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Fletcherism held a good deal of intuitive appeal.

Nutrition faddist John Harvey Kellogg, whose sanatorium briefly embraced Fletcherism, tried to re-enliven mealtimes by hiring a quartette to sing “The Chewing Song,” an original Kellogg composition, while diners grimly toiled.

In the United States and Europe, administrators at workhouses, prisons, and schools flirted with Fletcherism.

Together, he and Chittenden did their best to convince Hoover to make Fletcherism part of U.S. economic policy, thereby justifying a two-thirds reduction in the amount of civilian rations shipped overseas.

In 1979, a pair of Minneapolis researchers put Fletcherism to the test.