‘A Cult of Cactus Eaters’

To Live and Diet in L.E. Landone’s Los Angeles

Authors

  • Joel Harold Tannenbaum Independent Scholar Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.27815

Keywords:

early 20th-century, United States, food panic, food adulteration, social hygiene, demography, diet fads, purity, Upton Sinclair, polemics, food and religion, Christian "New Thought", Los Angeles, YMCA, cacti, Leon Elbert Landone

Abstract

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.

Author Biography

  • Joel Harold Tannenbaum, Independent Scholar

    Joel Harold Tannenbaum is a historian of food and food science now based in Philadelphia. He is currently at work on a biography of Brown Landone, a.k.a. Leon Elbert Landone, a.k.a. Leando Brown.

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Published

2021-11-01

Issue

PPC 121 (2021)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Tannenbaum, Joel Harold. 2021. “‘A Cult of Cactus Eaters’: To Live and Diet in L.E. Landone’s Los Angeles”. Petits Propos Culinaires, November, 71-84. https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.27815.