The historical context of vegetarianism

Abstract

The history of vegetarianism as a dietary movement has recently been condensed nicely, if inadvertently, in a Jumble, a type of word puzzle that appears in many American newspapers. In the Jumble, several words are presented with their letters rearranged, and the solver challenged to restore the scrambled words to their proper spelling. Certain designated letters in each reconstituted word must then be rearranged into new words to provide an answer to a picture riddle. In the Jumble under consideration, a man in a pith helmet is depicted up to his waist in a soon-to-besimmering cauldron, nervously holding out a book titled Good Nutrition . The puzzle caption reads, “What the missionary had to convert the cannibals to”.