‘A Cult of Cactus Eaters’
To Live and Diet in L.E. Landone’s Los Angeles
Keywords:
early 20th-century, United States, food panic, food adulteration, social hygiene, demography, diet fads, purity, Upton Sinclair, polemics, food and religion, Christian , Los Angeles, YMCA, cacti, Leon Elbert LandoneAbstract
This article delves into the life and times of L.E. Landone, a young schoolteacher, born in obscurity in the American Midwest who was able to reinvent himself as Doctor Leon Elbert Landone, an expert in dietetics with metaphysical leanings. He migrated from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1907 and launched himself to fame by undertaking a two-week diet consisting largely of Opuntia, the spineless cactus recently patented by celebrity botanist Luther Burbank.
Published
2021-11-01
