The attitude of dietetic professionals towards vegetarian diets has changed in recent years. Compared to the 1980 position statement of the American Dietetic Association (ADA) which raised doubts about the adequacy and benefit of vegetarian eating, the most recent ADA position paper on vegetarian diets, published in 2009, views vegetarian diets more positively.

— “The Contribution of Dietary Studies in Seventh-day Adventists to Vegetarian Nutrition,” Ella H. Haddad of Loma Linda University, Vegetarian Nutrition Dietary Practice Group Newsletter, Volume XIX, Number 4, 2011

1980 paper title: “Position Paper on the Vegetarian Approach to Eating”

Contributors: Lydia Sonnenberg (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist) and most likely Kathleen Keen Zolber (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist) and U.D. Register (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

Position statement: “The American Dietetic Association affirms that a well planned diet, consisting of a variety of largely unrefined plant foods supplemented with some milk and eggs (lacto-ovo vegetarian diet) meets all known nutrient needs. Furthermore, a total plant dietary can be made adequate by careful planning, giving proper attention to specific nutrients which may be in a less available form or in lower concentration or absent in plant foods.”

In 1980, The American Dietetic Association published “Position Paper on the Vegetarian Approach to Eating.” However, according to a note in the most recent American Dietetic Association position paper on a vegetarian diet, published in 2009, the ADA’s true position on a well-planned vegetarian diet arrived seven years later, just before the second vegetarian position paper was published in 1988:

American Dietetic Association (ADA) position adopted by the House of Delegates Leadership Team on October 18, 1987, and reaffirmed on September 12, 1992; September 6, 1996; June 22, 2000; and June 11, 2006.

Perhaps the 1980 paper is mostly forgotten now because it didn’t endorse vegetarianism as whole-heartedly as it could have. That’s because it advocates “protein combining” –- making sure that you eat a combination of plant foods that provide all essential proteins at every meal –- and it said vegetarianism could be risky for babies and pregnant women.

Nevertheless, the 1980 paper was mostly positive about vegetarianism and even veganism, and it provided an important groundwork for the later ADA vegetarian position papers, which is why I thought it was worth investigating who authored it. 

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Editor’s note: Almost everything in this entry is a quote, because I wanted to let Adventists do all the explaining. The names that initially appear in bold, aside from those in headlines, are Adventists who would later review American Dietetic Association vegetarian position papers. (Though there are other Adventist reviewers and authors of ADA vegetarian position papers who are not mentioned in this entry.) 

For more than 130 years Seventh-day Adventists (SDAs) have practiced a vegetarian dietary lifestyle because of their belief in the holistic nature of humankind. Whatever is done in eating or drinking should honor and glorify God and preserve the health of the body, mind and spirit.

— “The Seventh-day Adventist Position Statement on Vegetarian Diets,” Seventh-Day Adventist Dietetic Association

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Ellen White [prophet of Seventh-day Adventism] received her first major health reform vision, June 6, 1863, in the home of Aaron Milliard, at Otsego, Michigan. In this vision, for the first time, God’s people were urged to abstain from flesh food in general and from swine’s flesh in particular. Ellen White characterized this vision as “great light from the Lord,” adding, “I did not seek this light; I did not study to obtain it; it was given to me by the Lord to give to others.”

— “Ellen G. White and Vegetarianism,” Ministry Magazine, Apr., 1986

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God did not call upon this advent movement to do so unusual a thing as to build medical institutions as well as churches, and to train doctors and nurses as well as ministers and Bible instructors, just because He desired these doctors and nurses to care only for the bodies of men. Such care can be given in numerous hospitals in the land, and in some instances better care may be possible because of huge endowments and special equipment. But God called upon us to foster medical work because, rightly carried on, it can play a part in the divine plan for the salvation of men. The medical and ministerial are not two separate and distinct lines of activity. They are parts of one whole, and the link that connects them and provides the full justification for a medical side to this religious movement, is the fact that all physical woes and maladies are a by-product of our sinful state. The kind of service you render to the cause of God and to suffering humanity will help to reveal whether the goal of Adventist medical work is being maintained.

— “Blended Ministry for Body and Soul,” Francis D. Nichol, The Ministry, Page 29, Dec. 1945, Vol. 18, No. 13

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The Lord has given to Seventh-day Adventists the message of health reform, not only for our benefit, but also that we might more effectively prepare the minds of our neighbors and friends to receive the seeds of his love! ‘When connected with other lines of gospel effort, the medical missionary work is a most effective instrument by which the ground is prepared for the sowing of the seeds of truth, and the instrument by which the harvest is reaped.’ MM204

Like the farmer’s plow, the message of health as it centers in Jesus love, will break up the hardened soil of the heart and prepare it to more willingly allow the Gospel message to grow in the hearts and lives of our neighbors and friends.

Today there has been a general hardening of attitudes toward religious thought and experience. Yet at the same time we are witnessing an unprecedented interest in health! This should spur us on to evangelistic methods that capitalize on this manner of preparing the ground. ‘Health reform will reach a class and has reached a class that otherwise would never have been reached by the truth.” CM 134

— “Is Health Ministry Important?” Fred Hardinge, DrPH, RD, Seventh-day Adventist Dietetic Association

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The quote from Spirit of Prophecy which most clearly points out where [Adventist] health evangelism should be done and who should be doing it is: ’We have come to a time when every member of the church should take hold of medical missionary work. The world is a lazar house filled with victims of both physical and spiritual diseases. Everywhere people are perishing for lack of a knowledge of the truths that have been committed to us. The members of the church are in need of an awakening, that they may realize their responsibility to impart these truths.’ Welfare Ministry, p. 138.

— Handbook of Health Evangelism, by Elvin Adams MD, MPH, 2004, p. 3

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Table of Contents

1. Seventh-day Adventism Prophet Ellen G. White on God’s Preferred Diet and Spreading Adventism Through Vegetarian Advocacy

2. John Burden and the Founding of the College of Medical Evangelists/Loma Linda University

3. John H.N. Tindall Pioneers “Gospel Medical Missionary Evangelism”

4. E.H. Risley and Harold M. Walton Bring Adventist Health Evangelism and Vegetarian Dietetics Together

5. Mervyn G. Hardinge Uses the Newly Formed Loma Linda Division of Public Health and Nutrition to Promote Vegetarianism

6. Loma Linda University’s U.D. Register “Proves” Ellen G. White’s Divine Nutritional Prophesies and Persuades the American Dietetic Association

7. Kathleen Zolber of Loma Linda University Becomes the First Adventist President of the American Dietetic Association, Thereby Enriching Her Service to Her Church

8. Recruiting More Adventist Dietitians

9. The Seventh-day Adventist Dietetic Association

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