For invalids with especially sensitive stomachs and, as a result, dangerous weight loss, John combined the dry Malted Nuts with predigested, or dextrinized, starch, malt honey, and figs. He served and sold them in the form of small cakes called Bromose. The doctor claimed that it was “the vegetable analogue of malted milk and constitute[d] a perfect food. It was very caloric and helped invalids gain weight [by helping the body to produce] fat and blood.” Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was one of the product’s biggest fans. In 1899, Nurse Barton wrote Dr. Kellogg that she rarely allowed her name to be exploited in any venture other than the Red Cross. In the case of John’s Bromose and Nut Butter, which she found to be “choice, appetizing, wholesome foods, very pleasant to the palate, and exceedingly rich in nutritive and sustaining properties,” the world-famous humanitarian was only too happy to make an exception. Dr. Kellogg took full advantage of this important endorsement in subsequent advertisement campaigns for his nut foods.13
Clara Barton loved John Harvey Kellogg’s Bromose and Nut Butter. Credit 108
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GLUTEN (from the Latin, meaning glue) held a special fascination for John but not in the way a modern-day reader might assume. The doctor loved gluten and considered it essential for rejuvenating the wrecked bodies flocking to the San for salvation. He declared gluten to be “one of the most highly valuable elements of the grain. It serves especially to build up brain, bone, nerves, and muscles as well as blood.”14 The bread served in the San’s dining room was made from his “Sanitarium Gluten Flour,” which contained as much as 44.81 percent gluten. Beginning in 1889 and extending through his long career, John prescribed bags of the stuff for treating the “obese, anemic and the diabetic.” In the 1920s, he fortified his gluten flour with casein, a protein found in cow’s milk and rich in amino acids, carbohydrates, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, and Vitamin B12.15
The doctor also used an assortment of chopped nuts thickened with huge amounts of gluten to develop meat substitutes. He shaped the resultant mixes into patties and cooked them in a manner to taste like chicken, beef, and veal. His Sanitarium Food Company manufactured and sold a line of “nut-cutlets,” such as Nuttolene, and later, Battle Creek Steaks, Skallops, and Wieners. A similar product called Nuttose was a “nut butter” fortified with gluten and shaped like a square brick of cheese and cut into slices before serving. To accompany these nutty, glutenous entrées, John concocted a yeast extract and garden-vegetable-based powder he called Sativa, which when mixed with a little butter, flour, and water made a delicious “gravy rivaling mushrooms or beef in flavor.”16
As we confront the confusing epidemic of gluten-intolerance today, it is fascinating to speculate why Dr. Kellogg, the famous healer of the tender gut, saw few, if any, complications with his gluten products during so many years of taking care of so many fragile patients. Several nutrition experts have posited that today’s burgeoning “gluten problem” is a result of our species not having suitable time to adapt to consuming grains, in the face of an overconsumption of wheat. Other scientists counter this claim by noting that wheat grains have been a part of the human diet long enough for species adaptation (at least 11,000 years for wheat and closer to 23,000 years for wild wheat and barley). Some have argued that the increase in wheat sensitivities, allergies, and autoimmune diseases may be caused by genetic adaptation (and overadaptation) to increased encounters with disease-causing microbes found in the wheat grains or agents (such as sugar, saturated fats, and the growing number of food additives found in so many twenty-first-century processed wheat products), which can yield inflammatory responses and potential immune dysfunction.
Approximately one percent of the American population suffers from the very real gluten sensitivity known as celiac sprue disease, a genetic and, at times, stress-mediated disorder in which damage is done to the gut after eating wheat grains by means of an autoimmune response. In the United States, the incidence of celiac disease has increased only slightly over the past several decades. In 1950, for example, the incidence was 0.25 percent, despite the same approximate wheat consumption. That said, not a few doctors have privately groused that the current crop of gluten avoiders may have something more wrong with their heads than their intestinal tracts. The short, but unsatisfactory, answer to this multifactorial problem is that it is extremely complicated and its etiology is not yet entirely clear.17
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THE LAXATIVES OF CHOICE during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the industrial-strength senna and cascara. John labeled the latter “one of the most vicious of these vile [laxative] substances.” These cathartics could “move a mule” but they caused horrible cramping, irritation to the inner lining of the bowels, and, at too high a dose, severe diarrhea, dehydration, and even death.18 In 1911, while visiting Sicily and North Africa, John was introduced to a gentler laxative: the plantago seed, or psyllium. These mucilaginous seeds are safe for treating constipation because they are not absorbed by the small intestine and, unlike the irritating cascara, cause no harm to the gut. Instead, they proceed through the colon absorbing water and, thus, producing a bulky, soft stool. While on holiday, John drank a glass of the finely ground seeds mixed with water and fruit juice. The next morning, he was impressed by his first evacuation and asked his host for a bag of psyllium seeds. Dr. Kellogg somehow got the seeds through U.S. Customs and home to Battle Creek, where he cultivated them for growing, processing, canning, and sale by his Battle Creek Sanitarium Food Company.
This indigestible fiber remains favored by those intestinally backed up, as well as those with painful hemorrhoids and anal fissures, two ailments the doctor was well acquainted with both professionally and personally.19 The most popular brand is known as Metamucil, which has been on the market since 1934, and a host of generic products are also widely available. Recently, psyllium has been found to lower one’s serum cholesterol level.20 Again, Dr. Kellogg demonstrates from the grave how astute many of his nutritional prescriptions could be.
Louis Pasteur Credit 109
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THE DOCTOR’S LONG-STANDING interest in the nutritious properties of milk and substitute milk products led him to explore what we now call probiotics. In 1883, John made the first of many medical pilgrimages to Paris. Soon after arriving at the Gare du Nord railway station, he checked into his hotel room on the Seine and changed out of his wrinkled clothing into a freshly pressed suit. Virtually skipping out of the hotel lobby, he hailed a hansom cab to take him to the famed Pasteur Institute. Once there, the American doctor was welcomed and escorted on a tour by the great Louis Pasteur, an experience that would have been heady for any medical man.
The institute boasted a staff of world-class microbiologists and scientists. One of the most prominent was Élie Metchnikoff, a pioneer in studying the immune system and who shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1908 with Paul Ehrlich. Dr. Kellogg visited Metchnikoff’s laboratory, where Metchnikoff and his first assistant, Henry Tissier, studied the microbial environment of the gut. In 1907, Metchnikoff assigned Tissier to find scientific evidence supporting his theory that not all germs were pathogenic (disease-causing) or “bad.” Such contrary thinking was a hard sell to make during an era when new discoveries about “infectious diseases and their relation to micro-organisms were being announced like corn popping in a pan.”21
The Pasteur Institute laboratory, Paris, 1890s Credit 110
Élie Metchnikoff, circa 1905 Credit 111
Nevertheless, Metchnikoff and Tissier’s work was both sound and revolutionary. The “good” bacteria Tissier worked with the most were Lactobacillus bulgaricus and, subsequently, Lactobacillus acidophilus. These “healthy” microbes multiplied luxuriously within the intestinal flora of his experimental animals (in vivo) and inhibited the growth of many disease-causing germs. The bacilli grew especially well in a culture medium made with milk (in vitro). One way to improve intestinal health, prevent gut infections, and strike down the “putr
efactive,” disease-causing autointoxication, they reasoned, was to consume Lactobacillus-rich milk. Metchnikoff became so enthusiastic about these findings that he invested his considerable influence to hail Lactobacillus bulgaricus as a panacea for nearly every human ill and a protection against aging.22
This was a medical melody to John’s ears and he soon became the American agent for the promotion of Lactobacilli. For more than twenty-five years, the doctor continued a dialogue with Tissier by post and subsequent visits to the Pasteur Institute, where “he was shown every courtesy.”23 Dr. Tissier eventually discovered that Lactobacillus acidophilus was the better bacterium because it was easier to culture in large volumes, especially after spiking the Petri dish with lactose. In 1911, Dr. Kellogg asked for and received samples of an active strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus Tissier had cultured from fermented cow’s milk and yogurt.24 A delighted John immediately put these “good germs” to work at the San dining room.25
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LIKE HIS FAMOUS PATIENT Henry Ford, Dr. Kellogg was fascinated by the soybean.26 But instead of using them to fashion automobile parts, John wanted to harness their many nutritional properties. The doctor first learned about soy milk, a beverage consisting of pulverized dried soybeans mixed with water, from colleagues in Asia who had long prescribed it for those with sensitive stomachs. John added Tissier’s acidophilus to the recipe and called his drink “Soy Acidophilus Milk.” Those patients suffering from colitis, duodenal or gastric ulcers, constipation, and excessive flatulence happily found their conditions improved after imbibing soy milk and it soon became one of the San’s most popular beverages. For example, in 1935 the San served over two hundred gallons a week; a particular favorite dish was sliced ripe bananas and soy milk.27
John backed up his empirical observations of soy milk by studying hundreds of stool specimens in his smelly basement gastrointestinal laboratory. Those who exclusively drank acidophilus soy milk produced the most interesting samples. Like Tissier, as he gazed through the microscope, the doctor was amazed to learn how much the soy milk changed the intestinal flora, from a population of microbes that potentially caused harm to far more health-promoting variants. He was describing, in essence, a powerful probiotic.28
Dr. Kellogg’s most important discovery in this field came in 1933 after isolating a strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus in soy milk, which grew five to ten times more than when it was cultured in cow’s milk, was far more temperature resistant, and remained potent for three to four months. Impressed by how well the improved soy milk worked in changing the intestinal flora of adults, he next turned to the hottest topic in pediatrics of the day, the “artificial feeding,” or bottle-feeding, of infants with precise formulae of protein, carbohydrates, and fat derived from altered versions of cow’s milk. American mothers of this era avidly adopted “artificial feeding” because it was so much more convenient than breast-feeding. That said, not every baby seemed to thrive on the method.29
The results of John’s infant feeding studies comprise a stunning, if oft ignored, discovery. He found that babies who were exclusively breast-fed had an intestinal flora containing more than 90 percent Lactobacillus acidophilus. Sick infants, who were bottle-fed with cow’s milk formulae, produced dark and foul-smelling stools and had 10 to 20 percent Lactobacillus in their guts. To counteract potential bowel troubles, John advised that every bottle-fed baby should receive a teaspoonful of his “Soy Acidophilus Milk” at each feeding. After receiving a patent for his method of making acidophilus soy milk in 1934, John dreamed about selling gallons of the soy milk to improve millions of ailing infantile guts.30
The Dionne Quintuplets in January of 1937. The Quints were thriving, thanks to the attentive care of their physician, Dr. Allan Dafoe, and plenty of Dr. Kellogg’s soy milk. Credit 112
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TO PUBLICIZE HIS DISCOVERY, John tried to recruit the most famous babies in the world, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie Dionne. Today, the Dionne Quintuplets are an all but forgotten miracle of human reproduction. Born on May 28, 1934, in the small town of Callander, Ontario, Canada, these little girls were once the most famous babies in the world.31 The hardworking doctor who delivered and cared for them was a mild-mannered, general practitioner and “country doctor” named Allan Roy Dafoe. He, too, became a renowned celebrity and his career was dramatized in a string of 20th-Century-Fox films.32
Despite the sunny newspaper accounts of their progress, the quintuplets’ post-natal course was quite rocky. Among the many problems the five little girls experienced was a struggle to gain weight and trouble digesting the cow’s milk formula their mother gave them. Breast-feeding would have, undoubtedly, proved more tolerable to the infants but was impossible given the ratio of hungry mouths to maternal breasts. Dr. Dafoe was at his wits’ end to solve this very real health threat to his young charges.
None of the girls had a more difficult time than Marie Dionne, the youngest and smallest of the babies. At four months of age she developed a severe bowel infection, a not uncommon problem with premature infants. In the decades before modern neonatal intensive care, such infections were often death sentences. After reading about Marie’s dilemma, John wired Dr. Dafoe that he was sending a supply of his Soy Acidophilus Milk to help the struggling infant. Within a week and a half of prescribing the soy milk, Dr. Dafoe was amazed to discover that Marie’s infection had resolved. The country doctor asked Dr. Kellogg to send the quintuplets as much soy milk as he could deliver.33 Their earliest ration was just a teaspoonful of soy milk at each feeding, but by 1937 each of the famous Quints was consuming a pint or more per day and all enjoyed good digestive health.
For several years, Dr. Kellogg maintained a solicitous correspondence with Dr. Dafoe. He offered advice on the babies’ growth and development and, just as often, sent them crates of soy milk, fresh fruit, and other foods. At the same time, John lobbied David Croll, the Canadian minister of public welfare, who ran the Dionne Trust, which administered the millions of dollars these little girls generated from tourists flocking to Ontario to watch them grow and thrive through a glass-windowed home, movie appearances, product advertisements, postcards, photographs, and even Quint dolls.34 On many occasions, Dr. Kellogg lobbied Minister Croll for permission to use the names and likenesses of the Dionne girls on advertisements for his soy milk, which was “proving such a boon to babies suffering from bowel trouble.” The doctor reported he had no desire to profit from his medical discovery and was only interested in helping humanity, one stomach at a time. All the proceeds, he explained, would go toward his nonprofit Race Betterment Foundation and the Battle Creek College.35 John long awaited permission from Ottawa for an endorsement or, at least, a photograph of him with the children whose lives he helped save. It never came.36
The doctor was, however, free to brag about his success in treating the world-famous Admiral Richard Byrd. The intrepid explorer’s once sound digestion was devastated during his first 5-month expedition to the South Pole in 1928–1929. Fortunately, the doctor’s prescription of acidophilus soy milk quickly restored the admiral’s health. As a result, Byrd became a strict adherent of Dr. Kellogg’s biologic living diet. When the explorer made a subsequent trip to the South Pole in 1934, John made certain the admiral brought plenty of complimentary cans of his soy milk.37 The doctor also prescribed Lacto-Dextrin (a product containing milk sugar, or lactose, and dextrose, “to keep B. Acidophilus growing well in the colon,” as well as reduce the risks of putrefying food left in the colon and to produce odorless stools). And in the event of constipation, the doctor sent along boxes of Paramels (a chocolate-flavored caramel laxative, which combined malt sugar and theobromine, a bitter alkaloid found in the cacao plant, with a dollop of paraffin and mineral oil).38 In a January 1938 letter to John D. Rockefeller Jr., who funded Byrd’s expeditions, John boasted, “Some of our newer methods have certainly done a great deal for him. He looks and acts like another man entirely.”39
An advertisement for John H
arvey Kellogg’s “Zo” cereal, which Admiral Richard Byrd brought with him on his expeditions to the South Pole Credit 113
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IRONICALLY, the man who paid the closest attention to John’s nutritional developments was Will Kellogg. The cereal maker had “long nurtured the dream of combining essential nutrients from different grains to create a concentrated, high protein all-purpose food.”40 Will closely followed the discoveries then being made about protein, carbohydrate, and fat metabolism as well as the importance of vitamins and essential minerals in one’s daily diet.41 During the 1930s, Will introduced PEP, a whole wheat, flaked bran cereal that both stimulated bowel movements and was sprayed with a solution containing all the major vitamins.42
Beginning in 1945, Will blended his corn grits with soy-based flakes and turned them into a shredded cereal he called “Corn-Soya Shreds.” Each box promised “a fine body—this new protein cereal helps you have it” and the cereal’s advertisements featured artistic renderings of muscle-sculpted divers, gridiron heroes, cheerleaders, and gymnasts.43 The Kellogg Company discontinued Corn-Soya Shreds in the mid-1950s in favor of a low-fat, puffed, flaky cereal made from rice, wheat gluten, wheat germ, powdered skim milk, and brewer’s yeast, fortified with phosphorus, copper, iron, folic acid, vitamins B1, B12 and B6, niacin and riboflavin, and vitamins C and D. The Kellogg’s food chemists named this wonder food “Special K” and put it in white boxes labeled with “a big, red K.” This cereal is still enjoyed by many millions of consumers around the world.44
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