My wife recently told me an interesting story. When she was young, she went to her grandmother’s house for the summer. Her brother, a year younger than she, wrote her a letter. In the letter he told her that their family had turned vegetarian and that “now we are eating something that resembles rubber heels.”
—N. Gordon Thomas, Angwin, California
My husband, the boys’ dean, and I live in a boarding academy boys’ dormitory. As we eagerly awaited the birth of our first child this past summer, I was a little uncertain how the boys would feel about the baby when they returned to school. Would the baby make too much noise for the boys; would the boys make too much noise for the baby? Would they dislike the extra demands on our time?
Shortly after the boys returned to school my husband told me that every night in worship with his RAs (resident assistants), one of them would pray, “Please help the baby to sleep so that Mrs. Knight can get some rest.” I’ve frequently been asked, “How’s the baby, Mrs. Knight?” or “Can I hold the baby, Mrs. Knight?” The baby even made a candid appearance with one of the boys in his school “Names and Faces” picture.
I shouldn’t have worried. After all, one of the best things about boarding academy life is that we’re all just one big family!
—Jaclyn Knight, Hutchinson, Minnesota
“It is possible to lie without saying a word. People may do so by a nod of the head, a wink of the eye, a wave of the hand, or merely by remaining silent.”
—Thomas Chitowe, Guruve, Zimbabwe, as a caution to Adventists to monitor their behavior in regard to truthfulness
Here are some interesting dates regarding vegetarianism in the United States.
By the way, how’s that vegeburger?
1838:Vegetarianism endorsed in the U.S. by the American Health Convention
1900-1960:As transportation and refrigeration improve, meat consumption increases.
1971: Publication of Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappe, launches vegetarian movement in U.S. One percent of U.S. citizens describe themselves as vegetarian.
1974: Vegetarian Times magazine is founded by Paul Obis.
1983: Dr. John McDougall’s The McDougall Plan—the first book promoting
veganism by a credentialed Western medical authority—is published.
1990s: Medical evidence supporting the superiority of vegetarian diets becomes overwhelming. The American Dietetic Association officially endorses vegetarianism, and books by prominent doctors promote low-fat vegan or mostly vegan diets (e.g., The McDougall Program and Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease).
2003: Vegetarian food (such as soy milk and textured vegetable protein) sales double since 1998 to $1.6 billion.
2011: MyPlate replaces MyPyramid, ending 19 years of food pyramid guidelines from the U.S. government. According to the diagram, “protein” is a component of a healthy diet, but meat is not specifically mentioned.
—from an October 12, 2012, TakePart article available at http://news.yahoo.com/look-around-america-vegetarianism-isnt-going-anywhere-155700692.html
