Максимилиан Бирхер-Беннер: Пионер сыроедения и создатель мюсли

Swiss physician

Maximilian Oskar Bircher Benner, M. D. (22 August 1867 – 24 January 1939) was a Swiss physician and a pioneer nutritionist credited for popularizing muesli and raw food vegetarianism.

Maximilian Oskar Bircher Benner was born on 22 August 1867 in Aarau, Switzerland, to Heinrich Bircher and Berta Krüsi. He attended the University of Zurich to study medicine, and later opened his own general clinic. During the first year the clinic was open, Bircher Benner developed jaundice, and he claimed he recovered by eating raw apples. From this observation, he experimented with the health effects raw foods have on the body, and from this he promoted muesli; a dish based on raw oats, fruits and nuts. Bircher Benner expanded on his nutritional research and opened a sanatorium called "Vital Force" in 1897. He believed raw fruits and vegetables held the most nutritional value, cooked and commercially processed foods held even less, and meat held the least nutritional value. Eventually, Bircher Benner gave up meat entirely and became a vegetarian. Other scientists of the time did not respond well to what Bircher Benner referred to as his "new food science," but was sufficiently popular with the general public that he expanded his sanatorium practice. His nutritional habits and eating patterns steadily grew in popularity until he died on 24 January 1939 in Zürich.

At his sanatorium in Zürich, a balanced diet of raw vegetables and fruit was used as a means to heal patients, contrary to the beliefs commonly held at the end of the 19th century. He encouraged people of good health to eat approximately 50% raw foods on a daily basis, and for those with poor health to eat 100% raw foods. Bircher Benner's sisters, Alice Bircher and Berta Brupbacher Bircher, created many recipes using raw foods to help a diet of raw foods seem more appealing. Because of this help from his sisters, his sanatorium gained enormous popularity and he expanded the size of his clinic. Bircher Benner developed the idea that cooking deprived foods of their nutritional content and destroyed their "vital substance". He believed that cooked foods leave decay in the digestive tract, that may cause autointoxication. A contemporaneous academic review of Bircher Benner's cookbook Health Giving Dishes claims that the work contains "a mixture of physiological half truths and fantasies" and concludes that the number of people capable of eating solely raw fruits and vegetables as Bircher Benner encouraged is limited because only few humans can live as herbivores.