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Health fads as we know them took shape a century ago. Wellness “experts” — from Bernarr Macfadden in
Physical Culture to the Kellogg brothers — gave Americans plenty of new ideas to chew on for cleaner, healthier living, even if they typically involved pricey spa retreats and newfangled diet plans. Vegetarianism was slowly gaining purchase as a way to get “back to Nature.” All the better if you could do it in a health and spirit commune upstate.
As a lifelong reporter, Samuel G. Blythe was skeptical of “food faddists and physical culturists.” In his time at the
Post, the
New York World, and