The Secret to his Hi-Proteen Powder?
During the 1960s and 1970s, Real Estate Buying and Selling the FDA regularly locked horns with manufacturers for their lax production methods and incredulous claims. The FDA was forced to engage in light-touch regulation. In 1975, a court ruling allowed supplements to advertise themselves as natural. Public and private outcry stopped such plans in their tracks. The problem was that the FDA was never able to fully regulate the industry. From 1968 to 1970, Congress held several public hearings on the FDA’s plans to regulate supplements. Legislators, supplement trade associations, manufacturers and citizens discussed restrictions and bans on certain products, such as making it illegal to sell supplements with nutrients in excess of 150% of daily intake recommendations.
One year later, the Rogers Proxmire Act prohibited the FDA from imposing limits on vitamin and mineral amounts in supplements. Put simply, it became impossible to oversee what went into products. The number of products continued to grow. The FDA retained the right to pursue baseless or misleading claims, but this did little to slow down the industry. This also explains why so many supplements include a note to say they are not FDA approved or endorsed.
Their supplements weren’t pills, but rather food alternatives. Sylvester Graham, born in 1794, was an American Presbyterian minister who preached salvation through a vegetarian diet. While Graham didn’t officially endorse these products, his spiritual successor, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, was an eager proponent of his family’s line of new foods. Graham’s followers made and marketed Graham bread, crackers and flour with the promise that these products would promote righteous living and eternal salvation. Part of Graham’s teaching centered on temperance and whole grain foods.
Outlandish promises were commonplace. When Hoffman and others began selling supplements, they were technically subject to the policies of the Food and Drug Administration. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Government authorities did little to stop them. Vitamin producers promised cancer-curing products, protein powders advertised steroid-like effects, while pre-workout supplements – often laced with methamphetamines – offered boundless energy. The supplements industry and federal authorities have long been playing a game of cat and mouse.
But during the 1950s, the FDA was ill-equipped to regulate nutritional supplements. The secret to his Hi-Proteen powder? By the 1960s, Hoffman – who routinely claimed his products added pounds of muscles in rapid time – became a target of the FDA. Hoffman was regularly censored but never stopped. However, some of the manufacturers’ outlandish claims and unhygienic practices started to attract the attention of the regulatory body, which soon sought to gain more control. A large mixing vat in which he stirred Hershey’s chocolate powder together with soy protein powder using a rowing oar.
Sensing a potentially lucrative partnership, Bragg wrote to Hoffman with an idea. If someone bought a barbell set in the 1930s, it was likely they could still use it in the 1950s. Bragg recommended selling nutritional supplements, which would need to be replaced on a biweekly or monthly basis. Hoffman decided to pass on partnering up with Bragg, but he soon recognized the idea’s potential. Made from soy, Johnson’s “Hi Protein” powder was a huge success. In the 1950s, nutritionist and bodybuilding coach Irving Johnson began selling protein supplements in Hoffman’s Strength & Health magazine. In the letter, Bragg told Hoffman the fundamental flaw in his York business: his products were durable.
