed-eating freak, “like the man at the carnival show who eats beer glasses and swallows razor blades.”
