Dr. Wiley’s Question Box: Starches and Sugar Are the Principal Sources of Body Fat
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: In 1912, Dr. Wiley left his post as head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry because of the collusion he witnessed between food manufacturers and agents within the federal government. Unable to effectively enforce the country's first food purity law (passed in 1906), he left the government and joined the private Good Housekeeping Institute in Washington, D.C. From there, Wiley would help develop the famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval while also writing for the institute's magazine. In "Dr. Wiley's Question Box," he would answer specific questions from readers about food safety and nutrition. In the excerpt here, Wiley explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which conventional nutritionists and doctors have failed to comprehend from then until now: The principal source of fat stored in the body is not dietary fat but sugars and starches (i.e., carbohydrates). While nutrition schools today continue to teach the erroneous notion that glucose from carbohydrates is "the preferred fuel of the body," Wiley points out what people who study metabolism for a living all know: up to 80% of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body's fat tissue. Fat tissue, in turn, releases fatty acids, which form the majority of fuel calories used by the body’s cells. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.
View PDF: Dr. Wiley’s Question Box: Starches and Sugar Are the Principal Sources of Body Fat
Harvey W. Wiley’s Autobiography: Chemicals in Food (excerpt)
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: An illuminating peek at the early—and fateful—politics of food adulteration. From 1906–1912, Dr. Wiley was the head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry (later renamed Food and Drug Administration), the department charged with enforcing the country's first food purity law, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In this excerpt from his 1929 autobiography, Wiley details how the Bureau's authority was illegally usurped by higher-ranking officials within the USDA under the influence of industrial food manufacturers. In one famous case, the solicitor of the USDA forbade Dr. Wiley and other workers of his Bureau from testifying in a federal case in which their testimony would have supported a ban of the food additive sodium benzoate, a compound Wiley and his fellow chemists had determined to be injurious to health yet, sadly, remains one of the most common food preservatives used today. Includes an introduction by Dr. Royal Lee. Special Reprint No. 1-60.
View PDF: Harvey W. Wiley’s Autobiography: Chemicals in Food (excerpt)
History of a Crime Against the Food Law
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: Dr. Wiley was the "father" of the famous Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906 and the first head of what would later become the FDA. The Lee Foundation republished his autobiography after the original manuscript was "lost" by the Macmillan Publishing Company and after the book had conspicuously disappeared from every library in the nation. In it, Wiley sets the historical record straight as to how the food industry corrupted the nation's laws and politicians in order to sell cheap, refined, adulterated, devitalized "foods." The industry's usurpation of federal laws and regulations regarding whole foods is an example of American politics at its worst. Original publication date 1929; republished by the Lee Foundation in 1955.
View PDF: History of a Crime Against the Food Law
Letter to the President [by Dr. Wiley]
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: In this letter to President Calvin Coolidge, Dr. Harvey Wiley—the "father of the Pure Food and Drug Law" of 1906—calls to task the U.S. government for continued failure to enforce the food safety law, and he exhorts the president to "free the law from the illegal restrictions and the practical paralysis which have been inflicted upon it by the high officials in the Department of Agriculture." Wiley cites numerous examples of food adulteration at the time that appear to be squarely in violation of the law, including the use of nitrous oxides in the bleaching of flour as well as the addition of chemicals such as alum, sodium benzoate, and sulfur dioxide to packaged foods. "The proper enforcement of the Food and Drugs Act is intimately related to the public health," Wiley writes. If only Coolidge had felt the same way. 1925.
View PDF: Letter to the President [by Dr. Wiley]
May We Know Our Food
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: In 1907, Dr. Wiley was America's most famous food-purity activist as well as the head of the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, the forerunner of the FDA. For over ten years, Wiley had fought to get the first food inspection and purity law passed in the United States, and in June 1906 his efforts were rewarded with the Pure Food and Drug Act. In this report from the following year, Wiley comments on the historic law, discussing the "two ideas kept always in view in all the sections of the act," namely the misbranding of food products and the addition of dangerous substances to the food supply. Little did Wiley know that his insistence on enforcing these provisions would lead to his dismissal a few years later, as industrial food manufacturers and their allies within the government succeeded in ousting Wiley and circumventing the law intended to protect America's food supply. For more on Dr. Wiley and the corruption of the Pure Food and Drug Law, see "Letter to the President About Food Additives" and "Letter to the President [by Harvey Wiley]" in these archives. From lllustrated Sunday Magazine, 1907.
View PDF: May We Know Our Food
No Pure Food Action—Now
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: In 1925, Dr. Wiley, the former head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry (later to become the FDA), created a public firestorm when he published in Good Housekeeping magazine a letter he'd written to President Calvin Coolidge admonishing the Department of Agriculture for failing to enforce the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which outlawed the misbranding and adulteration of food. Wiley's letter caused Coolidge to call for an explanation from the acting secretary of the USDA, whose letter to the president revealed just how industrial food manufacturers had managed to circumvent the food purity law. In this partial article from 1926, Wiley expresses his disappointment in the conciliatory position of the USDA and questions the failure of the department to enforce the law in spite of the backing of two Supreme Court decisions. Though Wiley's stance against food manufacturers had cost him his job within the government, he continued to speak on behalf of America's public health throughout the remainder of his life. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.
View PDF: No Pure Food Action—Now
