John Kellogg

Surgeon, food reformer; born in Tyrone Township, Mich. (brother of Will K. Kellogg). Born into a Seventh Day Adventist family, he took a course in a "hygieotherapeutic" school. He rejected this approach and took regular medical training, finishing at Bellevue Hospital Medical College (New York City) but with a thesis claiming that disease is the body's way of defending itself. He had become editor of the Adventist monthly, Health Reformer (which he renamed Good Health …

…had become too big and had drifted too far from the church; in 1907 the Adventists excommunicated him but he fought to retain control of the sanitarium and his food laboratory. He wrote over 50 books promoting his ideas and also founded the Race Betterment Foundation to pursue his theories about eugenics. Although he would never become as rich or well-known as his brother, Will, John Kellogg had actually instituted a major revolution in the human diet.