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William Howard Hay

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William Howard Hay
Hay in 1934
BornDecember 14, 1866
Hartstown, Pennsylvania
Died1940
Occupation(s)Physician, writer

William Howard Hay (December 14, 1866 – 1940) was an American physician and director of The East Aurora Sun and Diet Sanatorium. He is principally known for the 'Hay diet', a food-combining dietary system.

Career

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Hay graduated from the New York University Medical College in 1891 and was licensed in Pennsylvania. Following graduation he practiced in Youngsville, and was the surgeon for the American Tinplate Company of New Castle.[1] While he was in Pennsylvania he set-up the Hay Rest Cure which was advertised as "a special service department for the cure of hay fever cases".[1] In 1905, it seems he had an episode of acute heart failure following running for a train.[2] As a result, he discovered that he had Bright's disease (or hypertension) with a dilated heart, a condition with a poor prognosis at the time. As a consequence he changed his diet, discontinued coffee and stopped smoking.[2] His condition improved, he lost weight and his blood pressure fell. Over the next 4 years he developed a dietary system based on this experience.[2] The dietary system he developed involved fasting and promoted the idea that certain foods require an acid pH environment in digestion, and other foods require an alkaline pH environment, and that both cannot take place at the same time, in the same environment.

In 1921 he went to Buffalo and in 1927 he was appointed director of The East Aurora Sun and Diet Sanatorium.[3][4] where he developed the 'Sun-Diet Menus'. In this period Hay was a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Defensive Diet League of America, and campaigned against the use of aluminum cooking utensils,[1] vivisection[5] and vaccination for smallpox.[6][7] In 1930 he resigned from his local medical society just before charges of unethical advertising were preferred.[1] In 1932 he purchased the Pocono Hay-ven resort and in 1935 became the Medical Director of Hay System, Inc. The Hay diet was popular around that time and many restaurants offered 'Hay-friendly' menus; followers of his dietary advice, who called themselves “Hayites”, included Henry Ford.[8]

Reception

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Hay was criticized in the Journal of the American Medical Association as a food-faddist[1] and later for advocating that a patient with type 1 diabetes stop taking insulin.[9]

Physician Logan Clendening described the Hay Diet as a "half-baked unscientific food fad" [10]

Jeffrey M. Pilcher a Professor of Food History has noted that:

[Hay] believed that carbohydrates and proteins should never be eaten at the same meal because the body uses alkaline enzymes to digest carbohydrates whereas acids work on proteins. Thus, if a person ate both types of foods together, the alkalines and acids would neutralize one another, the stomach would be unable to digest anything, and the food would simply rot in the intestines... His theory was exposed as flawed because the alkaline enzymes operate in one part of the intestine and the acids in another.[11]

Hay's dieting ideas have received continual criticism over lack of a scientific basis.[12][13][14] However, the Hay diet and its variants, such as the Kensington diet [15] and the Beverly Hills Diet,[13] have remained popular to this day,[16] with actors such as Elizabeth Hurley, Helen Mirren and Catherine Zeta-Jones following food-combining diets.[8][15]

Publications

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  • The Medical Millennium, (1927)
  • Health Via Food, (1929)
  • Weight Control, (1935)
  • A New Health Era, (1935)
  • Building Better Bodies, (1936)
  • The Hay System of Child Development (1936) [with Esther L. Smith]
  • What Price Health, (1946)
  • How to Always Be Well, (1967)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Bureau of Investigation. William Howard Hay. Capitalizing Food Fads and Fantasies". Journal of the American Medical Association. 100 (8): 595. 1933. doi:10.1001/jama.1933.02740080059028.
  2. ^ a b c Hay, William Howard (1932-01-01). Health Via Food.
  3. ^ "Sun Diet Sanatorium | Dharma Talks". neozen888.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  4. ^ Hay, William H. (1993-04-01). The Medical Millennium. Health Research Books. ISBN 9780787303860.
  5. ^ Columbia, United States Congress House Committee on the District of (1946-01-01). Prohibit Vivisection in the District of Columbia: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia, House of Representatives, Seventy-ninth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 5572, a Bill to Prohibit Experiments on Living Dogs in the District of Columbia. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  6. ^ McBean, Eleanor (1993-04-01). The Poisoned Needle. Health Research Books. ISBN 9780787305949.
  7. ^ "Address of William Howard Hay, MD". International Medical Council on Vaccination. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  8. ^ a b Gilman, Goldwin Smith Professor of Human Studies Sander L.; Gilman, Sander L. (2008-01-23). Diets and Dieting: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Routledge. ISBN 9781135870683.
  9. ^ "William Howard Hay". Journal of the American Medical Association. 106 (1): 63. 1936-01-04. doi:10.1001/jama.1936.02770010021053. ISSN 0002-9955.
  10. ^ Clendening, Logan. (1936). The Balanced Diet. D. Appleton-Century Company. p. 159
  11. ^ Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Food Fads. (2000). In Kenneth F. Kiple, Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. The Cambridge World History of Food, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1486-1494. ISBN 0-521-40215-8
  12. ^ "Logic behind call to avoid certain food combinations is faulty | The San Diego Union-Tribune". www.sandiegouniontribune.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-17. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  13. ^ a b Foxcroft, Louise (2012-01-05). Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1847654588.
  14. ^ "Debunking the Myth of Food Combining". Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  15. ^ a b "Have these dieters got their combinations in a twist?". Independent.co.uk. 1998-01-11. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  16. ^ Habgood, Jackie (2011-01-02). The Hay Diet Made Easy: A Practical Guide to Food Combining. Souvenir Press. ISBN 9780285639126.

Further reading

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  • Pyke, Magnus. (1970). The Development of Food Myths. In Gunnar Blix. Food Cultism and Nutrition Quackery. Uppsala. pp. 22–29.
  • Wolberg, Lewis Robert (1938). Hay Food Fantasy. Hygeia 16 (April): 311–13 and 372.
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