Bob Pastorio wrote:

Michael Ackerman wrote:

Next month, I believe, an article that I wrote on the subject will be
published in Robert Johnston's _Politics of Healing_, an anthology of
articles on alternative medicine in the US in the 20th century. I
examine
(what I call) the modern health foods movement, which originated in the
1930s in the wake of the discovery of vitamins and related nutritional
matters. (The organic foods movement in the US was one part of this
movement.) I discuss both the scientific aspect of the movement, and the
ideological aspect (which is definitely anti-modernist and
pro-environmental, but not fundamentally leftist -- in the 1950s the
movement had close links to the far right). Although my articles
stops in
1965, I believe that the food ideas embraced by the youth
counterculture in
the 1960s came mainly from the post-1930s health foods movement. (One
difference: the post-1960s movement endorsed vegetarianism, while the
earlier movement did not.)


And, I think it's fair to say, they also adopted other ways of eating
because they were other ways. Macrobiotic and the like.

As I recall, as macrobiotics we ate our share of chicken and fish, along
with the dreaded tofu and great, disgusting wads of brown rice (which we
cooked on a word-burning stove -- it took hours!). And pre-1960s, let's
remember Adele Davis. Raw liver for breakfast, anyone? I think it's
interesting that the gurus of both these "movements" died rather young.

Peg