Maximilian Bircher-Benner

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.

Biography 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 it was sufficiently popular with the general public that he expanded his sanatorium practice.

Bircher-Benner's nutritional habits and eating patterns steadily grew in popularity until he died on 24 January 1939 in Zürich.

Nutrition 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.

Selected publications

Food Science For All (translated by Arnold Eiloart, 1928) Fruit Dishes and Raw Vegetables: Sunlight (Vitamine) Food (1930) Health-Giving Dishes (1934) The Essential Nature and Organisation of Food Energy (translated by D. E. Hecht and E. F. Meyer, 1939) Hijos sanos y robustos (traducion del Dr. Emilio R, Meier, 1956) The Prevention of Incurable Disease (translated by E. F. Meyer, 1959)