This fascinating guidebook is an attempt to provide readers with information on what the author deems as "the natural food of mankind". In sum, the author is a proponent of vegetarianism and argues that "Meat is by no means a clean article of diet, but on the contrary a very unclean one; and many foods, supplying an equal amount of proteid matter, are to be preferred, for the reason that they supply less toxic material—which invariably accompanies flesh-meat."