In 1829, the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham invented a cracker made from coarse wheat that he believed would help restore American health. He lamented the 'miserable trash' that made up the average diet, especially white bread, and thought his eponymous crackers would curtail masturbation, which he deemed deleterious to both moral and physical well-being. (As someone who condemned sweet treats, he would have seen the s'more as an abomination.) Graham was, in many ways, what we might today call a wellness influencer. Nineteenth-century Americans opened Grahamite boarding houses so that travelers could eat his chaste and bland foods, and catch up on that week's copy of The Graham Journal of Health and Longevity. And like many of today's wellness influencers, he advocated for an ideology that mixed truth and nonsense. Yes, it's healthy to eat fiber; no, pleasurable foods are not linked to deviant sexual behaviors. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a wellness influencer who is also...
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