Adelle Davis Books
Davis’s first publication was a 1932 promotional pamphlet for a milk company. There followed two privately printed tracts, Optimum Health (1935) and You Can Stay Well (1939), and a nutrition handbook, Vitality through Planned Nutrition (1942). Davis’s public acclaim, however, rested on four books: Let’s Cook It Right (1947), Let’s Have Healthy Children (1951), Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit(1954), and Let’s Get Well (1965). The four Let’s books and their revisions sold ten million copies, mostly in paperback, during Davis’s lifetime.
The Let’s Series
Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit: Is a compendium of all the vitamins and mineral elements, one chapter on each one, taken from her years of clinical counseling and intensive research into the scientific experiments in the biochemistry of nutrition. Often referred as ALERT “Adelle’s Let’s Eat Right To…” this book explains in detail how these nutrients work in the body, the research that has been done on them, what happens when there is a deficiency in a nutrient, how much of the nutrient is needed in each instance and why, and what foods and supplements contain that nutrient. One gets a clear understanding of it is important, in each case, to supplement through the use of healthful foods and occasionally through pills. Further, since she educates you thoroughly in the research behind each nutrient, one learns how to adjust one’s diet wisely, using measurement and quantification based on science.
Let’s Get Well: There are three necessary rules to be observed in keeping well: 1) self-discipline, without which the other two rules are of little value; 2) proper use of the body; and 3) adequate nourishment for the body. These three rules of good living are considered so commonplace, as well as so fundamental, that each individual thinks he has the prerogative to handle these problems by himself without advice. Even the professional man assumes too often that the patient knows how to obey these rules. This book, Let’s Get Well, is devoted to the third rule of good living, or—how adequately to nourish the body. Please feel free to read Let’s Get Well chapter one.
Let’s Have Healthy Children: This book focuses on her theories as they pertain to diet during pregnancy, and raising a young family. This book also explains in detail how these nutrients work in the body of a child; what happens when there is a deficiency in a nutrient, how much of the nutrient is needed in each instance and why, and what foods and supplements contain that nutrient.
Let’s Cook It Right: Let’s Cook it Right is a celebrated cookbook dedicated to good health, good sense, and good eating. Adelle Davis believed that food should first and foremost, be delicious. This cookbook is full of ways to prepare fresh foods of all kinds in the most minimally-impacted, health-preserving manner; this book contains 400 easy-to-follow, basic recipes, a table of equivalents and an index.
Let’s Stay Healthy: A Guide to Lifelong Nutrition
Additional Writings:
You Can Get Well: A checkup by your doctor once a year and the information in You Can Get Well can save you a lot of trouble. This is the considered and solid promise that scientific nutrition holds out to you. You can increase your life span 10% if you start in time. Declares no less authority than Professor Henry Sherman of Columbia.
- Optimum Health (1935)
- You Can Stay Well (1939)
- Vitality Through Planned Nutrition (1942)
Under the pen name Jane Dunlap, Adelle Davis wrote: Exploring Inner Space: Personal Experiences Under LSD-25 (1961)