Are Onions Worse Than Meat? Modernizing Yoga Along Vegetarian Morality

In the 21st century, the popularity of yoga and vegetarianism appear to be two closely related social phenomena whose connection is hardly questioned. Whereas some yoga suppliers provide their followers with respective explanatory models embedded in a post-secular ideology of non-violence (e.g., Sharon Gannon), academically informed research strengthens the link between contemporary food practices (including veganism) with premodern Indian yoga discourses (i.e., Rosen 2011, Jacobs 2019, Miller 2024).

In my contribution, I raise attention to the modern emergence of this current narrative and stereotype. I shall focus on the transcultural exchange of dietary concepts related to posture-based yoga that took shape in the course of the twentieth century. Taking the example of English- and German-medium yoga guidebooks from the 1950s, it will be shown how Indian classificatory categories — and of sattvika food in particular — intermingle with prevalent dietary advice shaped by naturopathy and earliest Christian ethics (Urchristentum). Hardly surprising, prohibitions on the consumption of meat, fish and eggs were not consistent, even among Indian authors.

The analysis shows, firstly, semantic shifts in the translation of Indian terminology in order to meet changing notions of ‘vegetarian' nutrition. Secondly, it elucidates the social effects of dietary rules on the dissemination of posture-based yoga in Germany. Clearly, vegetarians were among the first to promote this questioned social practice at the time. Thirdly, it reveals gastropolitical narratives specific to the cold-war era, i.e. how the demand for ‘bloodless food' (unblutige Kost) was presented as a fundamental precondition for securing ‘world peace' — and in this way paved the ground for later changes in food consumption and cooking styles that were classified as ‘countercuisine' (Belasco 2007).