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topic reprinted by newspapers across the country, “Millers will never know how many babies they have
handicapped … from their commercial disregard of the laws of Nature [and] interfer[ence] with the in-
exorable laws which the Creator has ordained.” 36
By the time Alfred McCann himself died young of a heart attack in 1931, shortly after delivering a
two-hour radio tirade, fear of acidosis had become a national obsession—much like early twenty-first-
century concerns about gluten. A 1932 survey of new health and dietary advice topics, for example,
reported skeptically on the overwhelming consensus: “Nearly every disease in the world [seems] not to
be the result of eating improper food, but also of eating proper foods in improper combinations. … If a
person is so ignorant as to permit [white bread and sugar] to pass his lips, he is doomed.” 37
WEAKNESS IS A CRIME
Alfred W. McCann instilled Graham's Christian physiology with a Progressive distaste for bread trusts
and food oligopolies. Refined white flour was the product of greedy industrialists whose violations
of “the provisions of the Creator” accelerated the country's moral decline. America must defy these
“Moneybags,” he argued, and return its eating practices to the basic laws of God. 38 Nevertheless, by
the 1920s, a decidedly more pecuniary philosophy of health would outshine McCann's ideas. The real
prophet of 1920s amylophobia was Bernarr MacFadden, a sinewy entrepreneur with a genius for self-
promotion and a love of big business. MacFadden adapted Christian physiology to preach a more op-
timistic and secular creed—the gospel of personal improvement.
Like all good diet gurus of his time, MacFadden was born a sickly child. And, of course, like all
good diet gurus, MacFadden overcame his weakness through strict physical discipline—his version
marked by relentless exercise, heroic fasts, and a Graham-influenced diet. By 1899, at age thirty-one, his
muscles rippling and constitution brimming with vitality, he founded a secular church called “Physical
Culture” and began to preach. “Weakness is a crime; don't be a criminal” was his worldly command-
ment. 39
Half social movement, half business empire, Physical Culture would eventually come to include a
health and diet publishing conglomerate, the country's most popular lineup of pulp fiction magazines
and books, newspapers throughout the country, a Physical Culture restaurant chain, several Physical
Culture spa resorts, a model for Physical Culture schools, and a planned residential community in New
Jersey based on MacFadden's principles. When he died in 1955 (a respectable eighty-seven, but still a
bit shy of the 150 birthdays he had vowed to celebrate), the unabashed egomaniac had been a popular-
culture icon for four decades, unsuccessful Republican politician, advisor to presidents, the subject of
countless scandals, and a guru to Hollywood celebrities. He had taken on patent medicine makers, a na-
tion's sexual prudery, and the American Medical Association. He had denounced constrictive clothing,
shoes, alcohol, cigarettes, Communists, Jews—and, of course, white bread, “the greatest humbug ever
foisted upon a civilized people.” 40
MacFadden inspired many imitators, some of whom, like Charles Atlas (groomed by MacFadden)
and Jack LaLanne (taught by MacFadden's star pupil), would eventually eclipse his memory. But Bern-
arr MacFadden was the original. With his high brow, aquiline nose, and muscular physique posed nearly
naked on thousands of posters and magazine covers, he was the early twentieth-century's image of what
health should look like—and how to achieve it.
Although MacFadden presented himself as a real-life Superman, he insisted that anyone could
achieve the same results. Powerful physique, sexual virility, worldly success, and long life were all with-
in the reach of the average American. His prescription was rigorous but relatively simple: all disease
arose from blood impurities caused by poor diet and metabolic imbalance. Strenuous exercise and reg-
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