Adelle Davis Foundation

Specialties

It is the mission of The Adelle Davis Foundation to support a program of education and developmental activities relative to the field of nutrition. The Adelle Davis Foundation receives gifts, donations and bequests. The Foundation grants scholarships to qualified undergraduate and postgraduate students majoring in nutritional science. No part of the net earnings of The Adelle Davis Foundation shall accrue to the benefit of any member or private individual.

History

Established in 1974.

Adelle Davis, February 25 1904-​May 31 1974

Adelle Davis was a popular wrier and lecturer on food and health, was born Daisie Adelle Davis in Lizton, Indiana, the youngest of five daughters or Charles Eugene Davis, a farmer, and Harriet (McBroom) Davis. She later dropped the name Daisie because she associated with cows and pigs. Ten days after the baby’s birth Harriet Davis became paralyzed; she died 17 months later. This blow and the strict upbringing by her father, Davis later asserted created a sense of loneliness and self-​esteem which only seven years of psychoanalysis beginning in 1953, eventually dispelled. As a girl, Davis worked on the farm, learned to cook before learning to read, and 4-​H Club ribbons for baking and canning.

After graduating Lizton High School, Davis studied economics at Purdue University (1923 – 1925) then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in household science in 1927. She obtained further training in dietetics at New Y

Meet the Business Owner

Adelle Davis L.

Business Owner

Adelle Davis became a sought-​after guest on television talk shows. In her heyday as a food guru, the matronly Davis conveyed a feisty, down-​to-​earth forthrightness. Bright blue eyes dominated lined face and she would her gray hair into a chignon. The pitch of her voice was unusually low-​she sang tenor in her church choir-​and her use of it commanding. Writing and speaking with an ex cathedra air, she offered simple, easy-​to-​follow advice about diet. She radiated assurance that abiding by her precepts-​as she herself did– would ward off or cure most personal illnesses. Moreover, in proper diet lay societal well-​being. To Davis, «Alcoholism, crime, insanity, suicide, divorce, drug addiction and even impotency are often merely the results of bad eating» (Deutsch, p. 4).

Davis benefited from and contributed to the phenomenal growth, from the 1950s onward, of the health food movement, which thrived on publicity about pesticide residues and food additives.