'Healthmania' Diet, Supplements and the Pursuit of Health in America And
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‘Healthmania’ Diet, Supplements and the Pursuit of Health in America and Britain c. 1945-1980. Submitted by Nicos Kefalas to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Medical History In February 2019 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature:..................................Nicos Kefalas......................................... 1 Abstract: This thesis explores the history of healthy eating in the mid-to-late twentieth century, providing insight into the roots of contemporary anxieties about healthy lifestyles, dieting, and the prevention of chronic disease in the UK and the US. This thesis argues that during the post-war decades, British and American societies experienced a fundamental shift that enabled new forms of cultural preoccupations about health and diet to flourish. This shift created an obsession within the media, science and society about safeguarding good health, youth and vitality, especially through dieting, specific foods, and the ingestion of supplements. This shift was enabled by the simultaneous promotion and representation of healthy eating as a solution to chronic diseases, by neoromantic notions of health, by anxieties about modern living, but also by the growth of ideas around individual agency and responsibility for health. Drawing on a rich source base of self-help books, newspapers and magazines, advertisements, medical journals and comic books, chapters of this thesis explore the ways in which contemporary obsessions about diet and health were promoted, reported on and experienced in everyday life. Examining health obsessions in relation to gendered approaches to food and broader post-war concerns about the impact of modernity on health and lifestyle, on the valorisation of slim bodies and youth, and on chronic disease prevention and productivity, this thesis offers new perspectives on the multifaceted interactions between self-help advice literature, newspapers and magazines, mainstream medical thought, and comic books during the postwar decades. 2 Acknowledgements A large number of people have enabled and supported the research, writing and finalising of this thesis. First, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Mark Jackson, whose peerless supervision was instrumental to the writing of this thesis. Mark provided feedback on every draft, gave me guidance, pointed me to secondary and primary material, supported and at every step of the way dealt with my concerns with his trademark calmness and humour, for which I am most grateful. His support was crucial, since, if he had not believed in the usefulness of primary sources like comic books and television shows, a large portion of the thesis would not have been possible. I would like to also thank all the members of the Senior Investigative Award: Lifestyle, Health and Disease, Changing Concepts of Balance in Modern Medicine, for their help and support as well as, the administrative personnel of the Centre for Medical History and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. I would like to thank the Wellcome Trust, which through Professor Jackson’s Senior Investigative Award: Lifestyle, Health and Disease (Grant no. 100601/Z/12/Z), enabled my research trip to the Library of Congress (LOC) and the UCLA Film and Television Archives. I would like to thank the library staff of both the Library of Congress and the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Special thanks are reserved for the staff of the LOC Newspaper and Current Periodical Room, and more specifically for Megan Halsband, whose knowledge on comic books and help locating certain titles made my research on comic books possible. Also, I would like to thank the archive staff of the LOC Science and Business reading room who helped me with my research on magazines and humoured my extravagant demands by allowing me to access mountains of Prevention, Time, Newsweek, Life, and Men’s Fitness. I would also like to thank the staff of the UCLA Film and Television Archives for helping me to find, and play for me stacks of VHS tapes 3 and DVDs. Thanks also to the personnel of the Wellcome Library for helping me find self-help books and online resources. I want to express my gratitude to my parents, as all of this could not have been achieved without their financial and emotional support. Despite the fact that my father was recovering from cancer, my family encouraged me to continue my studies in order not to lose momentum, rather than allowing me to return home to help them out. Furthermore, I would love to thank my brother for all the encouragement, support and laughter he offered during this. I would also like to thank my girlfriend, Aiste, for her kindness and for loving and encouraging me throughout my PhD. Finally, I would like to thank my friends for their support and lightening up dark days: Michalis Michaelides, Hyunwu Kang, Demetris Demetriou, and Andreas Stamataris. 4 Table of Contents: Chapter I: Introduction .......................................................................................... 10 Histories of medicalisation, diet and risk ....................................................................... 15 Histories of food and cuisine .......................................................................................... 25 Sources and methodology ............................................................................................... 32 Structure of thesis .......................................................................................................... 39 Chapter II: Self-help and self-promotion: scientism and agency in UK and US popular advice literature ........................................................................................ 42 Authors, readers and scientism ...................................................................................... 43 Dieting as panacea: health problems, eating and disease ............................................... 65 Human Agency and Obligation ...................................................................................... 69 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter III: Promoting health: diet, science and medicine in the British and American press ....................................................................................................... 86 Newspapers and magazines in the late-twentieth century .............................................. 87 Scientism, heart disease and the medicalisation of lifestyle in the 1950s ........................ 96 Marketing health: health promotion and dietary campaigns in the 1950s .................. 110 Self-help, slimming and the medicalisation of diet in the press .................................... 118 Advertisements and the valorisation of nature in the 1960s ........................................ 144 Individual agency and responsibility in the 1970s ........................................................ 154 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 167 Chapter IV:Linking health, longevity and diet:medical research in the UK and the US ......................................................................................................................... 169 The cardiac 1950s: neoromanticism, epidemiology and the medicalisation of diet and lifestyle ......................................................................................................................... 170 The attack on fat: obesity and health in the 1950s ....................................................... 193 Dietotherapy and anti-quackery during the 1960s ....................................................... 206 Diabetes, women’s hearts, Vitamin C and cancer in the 1970s .................................... 220 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 236 Chapter V:The medicalisation of entertainment: healthy eating and chronic disease in popular comic books ........................................................................................ 239 Comic books in the late twentieth century ................................................................... 240 The medicalisation of entertainment ............................................................................ 251 ‘Scientific’ parenthood and self-help ........................................................................... 268 Healthy eating in advertisements ................................................................................. 274 Gendered standards of diet, exercise and obesity ........................................................ 283 Aging ............................................................................................................................ 296 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 298 5 Chapter VI: Conclusion .......................................................................................