Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I saw this picture of Stanley Green, The Protein Man, and it intrigued me.

According to Wikipedia, Stanley Green stood on the streets of London every day, peddling his book, Eight Passion Proteins with Care. If you’d like to read it, here is a PDF:

• Eight Passion Proteins with Care by Stanley Green 1975 Edition

He proselytized that eating protein was bad because it stimulated sexual desire. He wasn’t wrong. Several studies have shown that to be true, with dire warnings to vegetarians to watch their protein levels.

• BBC NEWS | Health | Sex drive warning to vegetarians and elderly

Poor Stanley, however, thought sexual passion was a bad thing and suggested that eating less protein would “increase discretion.”

At some time in our twenties, when the body comes to adult perfection and size, we cease to require protein for body building, and so passion gets a bonus of protein, if we do not eat less of protein, correspondingly.

The book continually refers to a “sexual friend,” who appears to be someone with whom you experiment sexually.

…it might be very hard to be well behaved with a sexual friend, and to be headstrong in one’s lonely bed: HARD to follow a responsible moral-code, in the unmarried years. -Use your unaided will, for as long as you can, to develop your character; but do not let passion defeat you, ALONE, nor with a sexual friend.

It’s more disturbing when I read this paragraph:

Some will not be lucky enough to marry, and others are conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE; but they would find the essence of happiness, in having gentle passion all the time: free of fleshly longing, particularly at bed-time.

Those who are “conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE?” Who are they? Is he talking about homosexuals?

He continues to rant about wives needing to eat less protein so their husbands aren’t overwhelmed by their “married-love” duties.

Married-love takes its toll of men as well. And for how many is it the last straw? -Do you find it hard to satisfy your husband, or is it an anxiety for YOUR HUSBAND to know how to keep YOU sweet, with enough married-love?

In World War II, Stanley was appalled by his co-sailors constant talk about their wives and sweethearts and what they wanted to do once they got home. Considering that he never married, I’m beginning to think that he may have been “conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE.” Perhaps he had been enticed by an encounter with a “sexual friend” only to find shame in his budding homosexuality. Never able to accept it, he chose to deny his nature and suppress his desire, and, in turn, urging others to do the same.

And, once again, there we have it. Dietary advice from a man trying to squelch his natural desires. Just like Kellogg, Graham and Post, poor Stanley Green spent his life railing against healthy sexual desire and blaming an essential nutrient in our food for it.

The next time someone tells you that you should be a vegetarian, remember where this obsession for vegetarianism came from and know that it’s not really a way of eating meant to make you happy or even healthy. It was a Puritan effort to squelch sexual desire in a society that was uncomfortable with it.

Via:

• Stanley Green – The Protein Man – Retronaut
• The Protein Man | John Guy Collick