This piece is part of a new series where we spotlight historical trends that feel relevant now. Send tips to michael@thehustle.co.
It’s easy to feel like we’re living in an alternative-meat golden age.
But rewind 110+ years, and you’ll find a similar trend: Back then, newspapers could not get enough of the explosion of “vegetable meat.”
Nutty for Nuttose?
In 1896, nutritionist and cereal kingpin John Harvey Kellogg invented his first meat replacement — Nuttose.
It looked a bit like Nuteena, a canned meal made of peanut, soy, and corn that US stores sold until 2005.
Nuttose was far from alone:
- In the early 1900s, a Chicago Tribune columnist named Jane Eddington served up recipes for sausages made from a smorgasbord of ingredients: lentils, breadcrumbs, hard-boiled eggs, eggplant, macaroni, and rice.
- Then there was The Vegetarian Meat Company, a short-lived corporation that sold “peanut steaks, nut chops and other protein preparations.”
- Kellogg himself later came out with Nuttolene, a spread that had “the consistency of cream cheese, a meaty flavor and composition.”
Mmm… digestion!
My favorite take on this all comes from the Evening Kansan-Republican, which in 1901 raved that “vegetable meat” is “almost indistinguishable from beef or mutton.”
And not to worry — according to the newspaper, “one great advantage of the ‘vegetable meat’ is that it is ‘predigested’: it does away almost altogether with the necessity for the ordinary processes of assimilation.”
