A Critique of the Book Prophetess of Health

Health Foods and Corn Flakes

Prophetess of Health claims that Dr. Kellogg offered to turn over the production rights of Granose Flakes to the church when the commercial value of the product became apparent and that Mrs. White ignored the offer (page 189). The footnote documentation includes reference to a letter from J. H. Kellogg to Ellen G. White dated June 10, 1894. In addition it is claimed that she later vetoed a chance to obtain the rights to Corn Flakes and that this later decision cost the church a fortune. CBPH 87.7

From this the reader would suppose that the June 10 letter would be a formal offer couched in clear business terms. On examination, what is said to be Kellogg’s “offer” to turn over production rights for Granose Flakes does not mention that product and turns out to be no offer at all. The communication cited is a seven page, single-spaced, newsy letter reporting to her in Australia, as was his custom, various and sundry happenings in Battle Creek and those particularly relating to his work and experiences. Near the close, after telling of the orphans he and Mrs. Kellogg had taken into their home, he expressed the hope that they might sometime have the privilege of entertaining Mrs. White in their home. The closing paragraph reads: CBPH 87.8

I must close this letter as I have nearly twenty operations to do this afternoon and it is already after three o’clock. Again thanking you for your constant remembrance of me and my work, and of your counsel and encouragement which has sustained and helped me all these years. CBPH 87.9

Now let us examine what is said to be the offer which Ellen White is reported to have ignored. CBPH 87.10

In his opening paragraph he speaks of W. K. Kellogg and the development of the health food business which was just getting well under way. We quote: CBPH 87.11

My brother Will, who has rendered me such efficient assistance for the last seventeen years, has just gone for a vacation of two or three months. He had an opportunity to visit Europe at a very small expense, and will endeavor to make arrangements to introduce our foods over there. I have a number of new foods, and shall try to make some arrangements to have them manufactured abroad. Our people might just as well take up this food business, and make enough money out of it to support the entire denominational work, if they would only appreciate it. But they do not, and I am so busy that I can do but very little in the way of pushing it. I now and then get at it, and give the matter a little push, and the result is thousands of dollars profit. We are now shipping to New York City alone nearly a carload a month of our foods. Our manufacturing capacity is taxed to the utmost, and there is a good profit. CBPH 87.12

The doctor then turns to other items of news. CBPH 87.13

In the first place, at the time he wrote this letter Dr. Kellogg was a loyal, trusted, Seventh-day Adventist leader. The Sanitarium where the foods were manufactured was a Seventh-day Adventist institution. In a passing remark he suggests that this newly developed health food business had a money making potential that could serve the church. CBPH 87.14

He makes no offer to Ellen White who, in any event, could in no way have accepted it in behalf of the church. She was not an officer of the church. He merely observes what he thinks might be done if there were men of vision who could grasp it. This is an excellent illustration of the distortion which occurs in Prophetess of Health, on which the average reader is at a disadvantage to detect, because he has no way of checking the context. CBPH 87.15

The corn flakes case is even clearer. It was in 1906 that the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company was incorporated and Dr. Kellogg sold to it the right to manufacture and sell Corn Flakes in the United States for $170,000. He was to receive $22,440 cash and $147,560 in stock for this. Meanwhile, the managers of the Sanitarium Health Food Company at St. Helena, California, had been steadily improving the sales of that denominational enterprise. They had raised the standards of their products, and had placed a large force of traveling salesmen, house-to-house solicitors, demonstrators, and samplers in the field until they had the largest force of health food salesmen in the field of anytime since the food business was begun in California. (H. H. Haynes Letter to A. G. Daniells, Sept. 23, 1906.) CBPH 87.16

Doubtless seeing the advantage of recruiting men with such wide contacts and experience, Dr. Kellogg and his brother Will offered to sell the rights to manufacture corn flakes in the nine Pacific Coast states for $45,000 and a royalty. CBPH 88.1

But this was on the specific and firm condition that it would not be a denominational enterprise or in any way connected with the denomination. E. G. Fulton and H. H. Haynes had gone to Battle Creek and suggested that the manufacturing of corn flakes for the Pacific Coast states be taken over by the Sanitarium Health Food Company. “During this conference,” W. C. White relates, “they were fully satisfied that it is the intention of Doctor and W. K. [Kellogg] to establish a factory on this coast and to separate their work from our denominational food business. They refused to consider any plan by which the corn flakes should be manufactured by the St. Helena Sanitarium Food Company. Their principal reason was their utter lack of confidence in any business enterprise connected with the denomination.” (W. C. White Letter to A. G. Daniells, Sept. 20, 1906.) CBPH 88.2

So, regardless of how it appears from reading Ellen White’s letters alone, her decision or recommendation could not possibly have “cost the church a fortune.” The “church” was never offered the rights to Corn Flakes. Even if it had been, there is no way of knowing that the church might have made the fortune from Corn Flakes which W. K. Kellogg made. CBPH 88.3