Background

Adelle Davis was born Daisie Adelle Davis on February 25, 1904 in Lizton, Indiana. She was the daughter of Charles Eugene Davis, a farmer, and Harriette McBroom.  After her mother's death, when she was seventeen months old, she was raised by her father and an elderly aunt on the farm in Indiana.  She is said to have attributed her lifelong interest in nutrition to the malnourishment she suffered as an infant, when after the death of her mother she was fed with a medicine dropper.

Education

Davis began her college education at Purdue University in Lafayette in 1923, but after two years transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, where she received a B. A. degree in dietetics in 1927.  In 1939, she received a master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern California School of Medicine.

Davis received dietetic training at Fordham and Bellevue hospitals in New York City and did graduate work in dietetics and nutrition at Columbia University and at UCLA.

Career

Davis served as supervisorof nutrition in the Yonkers, N. Y. , school system from 1928 to 1930.  She was a nutritional consultant to physicians and health clinics in Oakland, Calif. (1931 - 1933), Los Angeles (1934 - 1938), and Palos Verdes, Calif. , where she resided after 1948.  

Davis published her first two books, Optimum Health and You Can Stay Well, privately.  As her popularity grew, she was noticed by major publishers, and eventually Macmillan published Vitality Through Planned Nutrition (1942, rev. 1949).  Let's Cook It Right (1947, rev. 1972).  Let's Have Healthy Children (1951), Let's Eat Right To Keep Fit (1954), and Let's Get Well (1965) followed, all published by Harcourt.  

Her most controversial book was Exploring Inner Space: Personal Experiences Under LSD-25, written under the pseudonym of Jane Dunlap and published in 1961.  The descriptions of her mind-expanding experiences under the influence of LSD seemed to conflict with her views regarding the unhealthful effects of chemicals in food.  Davis also wrote countless articles on health and nutrition for numerous periodicals.  

It is estimated that her books have sold nearly seven million copies worldwide.  Davis's views on health and nutrition were controversial and often put her at odds with the medical establishment and the refined food industry.  

She believed that most human illness, including mental depression and addiction, could be attributed to overly processed commercial foods and food additives.  Her outspoken statements, such as, "Mass advertising of refined foods has exploited health for money to the extent that it amounts to mass murder, " did not endear her to American food producers.  She advocated organically grown foods, whole wheat baked goods, and brewer's yeast as healthful dietary elements.  While she believed that a proper diet did not require vitamin supplementation, she also felt that the processed food diet of most Americans was so poor that added vitamins were essential.  She held controversial views regarding the role of calcium as a painkiller, the effect of vitamin E deficiency on premature infants, and skim milk consumption during pregnancy as a cause of cataracts in babies.  

Her emphasis on the value of raw milk, eggs, and cheese led to criticism by medical authorities that adoption of her dietary recommendations could lead to obesity and heart disease. While medical research has demonstrated that her views on cholesterol-rich dairy foods are extreme and perhaps dangerous, vitamin E deficiency as a cause of anemia in premature infants is now a well-recognized condition.  

Davis often decried the lack of nutritional training in most medical school curricula, which led to frequent attacks by members of the medical educational community who felt that her teachings and writings were sensational, anecdotal, and filled with errors of fact and interpretation, a claim that Davis steadfastly denied.  She provided individual nutritional consultation to such celebrities as W. C. Fields and Charles Laughton.  Many who have read the works of Adelle Davis and have adopted the culinary style she advocated claim to have increased energy and a sense of good health.  

Adelle Davis died in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.  She will be remembered as a believer in good health and good nutrition despite ridicule and disdain from the processed food industry and the medical establishment, which she in turn accused of misguiding the American population.

Achievements

• Adelle Davis has been listed as a notable nutritionist, author by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Exploring Inner Space Personal Experiences Under LSD-25

    (Jane Dunlap's book is an account of a series of experimen...)

  • Vitality through planned nutrition,

    (1941 illustrated health guide from Adelle Davis, with 41 ...)

  • LET'S HAVE HEALTHY CHILDREN by Adelle Davis, REVISED AND UPDATED "America's most famous food expert gives the vital nutritional do's and don'ts for expectant mothers, babies, and growing children."

    (LET'S HAVE HEALTHY CHILDREN by Adelle Davis, REVISED AND ...)

  • You Can Get Well

    (Softcover)

  • Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit

    (Diet book)

Views

From a dietary point of view, Davis believed that "we are watching the fall of Rome. " 

Despite her popularity, she was heavily criticized by her peers for many recommendations she made that were not supported by the scientific literature, some of which were considered dangerous.

Quotations: "Mass advertising of refined foods has exploited health for money to the extent that it amounts to mass murder".

"We are watching the fall of Rome".

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.

As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• As John Poppy wrote in an article in Look, "an Adelle Davis reader tends to become a True Believer. " 

Interests

• An advocate of physical fitness, Adelle Davis played tennis regularly and enjoyed swimming.

Connections

Davis married George Edward Leisey, an engineer, in 1943 and they later adopted two children.  This marriage ended in divorce in 1953.  She married Frank Vernon Sieglinger, a retired accountant, in 1960.

Father:

Charles Eugene Davis

Mother:

Harriette McBroom

spouse(1):

George Edward Leisey

spouse(2):

Frank Vernon Sieglinger