5 Things You Need to Know About the Graham Diet

1. A Diet to Curb the Sex Drive?

In the nineteenth century, the Reverend Sylvester Graham decided that improper diet led to excessive sexual thoughts. He felt that if you changed diet and removed meat, you would decrease the sex drive and stop sexual behaviors like masturbation. He also thought that lust, caused by diet, created a variety of disease that included pulmonary consumption and even epilepsy. He promoted the diet through his prolific writing and speeches.

2. The Basics for the Graham Diet

The diet is basically a bland lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. It contains all the fresh fruits and vegetables you can consume. Whole wheat and fiber, and moderate amounts of fresh milk, cheese and eggs round out the diet. You can also add a small amount of butter, but only if it's fresh. If you like a spicy meal, forget it. This diet allows no spices, which Graham believed contributed to lust and ill-health. Graham also had the belief that ketchup and mustard created insanity.

3. A College Takes on the Diet

Oberlin College embraced the diet and, eventually, the Graham diet found its way to their cafeteria for a few months in 1841. The main staple for the student's fare was a cracker created from coarsely ground, unsifted wheat flour--an early version of graham crackers. The college promoted water as the accompaniment of this delightful meal. Students literally escaped campus to eat elsewhere. Oberlin took the diet so seriously that one professor lost his job in that period of time because he chose to add a little pepper to his meal. Just a few months after they embraced it, the staff and students could take no more and the diet became a bad memory at the college.

4. Some Health Benefits

Even though the Reverend was wrong when he claimed that he was a "Physiological Reformer" and that the diet and reduced sexual drive would cure all ills, some parts of his belief were correct. He promoted adequate sleep, abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, fresh air and exercise. The vegetarian diets of today tend to follow many of the rules outlined by the good Reverend.

5. Graham's Legacy

Two interesting items came from the diet--graham crackers and granola--created by James Caleb Jackson, a follower of Graham. The recipe for graham crackers has changed and is now directly in opposition of the diet it originally came from. Today, processed flour, an evil food according to Graham, replaces the coarsely ground unsifted flour in the graham cracker.