Early life
Macfadden was born in Mill Spring, Missouri, in 1868. He was a sickly child who lost both parents young, and he later said that exercise and outdoor work had rescued his health. That personal story shaped everything he did afterwards. He changed his first name from Bernard to Bernarr because he thought it sounded more forceful.
Physical Culture and a publishing empire
In 1899 he launched Physical Culture, a magazine about exercise, diet and the body. It was loud, confident and full of photographs of muscular men and women, which was unusual and, for some, shocking at the time. Letters from readers led him to start True Story, which became one of the best-selling magazines in America. Macfadden Publications went on to include Liberty, Photoplay and the New York Evening Graphic.
His health ideas
Macfadden preached a mix of ideas that ranged from sensible to strange:
- Exercise every day, especially walking
- Fresh air and open windows, day and night
- Wholemeal bread instead of white, which he famously called the “staff of death”
- Fasting, which he promoted as one of the surest roads to health
- The milk diet, which he wrote about in detail in The Miracle of Milk
- Distrust of doctors and drugs, which is where he went badly wrong
The controversies
It would be dishonest to present Macfadden as simply a hero. He told readers they could avoid doctors, and he supported treatments now regarded as quackery. The physician Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was a fierce critic. Macfadden was arrested on obscenity charges over posters for a physical culture show. Most painfully, two of his own children are reported to have died without medical care because of his views.
Why he still matters
Many things he pushed for are now mainstream: regular exercise, wholegrain food, less smoking and more time outdoors. His books also give a vivid picture of how people thought about health a hundred years ago, before antibiotics and modern nutrition science. That is why we keep The Miracle of Milk here as a historical text: worth reading, but not to be followed as medical advice.
Read his milk diet book
- The Miracle of Milk: preface and contents
- The milk diet explained in plain English
- A short history of the milk cure
Sources: Wikipedia: Bernarr Macfadden; National Geographic; Mental Floss.
This article is general information, not medical advice. Please speak to your doctor or a registered dietitian before making big changes to your diet.