Eating the five 'wonder foods' -- powdered brewers' yeast, powdered skim milk, yoghourt/yogurt, wheat germ, and black treacle/blackstrap molasses -- adds measurable 'youthful years' to the reader's life, the central promise of Look Younger, Live Longer.
This is the flagship claim of Hauser’s career, carried in the title of his best-known and bestselling book, Look Younger, Live Longer: that eating his five “wonder foods” adds specific, “youthful years” to a reader’s life. Hauser’s own list in the cited UK edition names powdered brewers’ yeast, powdered skim milk, yoghourt, wheat germ, and black treacle; the U.S. court record ties the same book-driven promotion to blackstrap molasses. The claim rests on a real nutritional surrogate (these are all genuine sources of vitamins and minerals a diet lacking them would miss) inflated into an unmeasured claim about years of life, exactly the surrogate-to-outcome leap the archive tracks elsewhere. No controlled trial of the five-food regimen against a lifespan or aging endpoint is cited anywhere in this bundle, so the claim is recorded as untested rather than refuted. The book’s promotional use is itself documented: in 1951 the federal government pursued two libel actions (hauser-molasses-libel-1951-i and -ii) against copies of the book on the theory that its “youthful years” promise, distributed alongside a specific molasses brand, functioned as unlawful commercial labeling for that product under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Appears in
Sources
- Look Younger, Live Longer (Faber and Faber edition) — Hauser G. Look Younger, Live Longer. London: Faber and Faber Limited; 1951. Digital Library of India / Internet Archive scan, in.ernet.dli.2015.242460.
- United States v. 8 Cartons, More or Less, Molasses, Etc. — United States v. 8 Cartons, More or Less, Molasses, Etc., 97 F. Supp. 313 (W.D.N.Y. 1951) (Burke, J.), decided 14 April 1951.
- United States v. 8 Cartons, Containing Plantation 'The Original' Etc., Molasses — United States v. 8 Cartons, Containing Plantation 'The Original' Etc., Molasses, 103 F. Supp. 626 (W.D.N.Y. 1951), decided 2 August 1951.
- Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science — Gardner M. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Revised ed. New York: Dover Publications; 1957 (orig. In the Name of Science, Putnam, 1952).
- Gayelord Hauser (Wikipedia) — Wikipedia contributors. 'Gayelord Hauser.' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 7 July 2026.