By Kayla Brown, Staff Writer
Franklin and Marshall visiting professor Kathryn Falvo enhanced the Susquehanna community’s knowledge of food history and vegetarianism at her lecture on Feb. 21 in Weber Dining Rooms 2 and 3.
The Susquehanna alumna led numerous students and faculty through a lecture in medical humanities titled “Free Him Wholly from the Lusts of the Flesh Pots: Vegetarianism and Bodily Control in 19th-Century America.”
Falvo graduated from Susquehanna in 2011 with a degree in History and Women’s Studies, and earned her Ph.D. in the same subjects from Penn State in 2018. In her studies, she focused on food history and revealed the truth behind it; “I’m obsessed with food,” she said.
Falvo’s lecture drew in about 20 people, from elementary-school-aged kids to senior members of the faculty.
Her opening remarks acknowledged that most people didn’t see food history as important to medicine.
“It was one of the ways in which people addressed what the human body was,” Falvo said, “and vegetarianism was one of a monopoly of ways that people attempted to do that.”
Falvo, a vegetarian herself, shed light on the appearance of vegetarianism before the 1900s.
“We think about animal liberation…we think about all these great environmental movements that popped up in the 20th century,” she said.
According to Falvo, in 1809 the Bible Christian Church was founded in England.
“They probably got more of their members based on the fact that they ran a soup kitchen rather than the fact that they were vegetarian, but nonetheless their numbers skyrocketed,” Falvo joked.
Due to this, the British Vegetarian Society began. However, the church didn’t last very long as many people flocked to America shortly after the War of 1812.
According to the International Vegetarian Union, a man by the name of William Metcalfe travelled to Philadelphia with about 40 other people to start a small neighborhood church in 1817.
Falvo noted that upon reaching Philadelphia, there were not even 10 members left due to the strenuous demand of being a member.
The members had to take an oath that promised they would never drink alcohol or eat meat again. As trying as that was for most people, it was also necessary for members to marry someone who was also vegetarian.
Around this time, the Bible Church came up with the idea of Christian Physiology. To be moral meant to have control, which included abstaining from sex and not eating meat or drinking alcohol. To sin represents a lack of control and the punishment for sin is sickness, according to the church.
Later in her lecture, Falvo discussed Sylvester Graham, a minister who was kicked out of every place he tried to preach before he concluded that the cause of all problems was stimulation. Graham’s solution was to cut out all stimulating food, and only eat cold water, apples and stale wheat crackers.
Falvo simplified Graham’s theory, “If no one stimulated their body with anything, you could live to be 300-years-old.”
In 1843, Bronson Alcott created a Utopian experiment in Massachusetts called Fruitlands based on beliefs from England, according to Falvo. In their society, there was an all vegan diet and animals were not used for manual labor but rather the wife did the work. If anyone disobeyed these rules, they were immediately kicked out of the society.
Unlike the Alcott children, who were forced to follow the rules set by their parents, Falvo made her own choice.
“I’m privileged to have the ability to make this choice,” she explained.
Contrary to the people who were being told to cut out meat and alcohol after years of consuming them, Falvo was raised not eating meat because her mom was also a vegetarian.
“You don’t miss what you never had,” she said.