Green Thoughts

By Stefan Kanfer

THE VEGETABLE PASSION

by JANET BARKAS

224 pages. Scribner's. $8.95.

In Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens introduces "an elderly pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man . . . who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment." That caricature of the desiccated plant-eater still pervades the English-speaking world. The very language is meaty with bias. Imagine a Beaneater martini, a fatted kale, a yam actor, a string of Turnip 'n' Brew restaurants. . .

On this mountain of cultural prejudice, Janet Barkas has planted The Vegetable Passion, a monomaniacal history of herbivores from Neanderthal man to the Hare Krishna people. Between her gargoyle book ends, this vegetarian convert presents a series of case histories. Each serves to dispel the notion that vegetable dieters are as alike as peas in a pod. Here is the early Christian theologian--and heretic--Origen, who castrated himself, and the American Benjamin Franklin, who did not. Here is Pythagoras, who denounced beans, and Horace Greeley, who renounced coffee. Here are the diverse saints and satans of human history: Gandhi and Hitler, Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Bormann, Albert Schweitzer and Richard Wagner. In The Vegetable Passion, such celebrities are always less notable for their deeds than for their dinners. "Byron," observes Barkas, "noted poet and lover, practiced a meatless diet sporadically throughout his life, not because of deep ethical or political ideas, but out of vanity--to enable him to keep his weight down and preserve his thin, appealing figure, which was almost as memorable as his strikingly handsome features."

Such effervescent reportage, unavailable since the demise of Louella Parsons, deadens the volume's central message. Healthy new comestibles are described in terms that instantly subvert the appetite: "The Pfizer Company has produced a product called Sure-Curd that is made from the parasitic fungus Endothia parasitica, a crystalline enzyme that . . . cuts in half the maturation time for Cheddar cheese." Moreover, the book's glossary of labels for meatless-dieters is as discouraging as mock chopped liver: "ovo-lactarians" supplement their plant food with eggs and milk; "granivores" eat only seeds and grains; "fruitarians" consume only fruits; "vegans" refrain from utilizing any animal product whatever.

Yet beneath the jargon and gossip, a serious as well as topical undercurrent can be felt. Should animals be killed to feed humans? In the long run, is the consumption of 10 Ibs. of grain to produce 1 Ib. of beef an equitable or sensible ratio? Is the meatless meal a fashion, an ideal or a specter? These were once the narrow concerns of Victorian freethinkers like George Bernard Shaw or of pop nutritionists like Adelle Davis. But suddenly, in many societies, the question of a high-protein vegetable diet has be come literally a matter of life and death.

Doubtless on the great anthropomorphic ocean every swell believes it self the wave of the future. But given present populations and food sources, Barkas' prophecy seems valid: the vegetable passion is no longer a joke. It is likely to gain adherents and political significance in the next decades. There may even come a day when it provokes books of vigor and practicality instead of green, leafy prattle. qedStefan Kanfer

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