The Fasting Cure

The Fasting Cure is 1911 non-fiction book on fasting by Upton Sinclair. It is a reprinting of two articles written by Sinclair which were originally published in the Cosmopolitan magazine. It also includes comments and notes to the articles, as well as extracts of articles Sinclair published in the Physical Culture magazine. Sinclair was keenly interested in health and nutrition. He experimented with various diets, and with fasting. He writes extensively about fasting in The Fasting Cure, which became bestseller. Sinclair believed that periodic fasting was important for health, saying, ""I had taken several fasts of ten or twelve days' duration, with the result of a complete making over of my health"". Sinclair favored a raw food diet of predominantly vegetables and nuts. For long periods of time, he was a complete vegetarian, but he also experimented with eating meat. His attitude to these matters is fully explained in the book's final chapter, ""The Use of Meat"". The book makes sensational claims of fasting curing practically all diseases, including cancer, tuberculosis, asthma, syphilis, and the common cold.

Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore in September 1878. His father moved the family to New York City in 1888. Although his own family was extremely poor, he spent periods of time living with his wealthy grandparents. He later argued that witnessing these extremes turned him into a socialist. Sinclair funded his college education by writing stories for newspapers and magazines. Sinclair's first novel was published in 1901. Sinclair was extremely active in socialist politics throughout his life. His novel Dragon's Teeth (1942) on the rise of Nazism won him the Pulitzer Prize. By the time Upton Sinclair died in 1968, he had published more than ninety books.