Life, 1929-03-08 · page 31 of 44
Life — March 8, 1929 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1929 satirical cartoon warns against food faddists and quack nutritionists. The top panel shows a medicine faker hawking a fake "Indian remedy" called Sagawawa to a crowd—representing fraudulent patent medicine salesmen of the era. The middle panel depicts the modern evolution: a charlatan now peddles diet books claiming "white bread is poison" and promoting synthetic hay instead of meat and dairy. This represents the emerging trend of pseudoscientific diet advice literature proliferating in the 1920s-30s. The bottom panel shows ordinary people accepting these false claims. The cartoon's message: people should trust licensed doctors and dietitians, not faddish literature. The entire page is essentially an advertisement by Washburn Crosby Company (Gold Medal Flour) promoting bread consumption and offering a legitimizing booklet from "eminent nutritional authorities." It's corporate messaging disguised as public health advocacy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Life he Evolutio This cartoon is published in an effort to awaken the public to the danger of following the literature and advice of food faddists or fakers when they should depend on a licensed doctor or dietitian for correct diet information. @ To anyone interested, we shall be glad to mail, without charge, a copy of “Facts About Bread and its Rightful Place in the Diet”—a booklet containing statements by the country’s most eminent nutritional authorities. @ Address Dept. 325, Washburn Crosby Company, millers of Gold Medal Flour, Minneapolis, Minnesota. COPYR.,. 1929, CENTRAL MILLS.INC. comicbooks.com