Vegetarianism: 1849

When we noticed, a week or two ago, a banquet of vegetables, we were not aware that a great Vegetarian Movement was going on...

The Vegetarian Advocate has replied to our article on the late vegetarian banquet, and we must confess that, notwithstanding the very cholera-inducing diet on which the members of the sect exist, the answer is by no means of a choleric character. The Vegetarian Advocate has a delicious vegetable leader, with two or three columns of provincial intelligence, showing the spread of vegetarian principles. There are vegetarian missionaries going about the country inculcating the doctrine of peas and potatoes; and there is a talk of a vegetarian dining-room, where there is to be nothing to eat but potatoes, plain and mashed, with puddings and pies in all their tempting variety.

--From Punch, or The London Charivari--

I never would have guessed this, but vegetarianism in the West was part of a reform movement organized during the Victorian Era.

That kind of takes the edge off of it.