Good Health and How We Won It (1909)

AUTHOR: Sinclair, Upton

KEYWORDS: diet, food, health, Temperance

Alcott, William
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Child, Lydia Maria
Dodds, Susanna Way
Fowler, Lydia Folger
Fowler, Orson Squire
Graham, Sylvester
Jackson, James Caleb
Kellogg, Ella Ervilla
Kellogg, John Harvey
Mussey, Reuben Dimond
Nichols, Mary Sargeant Gove
Nichols, Thomas Low
Shew, Joel
Smith, Ellen Goodell
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Trall, Russel Thacher
Trine, Ralph Waldo
White, Ellen Gould Harmon

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

This is a treatise on Sinclair's convictions concerning health reform, including diet. In the Introduction, Sinclair relates how he was always “a worshiper of the ideal of health, and never used any sort of stimulant.” But he also points out that he adopted very early “a practice to work sixteen hours a day” which, throughout his life, meant “work[ing] for long periods under very great nervous strain” (3). Overwork and stress regularly resulted in digestive and other problems, which were usually treated with some sort of medicine, until he “stumbled upon an article in the Contemporary Review, telling about the experiments of a gentleman named Horace Fletcher” (4). The article prompted him to try dietary experiments such as living “upon a few handfuls of rice and fruit” (5) and to engage with health reform literature, including John Harvey Kellogg's writings. Together with Michael Williams, his co-author whom he met around this time, Sinclair

went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where we found a million-dollar institution, equipped with every resource of modern science, and with more than a thousand nurses, physicians and helpers, all devoting their time to the teaching of the new art of keeping well. And thus, little by little, with backslidings, mistakes, and many disappointments, we worked out our problems, and found the road to permanent health. We do not say that we have entirely got over the ill effects of a lifetime of bad living; but we do say that we are getting rid of them very rapidly; we say that we have positive knowledge of the principles of right living, and of the causes of our former ailments, where before we had only ignorance (6).

The book subsequently sets out these principles of right living. Sinclair takes this to be particularly important given his conviction “that to-day our civilization is rapidly degenerating” (10). But he is also keen to point out what he thinks are the two sources of potential “regeneration,” namely “democracy” and “science” (10-11). This is why questions of health intersect with those of economics, politics, morality, spirituality, and art:

To whatever department of human activity one turns at the present day, he finds men engaged in combating the age-long evils of human life with the new weapon of exact knowledge; and their discoveries no longer remain the secrets of a few – by the agencies of the public school and the press they are spreading throughout the whole world. Thus, a new science of economics having been worked out, and the causes of poverty and exploitation set forth, we see a world-wide and universal movement for the abolition of these evils. And hand in hand with this goes a movement of moral regeneration, manifesting itself in a thousand different forms, but all having for their aim the teaching of self-mastery – the replacing of the old natural process of the elimination of the unfit by a conscious effort on the part of each individual to eliminate his own unfitness. We see this movement in literature and art; we see it in the new religions which are springing up – in Christian Science, and the so-called “New Thought” movements; we see it in the great health movement which is the theme of this book, and which claims for its leaders some of the finest spirits of our times (11-12).

For Sinclair and Williams, the principles of “new hygiene” and right living (16) include:

• the conviction that “the most important problems connected with health are those of nutrition” (37);
• the Fletcher-derived insistence on proper mastication and quantity of food (46-50, 57-68, 104-109);
• “a simple dietary, which at the same time is well balanced in its food elements, well cooked, and tastefully served” (110);
• the avoidance of “toxic food” such as “[a]ll meats and fish” (122) – Sinclair and Williams believe that meat causes cancer (186-188);
• a vegan diet, including, “in the order of excellence” as “given by Dr. Kellogg,” with “the antitoxic foods being in italics: fresh ripe fruits, cooked fresh fruits, cooked dried fruits, nuts, cooked cereals, rice, zweibach, toasted corn flakes, potato, cauliflower, and other fresh vegetables, honey, malted nuts, yogurt, or buttermilk, sterilized milk, and cream, peas, beans, lentils, raised bread, and sterilized butter” (123);
• the avoidance of “fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America” (132);
• minimal consumption of salt and avoidance of sugar and “irritating substance[s]” like “vinegar, … pepper, mustard, and other condiments and spices” (140-142);
• abstention from alcohol, tea, and coffee (193-202);
• proper “breathing, bathing, and exercise,” which, in addition to nutrition, are “of great importance in the art of keeping well” (219).

Sinclair and Williams insist that they “discarded meat from their dietary for scientific reasons” or health reasons only (175-176). They recommend Ella Ervilla Kellogg's cookbooks as guidance and the book includes a chapter promoting the activities at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (258-271).