The advantages of restricting meat intake, and even getting rid of it, for the good thing about your well being. This is among the arguments put ahead via those that advertise vegetarianism. However have you learnt that this very topical query has divided experts since… the Center Ages? That is what Bruno Lauriouk, professor emeritus on the College of Excursions and president of the Ecu Institute for the Historical past and Tradition of Meals, tells us in The Historical past of Dietetics. From Hippocrates to Nutri-Ranking (editions CNRS, 2025).
Within the lengthy historical past of vegetarianism, 3 primary arguments had been complex to justify rejecting – or rejecting – meat. The oldest is moral; we discover it amongst sure Neo-Pythagoreans of overdue antiquity, who stigmatize the violence completed to an animal when it’s killed for intake. The latest argument – relationship from the 20 th century – is of an ecological nature and issues to the very detrimental affects of extensive animal husbandry, with regards to the discharge of greenhouse gases or the withdrawal of water.
However, we regularly disregard, probably the most motivations of those that utterly abstain from meat can also be worry for his or her well being. Fueled via the repeated well being crises that experience affected the cattle sector because the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, frequently referred to as “mad cow disease”) within the overdue Nineteen Nineties, then revived via highlighting the carcinogenic results of endured purple meat intake, a definite distaste has taken root in our panorama.
On this paper, Bruno Lauriouk in particular returns to the debates concerning the well being advantages, or now not, of meat intake, from the Center Ages to the current day.
Then again, this line of protest towards meat intake has additionally been used within the on occasion far away previous, stretching again from the Center Ages to the 20 th century. That is what we describe within the Historical past of Dietetics. From Hippocrates to Nutri-Ranking.
Protection of the “meatless” Carthusian nutrition: Arnaud de Villeneuve
The treatise De esu carnium (in French, At the intake of meat) used to be compiled between 1302 and 1305 via probably the most largest docs of the time, the Catalan Arnaud de Villeneuve; the unique entire model of this whole paintings is De esu carnium via Arnaldus de Vilanova, ed. Dianne M. Bazell, Barcelona (Arnaldi de Villanova Opera medica Omnia, KSI), 1999).
A well-known professor on the College of Montpellier, smartly versed in scientific texts just lately translated from Arabic, Arnaud de Villeneuve places his abilities as a practitioner on the provider of the King of Aragon and the Pope. Right here he’s taking up the protection of the Carthusians; This rigorous monastic order, based via St. Bruno, used to be accused of letting its unwell individuals die via completely refusing them using meat. Then again, the Benedictine rule, essentially the most common within the West, spread out the potential for consuming it, exactly for the unwell.
Basically, the ban at the meat of land and air animals, which used to be the center of Lent for the devoted and which used to be imposed at the clergymen, used to be a great deal comfortable. And that underneath the affect of the machine of illustration dominant within the secular society that valued the intake of meat; a machine towards which small Carthusian communities emerged as facilities of resistance.
In opposition to the detractors of the Carthusians who constitute them as merciless or devoid of any humanity via now not permitting meat to sufferers in nice risk of loss of life, Arnaud de Villeneuve needs to end up that we act extra successfully via giving drugs and that plant meals don’t pose any further risk in comparison to meat dishes – to the contrary. He thus units forth a sequence of scientific arguments taken from the reference authors which he has a very good command of.
First, he demonstrates, prescribing meat is of little need when the affected person most effective wishes drugs. Then, the extra warmth given via the fats contained within the meat, to which sure detractors of the Carthusians attraction, does no just right to the unwell, and will also be very injurious to their restoration.
The 3rd argument: meat indisputably restores the muscle tissues, however now not all of the essential drive; if the “thick and sticky” blood it creates can indisputably lend a hand the frame each day, wine and egg yolks (that are a part of the abnormal monastic nutrition), as a result of they’re “light and subtle”, display, he estimates, a lot more helpful for restoring all his bodily and cognitive purposes. (“Prescribing” wine to unwell other folks nowadays could also be unexpected, and rightly so. However at the moment, giving wine, and due to this fact alcohol, used to be now not a question of dialogue, editor’s observe).
The Catalan physician, who additionally prides himself on theology, reminds us alongside the way in which that the Bible by no means gifts meat as wholesome or vital meals. And he notes that the Carthusians, even supposing they utterly abstain from meat, reside to an overly previous age, normally attaining 80 years, just like the patriarchs of the earliest age of the arena, when meat used to be now not but normal.
The belief is plain: the intake of meat is certainly not vital in case of sickness and, in consequence, the deprivation of meat does now not pose a risk; those that declare that using meat is vital have actually misunderstood its impact on diet. A powerful conclusion, which readers, however had little affect on apply. De esu carnium used to be regularly copied and on occasion quoted, however that did not prevent an enormous meat-friendly motion from creating and wiping out the whole lot in its trail.
Benefits of fasting: Andri vs. Heke
Then again, the anti-meat motion re-emerged within the early 18th century, underneath the pen of the fiery Philip Hecke. This “self-taught”, who turned into doctor to the Prince of Condé and dean of the Paris college, confirmed his skill as a polemicist via attacking the liberties {that a} rising collection of believers took with the responsibilities of Nice Lent. And, a super scandal for a rigorous Jansenist as he’s, at the very recommendation in their physician!
Since the context has modified so much since Arnaud de Villeneuve. Lent used to be on the middle of the protest that the Protestant Reformation led towards many Catholic dogmas and practices that weren’t showed within the Holy Scriptures. With the Age of Enlightenment, an excellent deeper motion started in Ancien Regime society, a motion of innovative de-Christianization. This used to be adopted via a unexpected building up within the sale of meat, which is historically held via the Lodge-Dieu all through Lent, in response to the advantages given to the unwell.
Hecke protested in contrast construction when he revealed his Treatise on Dispensations of Fasting in 1709.
Particularly, he intends to determine “through history, through analysis, and through observation” the “suitability” that fasting meals have “with health.” After some 73 chapters, Hecke used to be in a position to exhibit each
“that Great Lent has nothing so unusual” nor “too strict” and “that fruits, cereals and vegetables”, against this to meat, are “the most natural food for man”.
To try this, he creates a nutritional profile of a lot of natural merchandise.
The belief he attracts is obvious:
“It’s true to mention that low-fat meals is extra herbal for people than fatty meals, that it reasons fewer sicknesses and treatments extra sicknesses.
This is a entire reversal of the dietary price machine proposed right here, with an confirmation of absolutely the scientific superiority of grains, vegatables and fruits.
Philip Hecke’s dialogue had a direct affect. But it surely truly annoys maximum of my colleagues. Within the shadows, one among them sharpens his weapon in preparation for the act that may take the other stance. For this Nikolas Andrije, abstaining from meat is neither extra nor lower than a “health trap”. Then again, Hecke affirms precisely the other, seeing within the previousness of the vegetable nutrition discussed within the Bible an evidence of its superiority with regards to the beef nutrition: didn’t God thereby display his choice?
Alternatively, in his need to fight offensive dispensations from fasting, Hecke found out within the statistics of meat intake in Paris proof of an unlucky rest of the apply of abstinence. On this means, it impacts the robust skilled pursuits of each butchers and docs. It additionally turns out to move a purple line within the eyes of the Church, in that the deprivation of meat is not a penance, however a call, as though going again to historic heresies.
The defeat of scientific vegetarianism in France within the 18th century
That is an excessive amount of. Andriy refutes Hecke’s arguments level via level within the two volumes of his Treatise on Lenten Treatises revealed in 1713. Certainly one of his most powerful claims is in response to a reversal of his reasoning: the Church prescribed their use exactly as a result of fasting meals are poorly nutritious, in order that the desires of the frame aren’t totally glad. In 1714, the intervention of the best doctor of the time, Jean Astruc, who obviously affirmed the dietary superiority of fats over lean, marked the defeat of scientific vegetarianism. A minimum of in France.
For, around the Channel, the vegetarian motion that evolved from the nineteenth century onwards used to be in response to scientific arguments, to which a determine like Anna Clingsford gave the type of an axiom:
“Not only do plant substances contain all the elements necessary for nutrition and the production of power and heat, but (…) they contain more than animal substances.”
Ironically, it used to be within the fortress of Carnism that the Paris college turned into that she defended her thesis in 1880.
