By — Kamala Kelkar Kamala Kelkar Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/was-walt-whitman-a-follower-of-the-paleo-diet Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Was Walt Whitman a follower of the ‘Paleo’ diet? Arts Apr 30, 2016 3:43 PM EDT There are many takeaways from a series on health written by Walt Whitman in 1858 and recently published online, but one thing is clear — the celebrated American poet was not a fan of vegetarians. “Let the main part of a diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else,” he wrote. The series called “Manly Health Training”, which Whitman wrote under the pseudonym Mose Velsor for a New York paper, was discovered by a graduate student last summer and was digitized for the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. While there are about 125 pages of tips and insights – including worries that diseases spread by prostitution threatened man’s ability to procreate – the New York Times pointed out his allegiance to meat, aligning him with the modern Paleo diet. The path to a “noble-bodied, pure-bodied” according to Whitman, was an almost exclusively meat-based diet of lean meats. He said vegetarianism had a weakening effect, and did not mince words. “We have seen New England and New York vegetarians, gaunt, hard, melancholy, and unhappy looking persons, that looked like anything else than a recommendation of their doctrine — for that is the proof, after all,” he wrote. By — Kamala Kelkar Kamala Kelkar Kamala Kelkar works on investigative projects at PBS NewsHour Weekend. She has been a journalist for a decade, reporting from Oakland, India, Alaska and now New York. @kkelkar
There are many takeaways from a series on health written by Walt Whitman in 1858 and recently published online, but one thing is clear — the celebrated American poet was not a fan of vegetarians. “Let the main part of a diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else,” he wrote. The series called “Manly Health Training”, which Whitman wrote under the pseudonym Mose Velsor for a New York paper, was discovered by a graduate student last summer and was digitized for the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. While there are about 125 pages of tips and insights – including worries that diseases spread by prostitution threatened man’s ability to procreate – the New York Times pointed out his allegiance to meat, aligning him with the modern Paleo diet. The path to a “noble-bodied, pure-bodied” according to Whitman, was an almost exclusively meat-based diet of lean meats. He said vegetarianism had a weakening effect, and did not mince words. “We have seen New England and New York vegetarians, gaunt, hard, melancholy, and unhappy looking persons, that looked like anything else than a recommendation of their doctrine — for that is the proof, after all,” he wrote.