Vintage Veg

The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook Still Has Things to Teach Us

“We are vegetarians because one-third of the world is starving and at least half goes to bed hungry every night”

What is there to learn from a cookbook published by a religious vegetarian community in 1975? A lot, it turns out, if one is interested how veganism as a cuisine has evolved since the days of hippies extolling the virtues of the soybean. The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, published by the still-existing commune in Tennessee of the same name, makes its philosophy known on page one, alongside a photo of the leader who brought the first inhabitants from San Francisco to the south, Stephen Gaskin.

“We are vegetarians because one-third of the world is starving and at least half goes to bed hungry every night,” they write. “If everyone was vegetarian, there would be enough food to go around, and no one would be hungry.”

This is the ’70s soy wave, initiated most famously in Frances Moore Lappé’s seminal 1971 text Diet for a Small Planet. And while they call themselves vegetarian, the members of the commune were vegan, consuming no meat, fish, poultry, eggs, or dairy, and focused on growing their own food.

Despite the seemingly ascetic nature…