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{{Short description|American writer and nutritionist}}
{{Infobox person <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Adelle Davis
| image = ADAVIS1.jpg
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1904|2|25|mf=y}}
| birth_name = Daisie Adelle Davis
| birth_place = [[Lizton, Indiana
| death_date = {{death date and age|1974|5|31|1904|2|25}}
| death_place = [[Los Angeles]], California, U.S.
| occupation = Nutritionist, author
| movement =
| known_for = ''Let's Cook it Right'' (1947); ''Let's Have Healthy Children'' (1951, 1972); ''Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit'' (1954, 1970); ''Let's Get Well'' (1965)
| spouse =
| children =
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}}
'''Adelle Davis''' (25 February 1904 – 31 May 1974) was an American
Despite her popularity, she was heavily criticized by her peers for many recommendations she made that were not supported by the scientific literature, some of which were considered dangerous.
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After returning from Europe, Davis moved to [[Oakland, California]] in 1931 and worked as a consulting nutritionist for doctors at the [[Alameda Health System|Alameda County Health Clinic]].<ref name=Moritz/> Two years later she moved to Los Angeles to do consulting at a medical clinic in Hollywood.<ref name=Moritz/> She also enrolled at the [[University of Southern California]] in Los Angeles where she earned a master of science degree in [[biochemistry]],<ref name=Sicherman/> in 1938. She worked as a consulting nutritionist in Oakland and then in Los Angeles with physicians at the [[Alameda County, California|Alameda County]] Health Clinic and the William E. Branch Clinic in Hollywood. She also prescribed diets to the patients that were referred to her by numerous specialists.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/01/archives/adelle-davis-nutritionist-bestselling-author-dies-an-outspoken.html/ An Outspoken Believer] Retrieved on 8 Mar 2018</ref>
To help her spread nutrition information to the public she took a writing course and began writing pamphlets and books.<ref name=Moritz/> She continued seeing patients referred to her by physicians,<ref name=Moritz/> and by the end of her career she had helped approximately 20,000 referred patients.<ref name=Enquirer /> She had practiced professional nutritional counseling for 35 years before she
==Career as nutritionist and author==
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Davis wrote her consumer books over a 40-year career, revising some in the 1970s. She saw herself as an "interpreter", not merely a researcher. "I think of myself as a newspaper reporter, who goes out to libraries and gathers information from hundreds of journals, which most people can't understand, and I write it so that people ''can'' understand." She reviews scientific literature in the biochemical libraries at U.C.L.A., for instance. Her references for ''Let's Get Well'' totaled almost 2,500, many from cases during her nutrition practice, and she was upset when the publisher of ''Let's Have Healthy Children'' eliminated the 2,000 references from the 1972 revision, says author [[Daniel Yergin]].<ref name=Yergin>Yergin, Daniel. [https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/20/archives/supernutritionist-lets-get-adelle-davis-right-adelle-davis.html "Let's Get Adelle Davis Right"], ''New York Times'', May 20, 1973</ref>
Her first book, ''Let's Cook it Right'' (1947), was an effort to update and improve on the popular guide, ''[[
This book, like her later ones,
The book was well received and she went on to publish ''Let's Have Healthy Children'' (1951; revised in 1972 and 1981), which drew on her own experiences of working with obstetricians and conducting her own research.<ref name=Moritz/> The book gives nutrition advice for pregnant women as well as for infants and young children, including explaining the benefits of breastfeeding and when to introduce solid foods.<ref name=Moritz/>
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She denounced prepared baby foods due to their high concentrations of additives and pesticide residue, which made her opinions controversial among doctors.<ref name=Life>Howard, Jane. "Earth Mother to the Foodists", ''Life'' magazine, Oct. 22, 1971 pp. 67-70</ref> In the book she also criticized obstetricians and pediatricians for being ignorant about nutrition, which leads them to prescribe harmful diets for both mother and child. She said that "the chapter on canned foods will make your hair stand on end."<ref name=Life/>
She argued that women who did not eat well during pregnancy were more likely to suffer from numerous medical problems and that their infants
Her third book was ''Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit'' (1954; updated 1970), which was written as a basic primer on nutrition for the layperson. In it she includes numerous documented case histories from her practice and from footnoted medical journals.<ref name=Moritz/> She explains the functions and food sources of over forty nutrients considered essential to human health, including vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and proteins.<ref name=Moritz/>
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A significant part of Davis' appeal came from her credentials, including her university training, and her apparent application of scientific studies and principles to her writing, with one book totaling over 2100 footnotes and citations.<ref name=Hurley/> Some of her nutritional ideas, such as the need for exercise, the dangers of [[vitamin deficiency|vitamin deficiencies]],<ref name =Sicherman/> and the need to avoid [[hydrogenated fat]], [[saturated fat]], and excess [[sugar]], remain relevant even to modern nutritionists.<ref name=Hurley/> [[U.S. Senator]] [[Patrick Leahy]] commended her views in 1998 as well, in remarks meant to support a law protecting free speech on [[food safety]] from the threat of [[lawsuits]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cspinet.org/foodspeak/press/leahy.htm |title=Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy on The First Amendment and Food Safety |last=Leahy |first=Patrick |date=April 29, 1998 |publisher=[[Center for Science in the Public Interest]] |access-date=20 June 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130703101305/http://www.cspinet.org/foodspeak/press/leahy.htm |archive-date=3 July 2013 }}</ref>
Although she was very popular with the public in general in the 1970s, none of her books were recommended by any significant nutritional [[professional society]] of the time. Independent review of the superficially impressive large number of citations to the scientific literature in her books found that the citations often either misquoted the scientific literature or were contradicted by or unsupported by the proposed citation, and that errors in the book averaged at least one per page.<ref name=Rynearson>{{cite journal |author=Rynearson EH |title=Americans love hogwash |journal=Nutr. Rev. |volume=32 |pages=suppl 1:1–14 |date=July 1974|pmid=4367657 |doi= 10.1111/j.1753-4887.1974.tb05179.x}}</ref> One review noted that only 30 of 170 citations in a sample taken from one chapter accurately supported the assertions in her book.<ref name=Hurley/> The 1969 [[White House]] Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health labelled her probably the single most harmful source of false nutritional information.<ref name=Sicherman/><ref name="Quackwatch">{{cite web|url=http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/davis.html|title=The Legacy of Adelle Davis|last=Stephen Barrett
A nutritionist in a [[literature review]] said that her works were "at best a half truth" or led to "ridiculous conclusions".<ref name = McBean/> Nutritionists disputed her view that [[alcoholism]], [[crime]], [[suicide]], and [[divorce]] were byproducts of poor diet.<ref name = Hurley/><ref name=Life/>
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==Quotes==
Adelle Davis is known for:
{{cquote|Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.}}<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2017-07-01|title=Breakfast: The most important meal of the day?|journal=International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science|language=en|volume=8|pages=1–6|doi=10.1016/j.ijgfs.2017.01.003|issn=1878-450X|last1=Spence|first1=Charles|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite
==
In October 1943, Davis married George Edward Leisey, and adopted his two children, George and Barbara, though she never had children of her own.<ref name=Hurley>{{cite book|last=Hurley|first=Dan|title=Natural causes: death, lies, and politics in America's vitamin and herbal supplement industry|year=2006|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0-7679-2636-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uXGiG4Qx3XQC&q=%22adelle+davis%22&pg=PT230}}</ref> She divorced George Leisey in 1953 and married a retired accountant and lawyer named Frank Sieglinger in 1960.<ref name=Sicherman/>
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[[Category:American nutritionists]]
[[Category:American health activists]]
[[Category:Deaths from multiple myeloma in California]]
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni]]
[[Category:American health and wellness writers]]
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[[Category:Pseudoscientific diet advocates]]
[[Category:Psychedelic drug researchers]]
[[Category:
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
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