ABSTRACT

A movement for dietary reform developed in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century, towards the end of the processes of industrialization and urbanization. Diet was incorporated in a body of prescriptions and laws to form a synthesis that Carton called the health decalogue. In numerous European cities, the end of the nineteenth century coincided with the disappearance of the traditional diet based on cereals and starches. In reaction to the traditional diet as well as the food industry, several initiatives, theoretical and practical, came into existence for the promotion of alternative forms of diet in German cities between 1880 and 1930. By the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century, dietary reform was part of the programme of numerous movements and groups inspired by naturism and vegetarianism. Britain's place in the diet-reform movement at the end of the nineteenth century was the result of an early establishment of vegetarianism.