Understanding Ellen White

A promoter of vegetarianism: 1863 to 1893

Ellen White received her first major vision on health on June 6, 1863, at the home of Aaron Hilliard in Otsego, Michigan. Although the vision contained specific instructions concerning the health habits of James and Ellen White in particular, there were a number of general core principles related to healthful living, including diet and meat consumption. Among those were the harmful effects of pork eating and the benefit of vegetarianism. ¹¹ Thus she wrote that “in order to preserve health, temperance in all things is necessary. . . . The eating of pork has produced scrofula, leprosy and cancerous humors. Pork-eating is still causing the most intense suffering to the human race.” ¹² Concerning meat in general she noted that “there are but a few animals that are free from disease. . . . They are killed, and prepared for the market, and people eat freely of this poisonous animal food. Much disease is caused in this manner. . . . Many die of disease caused wholly by meat-eating, yet the world does not seem to be the wiser.” ¹³ UEGW 201.2

On December 25, 1865, in Rochester, New York, Ellen White received an additional major vision on health. This time she was shown that health reform had to become an essential part of the Seventh-day Adventist mission. She wrote: “The health reform, I was shown, is a part of the third angel’s message and is just as closely connected with it as are the arm and hand with the human body. I saw that we as a people must make an advance move in this great work.” ¹⁴ She also urged Seventh-day Adventists to establish their own health institution in order to help people live better and healthier lives. As a result, Seventh-day Adventists would build medical institutions, publish health literature, and become promoters of healthful living, including vegetarianism. ¹⁵ UEGW 201.3

In general, Ellen White followed a vegetarian diet after her vision in 1863. One year later, she noted that since the Lord presented to her “the subject of meat eating in relation to health,” she left “the use of meat.” As she acknowledged: UEGW 201.4

For a while it was rather difficult to bring my appetite to bread, for which formerly, I have had but little relish. But by persevering, I have been able to do this. I have lived for nearly one year without meat. . . . Yet my health has never been better than for the past six months. My former faint and dizzy feelings have left me My appetite is satisfied. My food is eaten with a greater relish than ever before I have no trouble with dropsy or heart disease. I have within eight months lost twenty-five pounds of flesh. I am better without it. I have more strength than I have realized for years. ¹⁶ UEGW 201.5

In 1869 she wrote to Edson, her son, that she (and James White) were “strict” in their diet to follow “the light” that God had given them and advised him to follow the same path. “We have advised you not to eat butter and meat,” she wrote. “We have not had it on our table. I should hope you would feel that we had advised you for your good and not to deprive you of these things because of any notions of our own.” ¹⁷ UEGW 202.1

During the same year, speaking at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Ellen White again reported that since she had received “the health reform message” she had not changed her course “a particle.” As she put it: UEGW 202.2

I have not taken one step back since the light from heaven upon this subject [diet] first shone upon my pathway. I broke away from everything at once,—from meat and butter, and from three meals,—and that while engaged in exhaustive brain labor, writing from early morning till sundown I was a great meat eater. But when faint, I placed my arms across my stomach and said: “I will not taste a morsel. I will eat simple food, or I will not eat at all.” Bread was distasteful to me. I could seldom eat a piece as large as a dollar [coin]. Some things in the reform I could get along with very well, but when I came to the bread I was especially set against it. When I made these changes I had a special battle to fight. The first two or three meals, I could not eat. I said to my stomach: “You may wait until you can eat bread.” In a little while I could eat bread, and graham bread, too. This I could not eat before; but now it tastes good, and I have had no loss of appetite. ¹⁸ UEGW 202.3

Evidently, Ellen White’s decision to follow a meatless diet was not without personal struggles. However, as she attested many years later, following the health principles revealed to her in 1863 was a “great blessing” and she was enjoying “better health” at the age of seventy-six (in 1904) than during her youthful years. ¹⁹ UEGW 202.4

Although her habitual practice was to avoid eating meat, there were times when she used meat. ²⁰ First, Ellen White sometimes departed from her usual meatless diet while traveling. Being a major leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she and James White traveled quite extensively. Traveling in the nineteenth century, however, was not as convenient and comfortable as today. Under such circumstances, as Roger Coon rightly observes, “it was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to follow a strictly vegetarian diet.” ²¹ UEGW 202.5

Related to the traveling issues was the Whites’ dependence on the “hospi-tality” of fellow believers. Since the majority of them were poor, it was difficult for many to discard meat entirely. Plus, fruits and vegetables were available only in season. ²² In 1878, for example, Ellen White described how they had spent Christmas with a poor family while in Denison, Texas. “We had a quar-ter of venison cooked and stuffing,” she wrote. “It was as tender as chicken. We all enjoyed it very much. There is plenty of venison in [the] market. I have not seen in years so much poverty as I have seen since I have come to Texas. Brother Moore has had poor health and he has nothing—not a cent to get provisions with. We must help that family or they must suffer for the very necessaries of life” ²³ In another letter from 1895, while living in Australia, Ellen White described again that many Adventist families were prevented from having a meatless diet because of poverty and difficult conditions. She noted: UEGW 203.1

I have been passing through an experience in this country [Australia] that is similar to the experience that I had in new fields in America. I have seen families whose circumstances would not permit them to furnish their table with healthful food. Unbelieving neighbors have sent them in portions of meat from animals recently killed. They have made soup of the meat, and supplied their large families of children with meals of bread and soup. It was not my duty, nor did I think it was the duty of any one else to lecture them upon the evils of meat-eating. UEGW 203.2

I feel sincere pity for families who have newly come to the faith, and who are so pressed with poverty that they know not from whence their next meal is coming. It is not my duty to discourse to them on healthful eating. There is a time to speak and a time to keep silent. ²⁴ UEGW 203.3

Clearly, Ellen White was well aware of the difference between the ideal diet and the real circumstances of believers. In situational circumstances she believed that God wanted us “to have common sense” and to “reason from common sense.” ²⁵ And Ellen White seemed to have followed this principle in all her counsels, including vegetarianism. UEGW 203.4

Another time when Ellen departed from a vegetarian diet was during a transition to a new cook. According to W. C. White, most new cooks who joined the White family did not know how to prepare vegetarian dishes. During those times, Willie wrote, “our table showed some compromise between the standard which sister White was aiming at and the knowledge and experience and standard of the new cook.” ²⁶ Not surprisingly, in 1892 Ellen White wrote from Australia to the General Conference president O. A. Olsen that she would pay a “higher price for a cook than for any other part of my work Were I to act over the preparation in coming to this place, I would say, Give me an experienced cook who has some inventive powers to prepare simple dishes healthfully, and that will not disgust the appetite. I am in earnest in this matter.” ²⁷ UEGW 203.5

Ellen White also seemed to have used meat (or spoke sympathetically of others who used it) for remedial purposes. In 1874, for example, she noted that James White bought some meat for May Walling, her grandniece, because she was sick. ²⁸ According to Arthur White’s recollection, Ellen White was also once advised to eat a soup of oysters for her upset stomach. ²⁹ We must note, of course, that the Seventh-day Adventist position on clean and unclean meats grew with time and oysters were not initially understood to be unclean. ³⁰ In 1881, John H. Kellogg also advised Ellen White, who was suffering from “severe attacks of headache and nervous prostration,” among other things, to eat “a little fresh meat, or game of any kind.” ³¹ UEGW 204.1

Remarkably, Ellen White seemed to have had a very balanced position on the use of meat for medical purposes. On one side, she advised people to be cautious concerning the therapeutic use of meat because of diseases found in animals. ³² On the other, she spoke against the total abandonment of meat for certain medical cases. In her publication on “health” in the Youth Instructor, for instance, she encouraged the eating of “fruit and vegetables and bread.” At the same time, however, she also recognized that those who had “feeble digestive organs” could use meat when they could not “eat vegetables, fruit, or porridge.” ³³ In 1895, she wrote to Dr. John H. Kellogg that while he had to encourage a vegetarian diet for better health, he was to make no such demands from people suffering from terminal diseases. Such people, Ellen White advised, were not to be “ burdened with the question as to whether they should leave meat eating or not. Be careful to make no stringent resolutions in regard to this matter.” ³⁴ She made the same point to Dr. and Mrs. Kress and their patients in 1905, noting that people dying of consumption (tuberculosis) and asking for chicken broth “should have it.” At the same time, however, her advice was not to be used as an “excuse for others to think [that] their case required the same diet.” ³⁵ Thus Ellen White’s approach to meat eating in cases of sickness varied on a case-by-case basis. UEGW 204.2

There were also times when Ellen White used meat in emergency situations. In 1873, for example, the Whites were in the mountains of Colorado when their wagon broke down. While waiting for the repaired parts to be brought back, their food supplies began to run low. As Ellen White reported in her diary, Willie and their companion “brother Glover” did some hunting and fishing and for the following few days they ate some fish and meat in order to survive. ³⁶ UEGW 205.1

In addition, there might have been times, at least according to some of Ellen White’s critics, when she might have eaten meat when it had not been absolutely necessary to do so. ³⁷ Even if these accounts are correct, Ellen White never hid the fact that she had used meat occasionally after her 1863 vision. After all, as we have noted, she was a “great meat eater” and at times she struggled to abandon meat completely. Moreover, she never considered eating meat a sin. Writing to Adventist colporteurs, for example, she advised “every Sabbath keeping [sic] canvasser to avoid meat eating, not because it is regarded as sin to eat meat, but because it is not healthful” ³⁸ UEGW 205.2

Thus Ellen White, in the period after her major visions on health in the 1860s, accepted and spoke of vegetarianism as the ideal diet for health. She also, in general, practiced vegetarianism, although at times she continued to eat meat. This, however, would change in the beginning of the 1890s. UEGW 205.3