Anita Guerrini looks to the history books:
Britain currently has the highest percentage of vegetarians in Europe, about five per cent of the population. How did this happen in the land of the beefeater? William Hogarth’s 1748 painting O the Roast Beef of Old England, or the Gate of Calais contrasted the beef-eating English to the famished French (and their Jacobite Scots allies) sipping their meagre potage, or nibbling on raw onions. But carnivores and vegetarians, as well as that recent innovation, the ‘locavore’, who eats only local food, all have a long history in Britain. …
[S]ome religious sectarians and radicals in the wake of the English Civil Wars proposed a vegetarian diet among other attributes of an imitation of Christ and a new, more egalitarian England. […Roger] Crab’s 1655 pamphlet, The English Hermite, repeated the common belief that Adam was a vegetarian and further denounced meat-eating as conducive to violence because of its enflaming effects on the blood. In addition it was more costly than living on vegetables alone. The fact that Crab very nearly starved to death on his regimen was omitted.
(Image: William Hogarth’s 1748 painting O the Roast Beef of Old England, or the Gate of Calais via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 