Historical and Genealogical Research

How many times have you seen an ad juxtaposing pictures of an overweight person with their new skinny self? They are often used to pitch a dietary supplement, usually with an offer of free samples. Did you know that the combination of these two sales techniques can be traced back more than one hundred years?

Back around 1906, Frank Jonas Kellogg was selling his weight loss pills, called various names, including Rengo and Sanitone Waffers. (He is not related to the cereal Kellogg family.)

This advertisement ran in the Atlanta Journal multiple times in 1906 and 1907, promoting the wonders of “Rengo Fruit”. It has all the stereotypical claims we expect in modern supplement commercials.

Rengo Fruit was written up in a 1912 book titled Nostrums and Quackery, which concludes that “It is little less than criminal that ignorant quacks of Kellogg’s type should be permitted to distribute indiscriminately drugs that have the potency for harm that is possessed by the thyroid preparations.”

In 1908, the U.S. Congress investigated Kellogg’s concoctions. The report was included as part of the President’s Homes Commission report of January 8, 1909, under the title “Thyroid Extracts in Obesity of Antifat Cures.” (S. Doc. 644; Serial Set Vol. 5394)

Frank Kellogg died in 1916 at age 70 but his promotional methods are still going strong.