Арнольд Эрет: Натуропат, диетолог и его "Безслизистая" система исцеления.

German naturopath and alternative health educator

Arnold Ehret (July 29, 1866 October 10, 1922) was a German naturopath, alternative health educator and germ theory denialist, best known for developing the Mucusless Diet Healing System. Ehret authored books and articles on dieting, detoxification, fruitarianism, fasting, food combining, health, longevity, naturopathy, physical culture and vitalism. In opposition to medical science that asserts white blood cells are important components of the immune system, Ehret believed that white blood cells are caused by consuming mucus forming foods, and as waste materials, poison the blood. His ideas about diet and disease have no scientific basis and have been criticized by medical experts as dangerous.

Ehret was born in 1866, in St. Georgen (Black Forest), Schwarzwald, Baden, near Freiburg, southern Germany. Ehret's interests were physics, chemistry, drawing and painting. he then taught there at a technical school for 15 years. Ehret was discharged from the army after nine months because of a heart condition. During the 1890s his health deteriorated and he took interest in naturopathy. In his later life, Ehret convinced himself he possessed psychic powers. He attended seances and stated that he had contacted the spirit of his deceased father. "schleimlose" (slime free) foods were the key to human health, and "fasting (simply eating less) is Nature's omnipotent method of cleansing the body from the effects of wrong and too much eating."

In 1907, Ehret, who was based in Freiburg, visited Monte Verità, a nature life colony in Ascona, Switzerland, near Lake Maggiore, whose visitors included Lenin and Trotsky. After collaborating with Henri Oedenkoven who owned a sanitarium at Monte Verità, Ehret opened one sanitarium in Ascona and another in nearby Lugano (Massagno), writing one of his books in Locarno. Around 1909, Ehret engaged in a series of public lectures and fasts monitored by German and Swiss officials. In 1909, he claimed he fasted for 105 days in total. In 1910, he wrote an article for a German vegetarian magazine about his 49 day fasting experience, which gained the public's interest, and which later appeared in his book Lebensfragen (Life Questions). For 65 years, Fred and Lucille Hirsch published Ehret's literature and the torch symbol found on Ehret's books became the logo of the Ehret Health Club. In 1979, the Ehret Literature Publishing Company Inc, in New York, inherited Ehret's publications and archive of unpublished German manuscripts.

Having denounced the nitrogenous albumin metabolic theory in 1909, Ehret learned of a contemporary, Thomas Powell, in 1912, who concurred with his belief that "grape sugar" (simple sugars in fruits and vegetables) was the optimum fuel source, body building material, and agent of vital energy for humans, not protein rich foods. Powell had set out his beliefs in the book "Fundamentals and Requirements of Health and Disease," published in 1909. Ehret claimed alkaline foods, which were also mucusless, formed the natural diet of humans. Ehret asserted that the body is an air gas engine, not dependent on food for energy, and that the body was not designed to utilize mucus forming foods, offering the equation Vitality = Power − Obstruction (V = P − O) to demonstrate this. Ehret also claimed the lungs were the pump in the body, while the heart acted as a valve, with the blood controlling the heart. Ehret further believed that white blood cells were the result of ingesting mucus forming foods.

Ehret maintained that new tissue was built primarily from simple sugars in fruits, not metabolised from protein and fat rich foods. Ehret favored nuts and seeds only during transition (and only in the winter) to the ideal fruit diet, and even then, only "sparingly," condemning high protein and fat rich foods, as "unnatural," writing further that "no animals eat fats" and "all fats are acid forming, even those of vegetable origin, and are not used by the body." Later editions of his Mucusless Diet Healing System published by Fred S. Hirsch, claimed nuts were "mucus free." Ehret specifically renounced meat, eggs, milk, fats, cereals, legumes, potatoes, and rice, whilst recognizing the transitional value in some of these.

Along with his sister, Ehret was brought up as a Roman Catholic. He believed in God, but took issue with the Church because of its dietary requirements in a letter to the Pope, and subsequently quit the Church, though his faith in God remained. After his death, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who was aware of his writings on Jesus, wrote to Fred Hirsch to confirm he would ban Catholics from reading Ehret's religious writings, if published. Prior to this, Ehret was popular with the bishop and the Catholic fraternity.

None of Ehret's claims are recognized as valid by experts in the scientific, medical, and nutritional fields to the present day. They largely contradict well understood biology and chemistry, and are unsupported by any evidence. Mucusless diets were critiqued as unscientific in the book Diet and Die by health writer Carl Malmberg in 1935. The "Special Committee on Aging" of the 88th US Congress published a report on "Frauds and Quackery effecting the Older Citizen" in 1963, in which it mentions Ehret as a quack whose "cultists earnestly believed that women who adhered to the diet program of 'Professor' Arnold Ehret could expect 'immaculate conception.'". In 1978, Ehret's mucusless diet was listed as a fad diet as "its claims are not substantiated scientifically." Kuske also commented that "there is no evidence that prolonged fasting provides any significant benefits." The product was said to cleanse and rejuvenate the intestines by "remov[ing] from the intestines hardened feces, mucus, and other age old uneliminated, imperfectly digested, fatty substances." The United States Secretary of Agriculture Arthur M. Hyde reported from sampling Innerclean that it was made from Senna leaves, anise seed, and sassafras bark. The product was misbranded with false and misleading health claims. The court released the product under a $4,000 bond, conditioned on agreement that the advisement on the packages was to be removed and destroyed under supervision of the United States Department of Agriculture. In the 1960s, Ehret's writings gained popularity with the hippie and surf culture of San Francisco, Hawaii, and California. In the 1970s, Paul Bragg rewrote The Mucusless Diet Healing System and Rational Fasting with Hirsch's permission. In 1973, Manuel Lezaeta integrated Ehret's ideas with his 'thermal doctrine' for the elimination of toxins in La Medicina Natural Al Alcance De Todos.