METHUSELAH ARCHIVE PRACTITIONERS / GAYELORD HAUSER
Grainy halftone black-and-white newspaper photograph of a young dark-haired man's face, close-cropped, from a 1930 print advertisement.
PUBLIC DOMAIN source

Gayelord Hauser

individual · United States (Chicago, then Hollywood, California)
lived:1895–1984
active:1925–1984
type:individual
role:promoter
location:United States (Chicago, then Hollywood, California)
eventual status:publicly_disconfirmed
FINANCIAL CONFLICTS
Hauser joined the Milwaukee firm Modern Products with his brother-in-law Sebastian Gysin in 1925; the firm manufactured the herbal laxative Swiss Kriss. Separately, the FDA in 1937 seized three products Hauser had personally endorsed -- 'Slim' (containing the drugs senna, bladderwrack, and buckthorn bark), 'Correcol' (weeds and gum), and Hauser Potassium Broth (alfalfa, okra, beet tops) -- as misbranded and sold under false and fraudulent claims (Time, 1942). In 1951 the federal government separately pursued two libel actions against copies of his bestseller Look Younger, Live Longer, alleging the book was being distributed at the point of sale as unlawful commercial 'labeling' for a specific brand of blackstrap molasses. This entry does not claim Hauser personally owned that molasses brand (Allied Molasses Co.) or that he held an ownership stake in Modern Products; the conflict named here is the documented overlap among his product-business affiliation, his personal product endorsements, and the retail use of his book to sell a promoted food.
INTERVENTIONS PROMOTED
NOTABLE PATIENTS
EXTERNAL REFERENCES
NOTES

Benjamin Gayelord Hauser (born Helmut Eugen Benjamin Gellert Hauser, 17 May 1895, Tubingen, Germany; died 26 December 1984, North Hollywood, California) immigrated to the United States in 1911. He had no medical degree; his training, such as it was, came from the Chicago College of Naturopathy and the American School of Chiropractic, supplemented by time observing “healing properties of food” among fringe-medicine circles in Dresden and Vienna around 1923 (Thompson et al. 2020). He presented himself as an internationally famous young Viennese scientist and, after the American Medical Association’s Bureau of Investigation examined his credentials, dropped the title “M.D.” in favor of “a food scientist” (Time, 1942).

Hauser joined the Milwaukee firm Modern Products in 1925 and moved to Hollywood in 1927, where he became “food adviser” to a roster of film and society clients that came to include Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, Grace Kelly, and the Duchess of Windsor. His books — beginning with Harmonized Food Selection (1930) and reaching a commercial peak with the bestseller Look Younger, Live Longer (1950) — promoted five “wonder foods” (powdered brewers’ yeast, powdered skim milk, yoghourt/yogurt, wheat germ, and black treacle/blackstrap molasses) as the route to measurable added years of youth and life. His eventual_status is recorded as publicly_disconfirmed: the AMA’s credential review, the FDA’s 1937 seizure of three Hauser-endorsed products as misbranded, and two 1951 federal libel actions against his flagship bestseller were all public regulatory and professional actions during his own lifetime, not a quiet fade into obscurity. He continued writing and lecturing until his death in 1984.