ABSTRACT
Hauser’s diets sought to cure both physical and psychological ailments, change body weight, and promote longevity. He argued very early that “health is nature, and disease is unnatural” and “no disease can exist in a chemicalized blood stream” (Hauser 1930: 33). Selfcure with foodstuffs, he claimed, especially acidic ones will eliminate “sickness and old age” (Hauser 1930: 38). Hauser’s proof of this is the prison and orphanage studies undertaken by Dr. Joseph Goldberger in 1914, which determined that pellagra was a disease of poor diet rather than an infectious disease. Able to draw on the “real” science of vitamin deficiency diseases by the 1930s, Hauser cloaked his vegetarian diets in the model of the Goldberger study (Hauser 1934: 6-7).
