A healthy diet: British newspaper narratives in the 1920s

ABSTRACT The early years of twentieth-century Britain were a transitional period for the way that food was understood. Diet adequacy was now being increasingly thought of as not simply a matter of the quantity of food but the qualities that food needed to have to sustain optimum health. A number of ‘fad diet’ books were circulating and proposed what readers should eat or avoid, and even how to eat. Science, meanwhile, was making progress with the identification of vitamins and these were added to the discourse. Newspapers in the 1920s had an important communication role in the struggle to separate dietary fact from fiction and this study examines how they represented ideas to their readers. Rather than giving a voice to ‘fad diets’, press stories endorsed the ‘common sense’ of normal varied diets although these could be socially and economically variable. Using fad ridicule and other techniques, as well as the reported opinion from well-known medical figures, newspapers emerge as responsible intermediaries in the transition .


Introduction
A hundred years ago, the concept of a healthy diet was contested terrain between scientists, as it was between a number of popular writers with their own distinctive proselytising views. What were the public to make of this uncertainty? The diets of many British people at the time would now be seen as nutritionally inadequate with a high dependence on carbohydrates. In this, the cheap carbohydrate diets of the nineteenth Centuryfeaturing potatoes, bread, cereals and refined sugarhad persisted. 1 Although there were differences on the basis of income, even those who were able to make choices relied on these carbohydrate-rich stomach-fillers. 2 However, the better-off could augment this with meat and dairy products, and were able to eat more: among the poor, such options were variable or non-existent. Through the interwar years, 3 there was to be a protracted period of discovery and debate to reach an understanding of what comprised a good diet rather than one which suppressed hunger.
On the supply side, food product development was not static even if the primary contributions were consumer confidence and convenience. Branded food items, increasingly sold through retail grocery chains, implied quality differentiation and there was the nowcommonplace retailing of foods 'in their nearest possible stage to table-readiness.' 4 These Vernon Mottram, was to still describe vitamins as … 'mysterious substances of, as yet, unknown chemical composition, present in very small amounts in many, but not all, foods. They are essential to life.' 21 Moreover, the nutritional importance of protective foodsgiving adequate levels of vitamins and mineralswas only 'beginning to be recognised and it was soon apparent that they were beyond the reach of a large proportion of the poorer people'. 22 Even in the 1930s, this field of research was challenging in terms of the basic food science and the implications of survey data. Causal links between poor diets and poor health were to be established and governments were to be convinced of their role in these matters. 23 While scientific thinking slowly evolved, the general public's understanding of diet in relation to health was some way behind research developments: this provided fertile grounds for assertion and half-truth.
Of this, there was already much to choose from since there were several popular books making extensive claims for particular food categories and ways of eating them. At the time, these ideas were often termed food fads since each was, or strived to be, fashionable. Distinguishing between conflicting types of dietary advice offered by strident authors was not straightforward. Each variant was presented with conviction and rested on the assurance of author experience that changing what they ate improved their health. Moreover, for the reader, any positive or negative dietary effects would probably be longer-term making clear attribution difficult.
Newspapers provide intermediary narratives on a number of issuespolitical events, economic prospects, tragedies and celebrationsas journalists and editors condense and simplify complex matters for readers. But what of these food fad issues? In our own time, the media regularly engage with dietary controversies, often with the accusation of sensationalisation or trivialisation of scientific issues. 24 It is important to not lose sight of that possibility when we consider newspapers of the past. However, for all their imperfections, they have immediacy and provide a permanent record of current thinking even if that subsequently proves transitory. In the 1920s, newspapers were the primary source of public information 25 and a question can be asked about their treatment of dietary ideas in relation to health. Knowing what was being reporting, and how, is salient to any understanding of how ideas and behaviours were changing at the time. Was this considered a topic of sufficient reader interest to warrant coverage, and how were dietary assertions viewed in relation to prevailing orthodoxy and the emerging science? So, by reference to period literature and newspaper coverage, we examine the relationship between what were often startlingly distinctive ideas about diet and the emerging research that would go on to underpin nutritional science in future decades. The focus of this study is therefore British newspaper coverage of food fads in the 1920s, but first it is important to outline the persuasive health-enhancement claims made in this very distinctive genre of literature.

Proselytising dietaries
Through the early years of the twentieth century, a number of proselytising books had been published or distributed in Britain to popularise new ways of thinking about food and eating. Stark has set this in the context of a wider discourse about the need for physical regeneration and rejuvenation of the body with the effect that eating for health was promoted as a distinct category from food as pleasure, or food as survival. 26 At the start of the 1920s, there were several ideas being widely circulated about what readers should do to sustain or regain their health. The authors of these texts had varied backgrounds, some were physicians others were businessmen, but all were apparently convinced that a disruptive approach to food and eating, a novel regime, would bestow better health generally, and sometimes cure existing conditions. Their authority was largely drawn from personal experience of improved health and the conviction that this had been achieved by a specific dietary approach.
In Strength from Eating, for example, Bernarr Macfadden, an American physical culture entrepreneur advised readers to eat not from habit but in response to appetite. 27 Enthusiastic mastication was encouraged and the virtues of eating raw food were set out. 28 Although this book had been published in 1901, Macfadden released a number of self-help books in Britain and America during the 1920s, including the Physical Culture Cook Book in 1924. 29 In 1906, Alexander Haig, a Scottish physician with outspoken views on the relationship between diet and health, had promoted avoidance of foods that stimulated the production of uric acid since this was seen to be the source of much ill-health. 30 In addition to popular books, he argued this case through correspondence in medical journals, even making a case for this diet in non-operative cancer care. 31 He had also claimed that 'the moral nature of man will only be recognisable when large numbers live on a uric-acid-free diet for the whole of their lives and transmit an untainted heredity to their descendants.' 32 His physician son Kenneth Haig (see note 22) also published advice on the exclusion of foods including inter alia all meat, fish and egg yolks; all pulses; mushrooms, asparagus, oatmeal, wheatmeal and brown bread containing any husk; as well as tea and coffee. 33 Sidney Beard, a proselytising vegetarian, wrote of a 'hygienic dietary' after his 'twelve years of abstinence from flesh-food.' 34 For readers to regain their health, 'the first step must be abstinence from the flesh and blood of animals and birds, and the substitution of what has popularly been known as "a mixed vegetarian diet".' 35 Fish could be included as a transitional stage until the full 'fruitarian' diet was achieved. Numerous health, and even moral, benefits were claimed for fruitarians. By 1921, his book was in its eighth edition with claimed sales of more than 45,000.
In the preface to a vegetarian cookery book, Margaret Blatch, a former principal of the Eustace Miles 36 School of Cookery claimed nine years of abstinence from 'flesh-foods', and described her quest for new food combinations … 'with special reference to their nutritive value … ' 37 Her book was described as a response to … 'numerous and oftrepeated requests from pupils.' 38 Also well-established was the idea, if not the practice, of Fletcherism. Horace Fletcher, 39 an American exponent on ways that people should eat to best effect, had attributed 40 his health revitalisation to what we might now call mindfulness about appetite and the process of eating. 41 He did not favour the prescription or proscription of particular foods as was the case with other authors. 42 Allowing himself to get hungry, then relentlessly chewing his food to extract all the flavour and ensure maximum digestibility meant, he said, 'I had worked out my own salvation. I had lost upwards of 60 pounds [27.2 kg] of fat: I was feeling better in all ways than I had for twenty years. My head was clear, my body felt springy, I enjoyed walking, I had not had a single cold for five months … ' 43 There was much in these books to beguile readers with poor health and those wishing to maintain fitness at a time when treatment for many conditions was unknown or of limited effect.
The scale of this dietary advice was considerable and, variously, restrictive and prescriptive ideas about food and eating still circulated through the 1920s. It was ironic, therefore, that as people went hungry in some parts of Britain, ideas circulated about what specific foods one should choose to eat, even how that food should be eaten. To say the least, that specificity sits uneasily with unmet basic food needs. For some, however, these new dietary ideas were enthusiastically received, offering the prospect of personal control over better health. In their various forms, they now aligned with the post-war rhetoric of social and personal change but, entangled in this discourse, there were also calls for their dismissal as food fads suggesting both triviality and impermanence. In this view, popularity could only mean that people had been misled as to the value of those ideas.

Healthy diets and scientific knowledge
A good diet in relation to health maintenance was, therefore, contested terrain: a number of ideas and practices were promoted but often in conflict. Put bleakly, at the time there was 'universal ignorance of the kind of foods that were most beneficial to health.' 44 Moreover, at the start of the 1920s, there was this further complication of an incomplete understanding of vitamins. Although predated by the observation and pragmatic treatment of conditions thought to result from dietary deficiencies, experimental research had identified some vitamins and started to outline their crucial role in effective nutrition. Their progressive identification was to change the way nutrition was understood and what counted as a healthy diet. Even among researchers, the role of vitamins in diet adequacy was contested. Semba argues there were two paradigms operating to obstruct scientific acceptance. 45 The germ theory of disease conflicted with the prospect of dietary modification eliminating or mitigating some conditions. Furthermore, scientists working with food mostly saw their research focus as being proteins and calories. This perspective on food research was to feature in the nutritional controversy of the 1930s when there was a notable increase in published research and debate associated with the data. 46 Dietary inadequacy, especially for the poorest families, had policy implications, but how was this to be understood? In the 1920s, vitamins were not yet a political fact, as Kamminga puts it, but there were undoubtedly signs of interest in food composition. 47 Vitamin discoveries aside, there was an enhanced awareness of health improvement possibilities with dietary change. This context provided ample grounds for conjecture.
A British Ministry of Health report, Diet in Relation to Normal Nutrition stands as an official summary of the science at a transitional point in nutritional knowledge. 48 New ways of thinking about food properties were acknowledged, and the report tried to give usable guidance on the application of recent research for everyday food practices. 'In the present state of knowledge it is not possible to say with any exactness where a diet begins to be unsatisfactory in respect of its content of essential substances' … 'but the point of practical importance which has emerged is that milk and green vegetables afford a means of raising any ordinary diet into the plane of safety.' 49 Moreover, the report acknowledged the transitional nature of scientific conclusions in an emergent field of research. 'It is probable that much of what has been said in this report may need modification in the light of future discoveries.' 50 How far this open-mindedness extended is another matter. 51 In the 1920s, how vitamins worked was incompletely understood by those best placed to know, but assumptions were readily made by others. Food manufacturers and retailers saw the possibility of increased sales by advertising an association with this new knowledge. 52 An advertisement for baby food, for example, was to say: 'Witchell Babies never die, they never fade away, for they are fed on WITCHELL's FOOD, which is rich in Vitamines, is pure concentrated nourishment, and stands pre-eminent over all other foods.' 53 Huntley and Palmer Breakfast Biscuits were advertised to 'contain Vitamin D that precious substitute for sunshine so essential for perfect health in our comparatively sunless country.' 54 For manufacturers, the promise of enhanced health linked to vitamin content was a widely used marketing device. Such was the concern about commercial misinformation that the British Medical Journal commissioned research into the vitamin content claims made by six well-known food products that were advertised in the medical press. Analysis revealed that, at best, the products contained low or variable quantities.
Under normal conditions of life an adequate supply of vitamins can be easily ensured by including in the diet a suitable amount of "protective foods", such as milk, butter, green vegetables and fruit, and that no advantage is to be gained by trying to obtain these substances in the form of drugs. 55 The article provoked a letter from Arthur Canney, the managing director of Virol, seeking to correct what he saw as misleading impressions about the nature of the product and the concentration of vitamins A and B present. 56 The authors disagreed 57 and thereby failed to placate Mr. Canney. 58 Similarly, as far as the proponents of fad diets were concerned, their earlier 'ideas were not displaced, but rather reinterpreted in the era of vitamins.' 59 Inevitably, vitamins were entangled with the dietary conjecture that underpinned food fads. Exploitation of this kind was not new, a 1908 text by Charles Stanford Read, had despaired that … 'where most physicians fear to tread, some well-meaning individual steps forward and unauthoritatively and unscientifically shows the public that for centuries they have been courting disaster by swallowing the wrong food.' 60 The increase in what was perceived as mistaken dietary advice offered by such fads at that time was attributed to the misapplication of experimental work from the laboratory to everyday life; introspection on life and diet caused by the stress of modern times; misunderstandings about diet and longevity; and the dubious power of the non-medical press. As the main mechanism for spreading ideas, the latter had a crucial role.
Since the lay press has been so multiplied and extended, and has become such a power in the land, many self-appointed authorities, by means of the columns of newspapers and magazines, think fit to dogmatize on some particular dietary or to rail against the pernicious effects of certain foods. 61 The text sought to explain why vegetarianism, the 'non-uric acid' diet, Fletcherism and other dietary regimes all posed risks. Clearly, those explanations were overwhelmed by the scale of fad practices since Vernon Mottram took a similar approach in 1925 and concluded that consideration of a number of food cults and fads shows that there is little to be said for any of them. Often their claims are extravagant and fantastic. Most of them are based on sentimental, and not on scientific grounds. 62 For the public, the problem was how to distinguish between fact and fiction since new ways of eating were nonetheless authoritatively presented. Elements of science could be incorporated in what were otherwise conjectural schemes. One book, first published in 1929, promoted a diet of raw and/or unrefined foods where possible based on the importance of mineral elements and … 'natural food salts of phosphorus, silica, fluorine, potash, sulphur and chlorine and iodine, in various combinations, are essential to the full assimilation of nourishing food and to the harmonious functioning of every organ.' 63 Readers were cautioned not to worry about vitamins per se since 'edible vegetables and ripe fruits, especially when raw, are among the most essential foods for health.' 64 Another, promoting eliminative feeding, was to reassure that, unlike other diets, 'we do not say you cannot eat this or you cannot eat that' … 'it is just during the period of elimination that you must adhere to only the highest of the life-giving foods.' 65 What were people to make of differing opinions on what they should be eating to which were now added novel food constituentsvitaminswhich were said to be so important? Although The Ministry of Health report -Diet in Relation to Normal Nutritionwas largely ignored by newspapers at the time, the public were becoming sensitised to dietary matters by articles featured in the emergent lifestyle section, or what were then generally thought of as the women's page. Recently, there had been a realisation of reader interest in the discussion of food as something more than the agricultural economics of production and price: lifestyle sections became popular to extend readership and provided information and advice about household and family matters. 66 Here, we examine how British newspapers handled this major transition for the public understanding of nutrition in the context of concern about well-publicised alternative diets and practices. Today, newspapers often stand accused of misrepresenting scientific reports by emphasising the headline at the expense of the footnote. 67 Inaccuracies and distortions matter because the press have an intermediary role between professional and lay understanding: presenting scientific knowledge and its limitations is important for lay interpretation and application in everyday life. This interaction between newspapers and readers was arguably even more important in the 1920s when high daily circulation rates and limited competition from other media formats 68 meant they were the main or sole source of news.

Newspaper sources and analysis
Nearly all national morning newspapers made circulation gains in the period 1921-1930: many increases were substantial in a dynamic market. 69 Moreover, most British towns had at least one local newspaper providing a blend of international, national and local news. Some could be considered regional but even the smallest serviced a hinterland of reader households. In additional to local material, content was sourced through syndication and, even in the 1920s, stories that caught the imagination, or rather the editor's estimation of public interest, would be published in different parts of Britain within a few days of their first appearance. There was a thriving network for news distribution. How these stories were framed and spread provides a way of understanding topics that attracted readers. 70 Data for this analysis were, therefore, primarily derived from newspapers published between the start of 1920 and the end of 1929 available on the British Library Newspaper Archive 71 and using the search term 'food fads'. Other sources are the Guardian Archive 72 and The Times Archive 73 together with period materials in the form of books, academic articles and reports.
The newspaper archives were examined for any reference to food fads since the search purpose was to find if there was wide newspaper interest, and the kind of stories presented to readers. The initial review of data themes showed that, in newspaper reports, there were three usage variants for the word 'fad'. First, food fads could refer to patterns of eating that were not associated with beliefs about health enhancement. For provincial hostesses, keeping up with new food fashions could be problematic. One column, for example, set out to explain … 'some of the food fads of the London Season.' 74 Although this usage is not part of the current analysis, it serves to remind us that food, and the latest fashion trends in metropolitan dining practices, were editorially considered of interest for readers elsewhere.
Second, there were children's food fads. While individual decisions would, in some form, apply to all food exclusion or preference patterns, for present purposes a distinction can be usefully drawn between children and adults. For children, what influences them is more restricted, and any decision would face potential resistance from adult family members: childhood food fad stories were mostly associated with food refusal and these are not included in this analysis. Nevertheless, they are an interesting footnote since they show concern enough to warrant advice articles on the subject.
Third, most period newspaper articles about food fads were framed as ill-advised departures from normal/typical eating practices and these are analysed here. Such fads are underpinned by group processes, that is how a fashion takes hold even if the group is notional and remote. Individuals may be linked only through what can be read about what others think, and what they do, but those social effects produce and reinforce changed behaviour. Of course, there are individual faddist likes and dislikes which may be unusual, or of unusual intensity, but which do not become more generally publicised. Some of these may be legacies from childhood experiences but are not subject to the social influences of the day. 'I once knew a man who for twenty years would not dream of eating an egg. He never revealed his exact objection, and I doubt if he knew the reason himself.' 75 One day, for some similarly obscure reason, the man resumed eating eggs. Individual quirks aside, most stories concerned what the characters being reported, and sometimes the columnists themselves, considered collective quirks: actions that had social momentum.
The question applied to these data is one of stance. How were foods fads represented to the public? Lifestyle pages now illustrated changing fashions in what was being served, and advised anxious parents how to deal with their children at the dining table. More importantly, for present purposes, there were widespread reports about what should be eaten in relation to health. A new understanding of food composition, and the effects of specific food constituents on health, was being developed by scientists but how were newspapers dealing with this in the context of the well-established proselytising dietaries?

Newspaper narratives
Perhaps the most acerbic food fad stance was ridicule linking the writer and reader in a common cultural understanding that what was being reported was not to be fully believed, if at all. One despaired … 'it is probably equally true that as many people suffer from food fads as benefit from them.' 76 Another article revealing a novel diet started with the observation that … 'diet is a subject which lends itself to all sorts of fanciful ideas.' 77 'Eat uncooked food is the latest advice offered by Dr. Dawes of Montana at an International Conference of Osteopaths at London. In his diet, it was reported that 'Dr. Dawes does not include meat, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, vinegar or sugar' … 'After four years of such diet he feels ten years younger, is more efficient and better looking.' 78 Taking notice of such rejuvenation possibilities could themselves be derided; another columnist asked … 'is it a sign of middle-age that the fleeting food-fad enthusiasm of valetudinarians have a way of becoming increasingly contagious.' 79 Setting the scene for a travel/cuisine book review, a columnist took the view that … food is an acceptable topic to-day. Lettuce, brown bread, Ryvita, raw carrot, ground nutscheerful eaters of each of these are to be found, who claim to be brighter, stronger, of longer life, more moral, than those who merely drag out their unprofitable existence on the other thing. But the acceptability of this topic derives from the medical world or, at least, from the self-conscious amateur of food fads, that is, from those unhappy ones who eat to live. 80 One newspaper reporter seemed overwhelmed by conflicting dietary advice. 'Dr. Lowenstein, a German physician, has hurled a fresh blow at the freedom of the breakfast table by declaring that eggs may contain tubercle bacilli. A taste for white bread, we are informed by a Fellow of Kings College, London, is a sign of depravity' … 'cooked vegetables are sparse in free vitamins and therefore to be avoided by the person who has his health at heart' … 'The world is rapidly becoming the playground of valetudinarians and food fads.' 81 Speaking in London at a luncheon given by the English-Speaking Union, Dr. Wood Hutchison ridiculed 'the dieting of the faddists which banned meat and gave prominence to brown bread' … 'People who lived on a diet mainly composed of cereals had just about the same resisting power to disease as cows and rabbits.' 82 A similarly bemused view of new ideas was taken in a lecture on Food Fads, Fancies and Facts give to members of a literary society. 'The world would be a dull place without its faddists, and nothing lends itself to fads like food.' 83 The lecturer, Dr. Danks, reassured the audience that all they needed to do was cook food properly for safety and digestibility, and seek variety in food sources to ensure nutritional adequacy. If most food fads lacked a physiological underpinning, arguably the reason was to be found in 'moral or religious prejudice against meat, alcohol etc., individual idiosyncrasy which has found that a certain food has agreed or disagreed with the individual, a misguided reading of human history, and lastly, but not least, too frequently mere chicanery.' 84 Then, as now, dietary fads readily arose in relation to weight loss. 85 One article reminded readers that weight management might be better approached … 'by lessened intake of food and increased activity' … [rather than falling] … 'victim to that most debased of all preoccupations commonly known as "food fads".' 86 Seeking to emulate the reputed slimness of Parisian women some took the view that garnishes might counter the effects of the rest of the meal. 'Although many do eat pineapple with their lamb chops,' [a head waiter] said, 'I have not noticed any change in the size of my patrons. One lady who comes here insists on fried apples with her fish, while another invariably orders cream to mix with vinegar for her salad, this being, as she tells me, her staple meal of the day.' 87 Other than ridicule there were stories stressing the irrelevance of food fads, obliquely suggesting their avoidance since they were not necessary. One story, not directly about food, made the case for 'living normally': it reported an exemplary woman employee who had worked for the Post Office for 40 years without a day off sick. 'Miss Henry, who has shingled hair, looks a comparatively young woman. She smokes and never worries about food fads.' 88 This was not a minor story in a local newspaper since it was widely circulated throughout Britain. 89 The irrelevance of food fads also featured in stories about sporting events and achievements. The question of what special diet, if any, people ate to achieve a remarkable feat had resonance. The answer suggested was minimal or no change at all to their normal fare. Ahead of the 1925 annual boat race between Cambridge and Oxford Universities, it had been reported that … 'a few years ago the Oxford crew were attacked by mild influenza while training and, being informed that oranges were a cure, took to eating them with great assiduity, even after all were well … ' 90 However, this year, 'nothing has been heard so far of any particular food fads among the rival Varsity crews.' 91 For the 1928 race, it was reported that there were few dietary differences between the two competing crews. Furthermore, 'both were allowed one and a half pints [852 ml] of beer a dayhalf a pint at lunch and one pint at dinner.' 92 Reviewing the book, Mountaineering Art, it was reported that the author thought it unnecessary 'to follow any food fads or cranky training rules as regards food and drink.' 93 Furthermore, it was questioned whether these were of any use in any sport or exercise. People in the public eye were drawn into food controversies of the day. 'Miss Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the Channel, trained on a meat diet. "No food fads, no fad foods, meat three times a day," was her training slogan.' 94 The unacceptability of imposing on others was also a theme. Commensality posed a problem for hosts if individuals deviated from normal dietary tolerances. One columnist took the view that … 'the solid Victorian family meal, where the same fare was served to everybody, and one was expected to eat the fare provided and be grateful, has completely vanished' … 'today every member of the family will probably be on a different diet or, at any rate, in a different food fad.' 95 A column filler revealed one strategy for handling the nuances of personal taste. 'Personally, I never pay attention to the food fads that are so common to-day. If people come to dine at my house they are given good food well cooked. If they don't like it they can refuse it.' 96 However, few days later, a letter from Diner Out, in the same newspaper was to comment that 'hostesses who never pay attention to the food fads of their guests are not very considerate. The ideal hostess does what she can to please her guests, not to provoke them.' 97 Underlining a shared cultural resonance of food fads, and commentary on them, the Daily Mirror produced two large cartoons under the single title Food Faddists at Dinner. They depicted a dinner hostess faced with the prospect of putting guests on separate tables reflecting their different dietary requests. No comment had been thought necessary. 98 This sense of unacceptable imposition by an individual on others was also to be found in rejections of the proselytising stance often taken by faddists. At a public lecture on food fads in Glasgow, the speaker noted that … 'it was a very curious things that once they had decided what should and should not be eaten, they could not keep it to themselves, but wanted to go and coerce other people on the lines that they thought right' … 'Very few people, he added, had the knowledge requisite to be dogmatic.' 99 Similarly rejecting such interpersonal pressure, a columnist was of the view that … 'I am very well content that all the world should eat porridge if I am permitted to avoid it.' 100 A former medical officer of health took on the white bread versus brown bread controversy in a luncheon talk given at the Confectioners' and Bakers' Exhibition in London. He … 'had not a word to say against brown bread in certain conditions, but he did not want to eat it, he did not think the public wanted to eat it, and the experience of millions of workers was a better test than any the laboratory could provide.' 101 Reflecting on the fact that few centenarians could reveal a clear dietary path to their old age, a columnist cast doubts on faddists who would argue there was one. Although the then-current American fad promoting a diet of raw food was one of many, proponents shared an evangelical zeal. 'Food faddists would be thoroughly amusing if they were not at times intensely annoying because they thrust their theories down the throats of their friends, who find these much harder to digest than the foods they condemn.' 102 Dietary fads could also be framed as dangerous to health since there were salutary examples of bad outcomes. A woman's attempted suicide, and the attempted murder of her child, were framed by vegetarianism in a London court case. The husband 'seemed to have been a rigid vegetarian, and to have insisted upon a diet of herbs, not only for himself, but also for his wife and baby.' 103 The folly of unusual diets had been highlighted when an inquest was told of … 'how a lieutenant-colonel starved himself to death through the effect of reading books on dieting.' 104 A doctor … 'said Lt-Col. Call refused to take an all-round diet which was prescribed. Death was due to heart failure following starvation. The coroner said the starvation was self-imposed in the wrong opinion that it was the right thing to do.' 105 Such was the perceived threat of food fads to cancer patients, the North of England Cancer Campaign (Sunderland Branch) was to say … 'there is no proof that by following any one of the food fads of the moment immunity from cancer can be secured' … 'It is true that a wholesome, suitable diet safeguards against all diseases, since bodily fitness largely depends upon good food habits.' 106 The article was flagged by the newspaper as being issued for the public good. The same article, with the same note, was promoted by the Nottinghamshire Cancer Campaign. 107

Professional perspectives
Although medical expertise on dietary matters was limited, 108 many reports denouncing fads were underpinned by reference to professional opinion, usually that of a physician or health official. Even though some food fad proponents were themselves physicians, the medical opinions featured in these newspaper stories were rarely supportive. These authoritative voices were not necessarily well informed about the latest scientific developments and advice often veered towards the safety of a varied 'general' diet that ran counter to fad restrictions on the range of foods that should be eaten. By luck or good judgement, this was a beneficial intermediary position for newspaper readers. As suggested earlier, one of the problems with news of food fads was that they might well contain a measure of truth extrapolated to a dubious conclusion. Partial truth was perhaps more problematic than fantasy in the promotion of dietary change. One report was to say: 'there are, of course, faddists who run an idea to death, and only seize on part of a scientific truth. This article is not for them.' 109 Another was to affirm that dieting had its legitimate medical uses 'yet so uncritical is a large section of the public that they are easily taken in by this conscious or unconscious quackery.' 110 A doctor speaking at the People's League of Health meeting in London the previous evening was quoted saying, 'don't follow any food fanatics: they want to diet the mass where the wise physician will diet the individual.' 111 Another lamented a general lack of knowledge about eating and health. 'In this well-instructed age everybody knows, or ought to know, that there are certain essential classes of foods required for the nourishment and maintenance in health of the human body.' 112 However, it was also the case that … 'many men and women like to delude themselves into the idea that they have a considerable amount of medical and physiological knowledge, so that, without the burdensome curriculum extending over six years which goes into the fashioning of a doctor, they feel that they knowit may be by instinctwhat are the causes of their own and other people's ailments' … 'Hence the development of many fads and fashions which govern the lives of thousands.' 113 A review of Mottram's book, Food and the Family, outlined the content in terms of health and nutrition but drew attention to a chapter on food fads of which the author does not think very highly, and another on the dangers of modern foodstuffs, in which attention is drawn to … [inter alia] … the tendency to restrict diet to a comparatively few articles of food. 114 Another review was to note that while comprehensively condemning food fads … 'Professor Mottram is fair even to the faddists, and is judicial in his treatment of the vegetarians, the fruitarians, and the devotees of Fletcherism as of the moderate drinkers.' 115 Notably the book addressed scientific issues clearly and 'altogether it is an interesting and consoling treatise and worth five shillings [0.25 GBP] of anybody's money.' 116 Articles on general dietary education reinforced the message that food fads were seldom the answer … the diet question has been so much harped upon by quacks, cranks and food 'specialists' that it has become a tiresome subject to most people, and the conflicting views of 'dietetic experts', who never saw the inside of a physiological laboratory, are generally, at the least, misleading, and often fundamentally wrong. 117 An article, referring to a League of Red Cross Societies' publication, reminded readers that … 'for normal individuals there is no physiological warranty for the various food fads and faddists who would exclude certain articles of food from the human diet or would place their faith on some particular food.' 118 Wholemeal bread served as a flashpoint for fad criticism more generally. Appealing for common sense, or at least a more nuanced view of food values, Sir Thomas Horder, physician to the British royal family and a well-known public figure, 119 said that … 'the most serious error introduced in the advocacy of wholemeal bread is the impression given that white bread contains no vitamin B.' 120 Furthermore, the notion that great care must be taken to ensure sufficient supply of vitamins in the diet of the vast majority of people in this country is absurd. Very little suffices for this purpose, and it is certain that the common mixed diet of most households contains sufficient and to spare of all the vitamins without special precautions being exercised in this direction. 121 Elsewhere, Sir Thomas Horder defended his views on the nutritional adequacy of white bread declaring 'that the case for wholemeal bread had recently been overstated.' 122 He rejected the ideas that 'the substitution of wholemeal for white bread by the whole nation would result in such hygienic benefits as would amply compensate for the extra cost to the worker' … [or that] … 'such substitution offered immunity from cancer and other diseases.' 123 Not all medical personalities took the same view, of course. At one extreme, Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane, 124 a famous surgeon who also developed contentious views on the relationship between food and cancer, argued that wholemeal bread … 'is an entire food and a perfect food, and white bread is a source of weakness, physical degeneration, ill-health and disease, and a national danger.' 125 Other medical opinions were offered on the theme of common sense and ridicule could also be used here to reinforce the absurdity of the fad. At a dinner given for the Institute of Grocers, Sir James Crichton-Browne 126 mocked public fascination with vitamins. 'I heard lately … of a woman who went into a shop and asked for a pound [0.45 kg] of mixed vitamines' … 'My advice to the people is to have a sufficient and varied supply of wholesome food and not to bother about vitamines.' 127 A wide-ranging food and health article also ridiculed faddists: 'The secret of health does not lie in wholemeal bread or unfired vegetables; in the seventy-two times mastication theory, or in the jump-quick cereals which the manufacturers of Britain and America so forcefully press upon us' … 'Heal-alls in dietetics are as will-o'-the-wispish as are cure-alls in pharmacy.' 128 Showing the topicality of food fads, one event fuelled widespread interest. Food fads had been mentioned in a speech following the annual general meeting of Bovril, a major beef extract manufacturer, on 4 March 1925. This produced extensive newspaper coveragealmost certainly more than the business event itself would normally have warranted. In what was described as a rousing speech promoting Bovril's uses in extreme locations as well as ordinary domestic kitchens, Sir James Crichton-Browne dismissed the current fascination with vitamines he advised the 'average man with an average mixed diet not to trouble himself about them.' 129 There was, he said, 'no subject on which as much nonsense was talked, not even politics, as about food. You never went to a dinner party without hearing fantastic theories as to what we should eat … '. 130 Faddists were mocked and in matters of diet … 'tradition, stretching back for thousands of years, and common sense counted for a great deal … '. 131 The Bovril event is interesting since, even with well-known companies, reports of annual general meetings have restricted appeal other than, perhaps, the headline facts of their trading position over the period. However, across the country, newspapers reported what had happened. As shown in Table 1, over the course of the next two weeks, the story had been told across Britain as daily and weekly newspapers were published. Some treated this primarily as a business story even though Sir James Crichton-Browne and food fads were mentioned within the column. 132 One publication blended the business and food fads dimensions in the article title. 133 However, many newspapers saw the well-known doctor's views on 'food fads' as the main item of interest within this business story and this was reflected in the headlines they used. Headline similarities may arise from syndication, but the narrow range of headlines across the country reveals a fairly uniform journalistic assessment of what might attract their readers at this time: food fads were newsworthy.
There were reverberations beyond this intense period of media interest. The following year, Crichton-Browne was to speak at the annual dinner of the Institute of Certificated Grocers. 'It was scarcely possible to open a newspaper without finding some scare about food poisoning, food preservatives, food adulteration, with dietetic recommendations which are sometimes simply foolish and sometimes mischievous.' 134 He concluded with advice to ignore such killjoys and faddists and … 'to follow the dictates of common sense, well established tradition and a healthy appetite. As long as they had a good mixed, varied diet they need not bother their heads too much about vitamins.' 135 Crichton-Browne was also invoked with the comment that 'the food faddists were never so varied, so active, and so assured as they are today, assailing us with confident assertions that most of us are digging our graves with our teeth.' 136 Even at the end of the decade, it was still necessary to suggest that people should have regard for the science, and common sense: the food fad challenged both.
There are, of course, certain principles of dietetics which have behind them solid reasons, good science and general experience; but the greater number of dietary laws, orders and prohibitions which people make for themselves, or pompously lay down for others, have about as much validity as has the ancient dogma that a fish diet increases brain power. 137

Concluding comments
It is easy to forget that controversial topics in our own times often have long histories. In Britain, the relative merits of diets for specific health, weight-control or performance needs are still matters for debate, involve a challenge to ordinary food choices and attract press comment. 138 The problem takes on new forms. Vegetarian and vegan diets are now widely accepted, for example, and recognised medical needs may require specific dietary arrangements but might still require repeated negotiation in practice. 139 This analysis of newspaper coverage for the period 1920-1929 has shown how dietary fads were represented to the public. At the time, there was no shortage of fads in circulation and the recent identification of vitamins, previously unknown food components, gave an extra dimension to the question of what nutritional value could be extracted from novel dietary arrangements. At a time when there was heavy household reliance on print media across Britain, local and regional newspapers clearly expected reader interest as they unearthed or used syndicated stories about food fads to feature as articles on their lifestyle page. Moreover, this was not a stance restricted to a few newspapers since there was both geographical spread and a recurring incidence of such stories. References to food fads invoked shared understandings in the sense that article writers could assume readers knew what they were, needing to supply only provide minimal detail of the fad for the story to be understood. However, writers routinely took the view that stories required dietary contextualisation to answer questions about their value. In this there was remarkable consistency: food fads were considered unwise. We know that the popularity of dietary fads was enough to concern doctors like Stanford Read or the physiologist Vernon Mottram who wrote to explain nutrition and health for a wider audience and to caution against fads. What we do not know, however, is the extent to which newspaper coverage reflected actual adherence to any particular set of dietary ideas. Similarly, we do not know how long adherents engaged with any particular fad. These are inevitable limitations.
In newspapers, food fads and their proselytising adherents were widely dismissed with ridicule; indications of irrelevance; reminders that fad diets were an imposition on others, or that they could be a danger to health. These themes recur. The reporting of professional opinion overwhelmingly suggested a normal varied diet was all that was needed for good health, and that new practices could well be counter-productive especially if they restricted or excluded certain food items. However, while those public statements of medical opinion reflected a view that many would endorse today that a normal varied diet is adequatethere were other factors to consider.
First, food science research had started to change the traditional view of diet adequacy from quantity to quality. This was to be a paradigm shift in scientific thinking about food.
Up to the end of the nineteenth century the energy value and the protein content of a diet were the only criteria adopted to determine its adequacy. Various estimates had been made as to the number of calories and amount of protein the average man required daily. If the diet provided these, it was sufficient. 140 Such thinking was not overturned rapidly even among scientists. 141 Arguably, change might have been slower among doctors since nutrition was neglected in medical education. 142 Even doctors who were prominent public figures, and spoke out on dietary matters, were specialists from other medical fields.
Second, what would newspaper readers understand by the term normal varied diet? Leaving aside those households struggling to put any food on the table, there were nutritional problems. Even in the early 1930s, British household diets were far from ideal. John Boyd Orr's examination of family food budgets in the early 1930s had revealed considerable dependence on bread/flour and potatoes, although this was generally an improvement over comparative 1924-1928 data. 143 Higher levels of household income had the effect of adding milk, fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and eggs to a uniformly heavy reliance on the stomach-fillers by all social groups. In practical terms, a normal varied diet would not mean the same in different households. So, advising readers to ignore talk of vitamins per se and rely on the common sense of a normal varied diet has questionable relevance to nutritional adequacy.
Third, reported professional commentary on vitamins often sounds dismissivesomething not to worry about. Articles did not distinguish vitamins from food fads since, at the time, vitamins were subject to commercial hyperbole and thus similar in their potential effect even if they were understood to be vital. In this sense, vitamins became inadvertently entangled with a wider condemnation of food fads: newspaper articles were insufficiently nuanced to underline their value for readers. Mid-decade, the widespread publicity for Crichton-Browne's comments at the Bovril Ltd. meeting says much about the perceived news value of food fad condemnation in which vitamins were implicated in this way.
In retrospect, British 1920s newspapers are largely vindicated in their treatment of food fads: they do not endorse new dietaries or ways of eating. The pejorative term 'food fads' used in so many articles suggests there was now a widely shared belief among British newspaper editors and journalists that these proselytising dietaries were generally seen as 'cranky' and this needed to be signalled to readers. Presumably because it provided both interest and reassurance for readers, condemnation of the fad and appeals for common sense were a consistent approach. However, this is not what might have been expected from Stanford Read's criticism of the non-medical press in 1908 and opens up the question of whether newspaper interest in fad practices per se had declined in favour of a more critical approach. One could speculate that this stance in the 1920s was influenced by a growing, if incomplete, awareness of the new nutritional research, although calls for moderation and common-sense referenced the elusive notion of normal fare when this was clearly not adequate for many people. The general failure of newspapers to signal the nature and importance of vitamins in these lifestyle articles does not readily allow their distinction from food fads more generally, or provide a counterweight to commercial exaggeration. Arguably, this deficiency is more easily understood in our own time than it was when vitamins were recently identified, and their role still a matter of debate.