Meet the sex-hating vegetarian activist who had the Soylent idea in the 1830s
Sylvester Graham was bout that bland life
Chances are you’ve eaten a graham cracker, which means you’ve eaten a snack invented by a sex-hating health cult.
The mid-1800s saw the first wave of mass vegetarianism in the US, and health hawks everywhere were trumpeting the benefits of whole grain bread. Specifically, people ground their own grain at home and baked it into bland loaves that would later inspire graham crackers. They believed the minimal ingredients in such bread supported a healthy constitution and promoted strong habits.
These, however, did not include sex or masturbation, urges that Grahamites deemed dangerously unhealthy.
Many incorrectly believe the graham cracker was invented by Sylvester Graham, a minister and early proponent of vegetarianism. Actually, though he’d made a plain, unsweetened version, the popular snack we know today came years after Sylvester’s death in 1851.
Graham advocated a diet free of meat, alcohol, stimulants, spices, and chemical additives. He believed clean living came from whole grains, homemade bread, and pure water. He urged people to avoid activities that may compromise the nerves, and was an early theorist that stress led to disease. If it were up to him, everyone would bathe regularly, get plenty of sunlight, and wear loose, comfortable clothes. Graham notoriously preached sexual abstinence and especially despised masturbation, which he claimed led to insanity.
Graham’s own health was rather poor from an early age, possibly because of glandular issues. He suffered a nervous breakdown in his late twenties, before moving to Rhode Island to recuperate and study theology. Soon his interest in dietary health merged with his preaching.
People began paying attention to Graham’s vegetarian lifestyle amidst the cholera epidemic, which broke out in the late 1820s and lasted over two decades. Popular medicine at the time advised a diet of hearty meat, port wine, and few vegetables. But Graham’s approach appeared to prevent more sickness. At the same time, more people were living in cities and buying food rather than preparing it at home; manufacturers were adding fillers like chalk and copper to white flour to make it whiter and extend shelf life.
Graham recognized these dangers and spoke loudly against store-bought food. His popularity exploded when he published his 1837 Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making. His lectures were overrun with people. Several male-only establishments even opened to help men duplicate Graham’s sleeping and eating schedules. Acolytes called themselves Grahamites and began demanding products like special flour, breads, and the aforementioned crackers.
When Graham died at the relatively young age of 57, many of his followers dropped out. A diet that was supposed to increase longevity couldn’t even spare its founder. More curious, autopsies found no evidence of major disease. People called him a crank and a quack.
Seth Hunt, a friend and fellow Grahamite leader, published a letter in response to the controversy. In it he said, “He was of a constitution and temperament which naturally rendered him mentally precocious, and predisposed him to nervous and scrofulous maladies…The wonder is that he held out as long as he did.”
While vegetarianism suffered a temporary setback, the health industry was experiencing radical changes. The start of the Progressive Era in the second half of the 19th Century meant reforming medical practices and increasing investment in public health, a movement largely championed by suffragist women. Americans were fascinated by diets, vitamins, and hygiene technology.
The irony, of course, is that to keep the graham cracker popular, Nabisco added sugar and preservatives in 1931, contrary to Sylvester Graham’s entire belief system. But the core tenets of his health doctrine now form the backbone of a healthy Western diet and especially the current clean-living movement, one low in meat consumption, high in vegetables and grains, and plenty of hydration. No one really bought into the sex ban part, though.
