Food science for all and a new sunlight theory of nutrition (Bircher-Benner, 1928)
book · 1928
LINK
SUMMARY
English-language presentation of Bircher-Benner's nutrition doctrine, the 'new sunlight theory of nutrition', delivered as lectures to teachers of domestic economy and translated and edited by Arnold Eiloart. The work states in its own title the central energetic premise of the system: that the value of food is to be understood through the sunlight (solar energy) it carries. Catalogue metadata (title, contributor, 1928 date, 140 pages) was copied from the Wellcome Collection work record (work h9mx92ke), fetched 2026-06-05. Used to ground the claims that Bircher-Benner taught that raw plant food stores and delivers the sun's energy and that food value is an energetic quantity rather than a matter of calories alone.
NOTES
This is one of Bircher-Benner’s own works, cited as a primary source for the mechanism he claimed. The phrase “sunlight theory of nutrition” is his (it appears in the title of the authorized English edition), and the source is used only to establish what he asserted, not to support its truth. The Wellcome Collection catalogue record supplies the bibliographic metadata; the energetic, solar-energy framing of nutrition is the doctrine the archive documents and that mainstream nutritional science did not adopt.