The Story of our Health Message

Health Foods Produced

Perhaps this line of endeavor has been most successfully promoted in the Australasian Division, where the Health Food Company maintains, besides several factories, a large wholesale depot, many retail stores, a system of affiliated vegetarian cafés, and the finest and best equipped laboratory in Australia. Hundreds of men and women are engaged in the production and distribution of health foods. Other hundreds of students thus employed are enabled to pay the expenses of their education. Every cafe and food depot is a health educational center. Specially trained attendants give advice to inquirers regarding food values and general health principles. SHM 427.3

Indicative of one relationship between the health food work and the general program of the church, it may be noted: SHM 427.4

“By the operation of this branch of our service approximately a thousand workers are employed, whose tithes and offerings comprise a substantial portion of the support of local conference and mission efforts. SHM 428.1

“From its earnings, the financing of our educational work is made possible, the school of nursing connected with our Sydney Sanitarium is subsidized, our influential welfare work is sustained, and our general mission funds are helped.”—Report of E. B. Rudge, president of the Australasian Division, to the General Conference of 1941, in The Review and Herald, June 8, 1941. SHM 428.2

At the General Conference of 1905 a forward step was taken in the creation of a Medical Missionary Council, as one of the departments of the General Conference, with the purpose that “the medical missionary work in all its features receive the same fostering care and financial support from the conference organization, churches, and people that are given to other branches of our work.” The Review and Herald, June 8, 1905. Eight members of the Medical Missionary Council were appointed by the General Conference Committee; the remainder consisted of one representative of each union conference. Plans were laid for the launching, with greater intensity, of a health and temperance educational campaign through the world for the preparation of suitable literature and for a more thorough blending of medical and evangelical endeavor on the part of both the ministry and the physician. SHM 428.3