It is easy then to understand, and important not to forget, that meat-eaters and vegetarians do not desire and need the same vegetables; meat-eaters wish for those that will help to counterbalance the excessive amount of the muscle-building element and of fat in meat; vegetarians principally seek at least some vegetables that are rich in the muscle-building element; and that consequently take the place of meat. It is, in fact, really surprising that present-day experimenters with a vegetable diet, breaking way from their own and their families’ long established meat-eating habits, have succeeded so well, consider the universal crass ignorance of the subject; for the vegetable food preferred by the meat-eaters and most frequently seen at their tables is generally comparatively poor in muscle-building material, since they instinctively desire thereby to counterbalance the excess of that material, and the deficiency of sugar or starch, supplied by their meat and fish. So, a vegetarian seldom find there what he particularly needs, vegetables comparatively rich in muscle-making matter and not overburdened with starch or sugar; and his appetite is, therefore, apt to be as unsatisfied as the crane’s who was invited to dine with the fox, and the shallow soup plate quite impossible for his beak. The incompatibility of the two methods can hardly be too strongly insisted upon. For it seems to have been (especially among meat-eaters) well nigh incomprehensible, or inconceivable, and has doubtless consequently led to the failure, or abandonment, of any vegetarian experiments.
Excerpted from Vegetarian Diet and Dishes by Benjamin Smith Lyman. Published by Ferris & Leach of Philadelphia in 1917.