Substitute? I do not think it means what you think it means

A lot of my old health food cookbooks are for vegetarians, and even the ones that aren't are usually veg-heavy and light on the meat. I picked up Let's Cook It Right (Adelle Davis, originally 1947, but mine is a 1962 edition) in part because I saw it had a fairly substantial chapter about meat substitutes, so I wanted to see what it recommended. Would it be bricks of veggies bound with whole wheat bread crumbs? "Fillets" made with things like olives or cereal? Big platters of overly plain cooked vegetables? 

Nope!

Believe it or not, Spanish Rice with Meat is actually a meat substitute, at least according to the chapter title. Not sure how, as the meat it calls for is, in fact, meat. This chapter reveals that unlike other "health food" writers, Davis is extremely wary of the idea of meatless cooking, noting in the introduction for the meat substitute chapter that plant proteins "lack several essential amino acids and hence do not have the health-building value of meats, fish, eggs, or milk. Generous amounts of meat, cheese, or other adequate proteins should be added to these so-called 'meat substitutes' whenever possible." The inclusion of a meat substitutes chapter seems pretty puzzling once you realize the author is convinced the only adequate substitute for meat is meat. 

You might think that meat is only added to the rice since rice is not all that high in protein, but that recipes based on beans might not get the same level of meaty fortification. You would, of course, be wrong. 

The seasoned lentils or split peas are an adequate meat substitute if they contain meat.

I spotted a Chow Mein recipe and wondered if it might at least introduce readers to tofu since Davis reluctantly named soybeans as being the only "true meat substitute" from the legume family. 

Nope! Forget tofu. The "meat substitute" here is leftover pork roast.

And the one recipe I expected to include meat once I was used to the chapter's emphasis on meat was perhaps the biggest surprise.

Fried rice-- usually enriched with eggs and a meat of some type-- is an entirely different dish in this book. Here, it's just a rice pilaf with a bunch of cheese stirred in at the end! Sounds good, but I'd be pretty surprised if someone promised fried rice and showed up with a dish of this.

I was at a loss as to how the recipes in the meat substitutes chapter were different from the recipes in any other chapter. Then I noticed the full title of the chapter (rather than the shortened version written in the header of each page in the section): Meat Substitutes and Extenders for Limited Budgets. This chapter is more about stretching the meat than using something else in its place. I always thought that was the role of things like casseroles, though, and they show up in a lot of chapters. I never did quite figure out how these recipes got singled out for this particular chapter when they might have fit just as easily in the chapters on meats or using up leftovers, but at least I had an interesting afternoon trying to figure it out.