“The Stomach First”:
Sylvester Graham, Grahamism, and Dietary Change in New York City in the 1830s and 1840s
Cindy R. Lobel, Ph.D. Candidate, CUNY

“What a wonderful stir the Grahamites are making in our city!” a New Yorker remarked sarcastically in 1831. Diet reformer Sylvester Graham, and his group of “hooting owl” disciples, he complained, were “taking away all the good living . . . and turning all our refinements and decanters upside down.” Graham had only been in New York for a few months but already he was gaining a following for his theories on diet, health, and proper living. In the subsequent two decades, many middle-class New Yorkers, like their counterparts in other areas of the country would adhere to Grahamite principles.
 Grahamism took hold in New York at a time of great changes in food habits, and dietary choice. Due to technological, industrial, and commercial developments, New Yorkers of the 1830s had an unprecedented array of foods to choose from, new methods of procurement and preparation, and an unparalleled number of public dining establishments to frequent. It was into this realm of extraordinary range and choice that Graham and his followers entered.
 While there seems to be a firm relationship between dietary changes and Grahamite activity, scholars of Grahamism and of health reform have not explored this connection. They have either sought to place Graham in the larger context of antebellum reform movements or examined him within the history of sexuality, or the history of medicine. This paper looks at the dietary shifts in one locale in which Grahamites were active -- New York City -- and explores the relationship between these developments and the concerns of Graham and his followers. There were telling, and specific links between Grahamite dietary precepts, and the actual changes to the American diet occurring during the early nineteenth century.
 In seeking to explain the popularity of Grahamism and other health reforms, many scholars have settled on a “social anxiety” thesis. The health reformers, the argument goes, were responding to a society in flux. Faced with sweeping transformations to their culture brought about by urbanization, industrialization, and commercialization, Graham and others like him hearkened back to a simpler time when tradition and outside sources of authority held sway. While some antebellum Americans translated their anxieties into religious movements, political participation, temperance, and abolitionism, others tried to reorder society by controlling their bodily functions and encouraging others to do so as well. Health reform, these historians argue, was thus both a response to and, ultimately, a method of dealing with modernization.
 While the “social anxiety thesis” is compelling, does not explain why this particular program, with its particular shape, carried salience when it did. Why, the question remains, were Graham’s rules for living -- which weren’t entirely new -- embraced by a popular audience at this time? Why did they single out certain foods, and certain dietary habits, for derision? There is not an immediate causal connection between a perceived void of authority, or concern about social disorder, and the notion, for example, that bread made with refined flour was evil. There needs to be a firmer link drawn between their concerns and the specific social changes they witnessed. This paper explores that link.