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Plant-Based vs Animal-Based Diet: A Dialog
The value of a plant-based diet for improving overall health has become a hot topic of late. Following is a description of a dialogue in Greece between two knowledgeable Greek citizens. For the following, I’ll simple refer to them as Mr. Sarkis and Mr. Goulas.
Sarkis and Goulas are discussing the future of the cities in which they live. Sarkis says the cities should be simple, and the citizens should subsist on barley and wheat, with relishes of salt, olives, cheese and “country fare of boiled onions and cabbage,” with desserts of “figs, pease, beans, roasted myrtle-berries and beechnuts, and wine in moderation.” Sarkis continues, “And thus, passing their days in tranquility and sound health, they will, in all probability, live to an advanced age...”
Goulas replies that such a diet would only be appropriate for “a community of swine,” and that the citizens should live “in a civilized manner.” He continues, “They ought to recline on couches. . . and have the usual dishes and dessert of a modern dinner.” In other words, the citizens should have the “luxury” of eating meat.
To that Sarkis replies, “if you wish us also to contemplate a city that is suffering from inflammation.... We shall also need great quantities of all kinds of cattle for those who may wish to eat them, shall we not?”
Goulas says, “Of course we shall.”
Sarkis then says, “Then shall we not experience the need of medical men also to a much greater extent under this than under the former régime?”
Goulas can’t deny it. “Yes, indeed,” he says.
Sarkis goes on to say that this luxurious city will be short of land because of the extra acreage required to raise animals for food. This shortage will lead the citizens to take land from others, which could precipitate violence and war, thus a need for justice. Furthermore, Sarkis says, “when dissoluteness and diseases abound in a city, are not law courts and surgeries opened in abundance, and do not Law and Physic begin to hold their heads high, when numbers even of well-born persons devote themselves with eagerness to these professions?” In other words, in this luxurious city of sickness and disease, lawyers and doctors will become the norm.
Sounds contemporary, doesn’t it? Wrong, this was paraphrased from the book “The Ethics of Diet” written in 1883. Well, historically that’s reasonably recent, right? Wrong again. In the quoted dialogue replace “Sarkis” with “Socrates” and “Goulas” with “Glaucon” and you have excerpts from a dialogue written by Plato almost 2,500 years ago.
