32 Facts About Adelle Davis

Adelle Davis wrote an early textbook on nutrition in 1942, followed by four best-selling books for consumers which praised the value of natural foods and criticized the diet of the average American.

Adelle Davis's books sold over 10 million copies and helped shape America's eating habits.

Adelle Davis was born on February 25,1904, on a small-town farm near Lizton, Indiana.

Adelle Davis was the youngest of five daughters of Charles Eugene Davis and Harriette Davis.

Adelle Davis was raised with her sisters on the family's farm by her father and an elderly aunt, where among her duties were pitching hay, plowing corn, and milking cows.

Adelle Davis rode seven miles in a horse and buggy to attend school, where she graduated in 1923 with thirteen other students.

Adelle Davis enrolled at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana where she stayed from 1923 to 1925, majoring in home economics.

Adelle Davis enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she earned a master of science degree in biochemistry, in 1938.

Adelle Davis worked as a consulting nutritionist in Oakland and then in Los Angeles with physicians at the Alameda County Health Clinic and the William E Branch Clinic in Hollywood.

Adelle Davis prescribed diets to the patients that were referred to her by numerous specialists.

Adelle Davis continued seeing patients referred to her by physicians, and by the end of her career she had helped approximately 20,000 referred patients.

Adelle Davis had practiced professional nutritional counseling for 35 years before she gave up and devoted her time to her family.

In 1942 Adelle Davis wrote a 524-page, forty-one chapter nutrition textbook for Macmillan, Vitality Through Planned Nutrition.

Adelle Davis wrote her consumer books over a 40-year career, revising some in the 1970s.

Adelle Davis saw herself as an "interpreter", not merely a researcher.

Adelle Davis's first book, Let's Cook it Right, was an effort to update and improve on the popular guide, Joy of Cooking, by including scientific facts about nutrition.

Adelle Davis preached the benefits of whole grains and breads, fresh vegetables, vitamin supplements, limits on sugar, and avoidance of packaged and processed foods.

Adelle Davis denounced prepared baby foods due to their high concentrations of additives and pesticide residue, which made her opinions controversial among doctors.

Adelle Davis argued that women who did not eat well during pregnancy were more likely to suffer from numerous medical problems and that their infants might have hearing and vision abnormalities, rickets and anemia, and do poorly in school, and that such mothers were settling for mediocre children when they could have superior ones.

Adelle Davis explains the functions and food sources of over forty nutrients considered essential to human health, including vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and proteins.

Adelle Davis used the book to describe in detail her belief that most Americans inflicted harm on themselves with their typical diets, which was excessively high in salt, refined sugars, pesticides, growth hormones, preservatives and other additives, and thereby "devitalized" of its essential nutrients by the excessive processing.

Adelle Davis believed many of America's dietary problems were due to most doctors not being well informed about nutrition.

Adelle Davis believed few medical schools offered nutrition courses and physicians had little time to read the hundreds of medical journals published to keep up with new findings.

Adelle Davis criticized the food industry of helping promote bad eating habits with misleading advertising.

Adelle Davis gained further from speaking on the lecture circuit on college campuses as well as in Latin America and Europe, and eventually became sought after for guest appearances on television talk show programs.

Adelle Davis wrote a series of four books, starting with a cookbook in 1947, that ultimately sold over 10 million copies in total.

Adelle Davis contributed to, as well as benefiting from, the rise of a nutritional and health-food movement that began in the 1950s, which focused on subjects such as pesticide residues and food additives, a movement her critics would come to term food faddism.

Adelle Davis's celebrity was demonstrated by her repeated guest appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as she became the most popular and influential nutritionist in the country.

The child was pale and chronically ill because her mother, who was an adherent of Adelle Davis's nutrition, was giving her large doses of vitamins A and D plus calcium lactate.

In October 1943, Adelle Davis married George Edward Leisey, and adopted his two children, George and Barbara, though she never had children of her own.

Adelle Davis divorced George Leisey in 1953 and married a retired accountant and lawyer named Frank Sieglinger in 1960.

Adelle Davis attributed her getting cancer to her early years in college, where she ate junk food before learning about its negative effects on health, and to a number of X-rays she underwent.