Horace Fletcher was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 health-food faddist

Food faddism

The phrases food faddism and fad diet originally referred to idiosyncratic diets and eating patterns that promote short-term weight loss, usually with no concern for long-term weight maintenance, and enjoy temporary popularity...

 of the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 who earned the nickname "The Great Masticator," by arguing that food should be chewed thirty two times – or, about 100 times per minute – before being swallowed: "Nature will castigate those who don't masticate

Mastication

Mastication or chewing is the process by which food is crushed and ground by teeth. It is the first step of digestion and it increases the surface area of foods to allow more efficient break down by enzymes. During the mastication process, the food is positioned between the teeth for grinding by...

." He invented elaborate justifications for his claim.

Fletcher and his followers recited and followed his instructions religiously, even claiming that liquids, too, had to be chewed in order to be properly mixed with saliva

Saliva

Saliva , referred to in various contexts as spit, spittle, drivel, drool, or slobber, is the watery substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is a component of oral fluid. In mammals, saliva is produced in and secreted from the three pairs of major salivary glands,...

. Fletcher argued that his mastication method will increase the amount of strength a person could have while actually decreasing the amount of food that they consumed (Fletcher, 1913, 20). Fletcher promised that "Fletcherizing", as it became known, would turn "a pitiable glutton into an intelligent epicurean."

Fletcher also advised against eating before being "Good and Hungry", or while angry or sad. Fletcher would claim that knowing exactly what was in the food one consumed was important. He stated that different foods have different waste materials, so knowing what type of waste one was going to have in one’s body was valuable knowledge, thus critical to one’s overall well being (The New Glutton, 1906, 132-133). He promoted his theories for decades on lecture circuits, and became a millionaire. Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 and John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

 were among those who gave the fad a try. Henry James and Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

 were visitors to his palazzo in Venice. He lived in the Palazzo Saibante with his wife, Grace Fletcher, an amateur painter, who studied in Paris in the 1870s and was influenced by the Impressionists

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, and her daughter, Ivy. Ivy, later to become a journalist at the Daily Express in the 1930s, was often a guinea pig for Horace's experiments which she described in her unpublished memoirs "Remember Me".

Although many people believed Fletcher’s laboratory reports, the more important eye-opener to doctors and laymen was his series of experiments in the Yale Gymnasium. It was here that he participated, at the age of fifty-eight, in vigorous tests of strength and endurance versus the college athletes. The tests included: “deep-knee bending,” holding out arms horizontally for a length of time, and calf raises on an intricate machine. Fletcher claimed to lift “three hundred pounds dead weight three hundred and fifty times with his right calf.” (Fletcher, 25) The tests claim that Fletcher outperformed these Yale athletes in all events and that they were very impressed with his athletic ability at his old age. Fletcher attributed this to following his eating practices, and ultimately these tests, whether true or not, helped further endorse “Fletcherism” publicly. (Fletcher, 27-31)

Fletcher saw many similarities between humans and functioning machines. He posited several analogies between machines and the human body. Just some of the comparisons that Fletcher drew included: fuel to food; steam to blood circulation; steam gauge to human pulse; and engine to heart (Fletcher 136, 137).

Along with "Fletcherizing", Fletcher and his supporters advocated a low-protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 diet as a means to health and well-being.

Fletcher had a special interest in human excreta. He believed that the only true indication of one’s nutrition was evidenced by excreta (Fletcher 142). Fletcher advocated teaching children to examine their excreta as a means for disease prevention (Fletcher 143). If one was in good health and maintained proper nutrition then their excreta, or digestive "ash", as Fletcher called it, should be entirely "inoffensive". By inoffensive, Fletcher meant that there was no stench and no evidence of bacterial decomposition (Fletcher 145).

Fletcher was an avid spokesman for Belgian Relief and a member of the Commission for Relief in Belgium in World War I.

But by 1919, when Fletcher, 69, died of bronchitis

Bronchitis

Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...

, his diet plan was already being replaced by the next approach to dieting championed by Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and health campaigner, and one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation often regarded as belonging instead to the Post-Keynesian school.Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and...

 and Eugene Lyman Fisk: counting calories.

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