Worthington Foods

Worthington Foods was a manufacturer of vegetarian foods based in Worthington, Ohio and founded by Dr. George T. Harding (1843-1928), an Adventist physician at Harding Sanitarium. The company first began producing vegetarian food products in 1939 under the name Special Foods Company. At the time of publication, Worthington products was spun off and purchased by different food manufacturers, including Kellanova (a division of Kellogg’s) and Above Food and Bite Acquisition.

Founding

In 1916, Dr. George T. Harding II (1878-1934) opened Indianola Rest Home, on 18th Avenue in Columbus, Ohio.¹ Harding was the brother of Warren G. Harding, who was later president of the United States. Indianola had capacity for only six female residents, but in 1918 Harding expanded the facility and relocated the rest home south of Columbus. It began accepting patients of both genders. The newly renamed Columbus Rural Rest Home now boasted a capacity of twenty-one.²

By 1919, Harding was ready to expand and moved yet again. He purchased a 47-acre site for $40,000, and the rest home again relocated to Worthington about ten miles north of Columbus. The facility that ultimately became Harding Sanitarium and later Harding Hospital was moved to its current location. It has since been acquired by a medical group, and today it is known as the Worthington campus of the Ohio State University Medical Center.

Dr. Harding II died in 1934, at which point his son, the twenty-nine-year-old Dr. George Harding III (1904-1985), took over administration of the hospital. The rest home was renamed the Harding Sanitarium for Mental and Nervous Disorders. The name reflected a specialization in mental health.³ The weekly fee for at least part of the 1930s was $35, but during the Great Depression the fee was not affordable for many. It was reported that the staff sacrificed so no one was turned away. As one nurse stated, “the feeling was that... we would make any sacrifice rather than have anyone have to leave.”⁴

Consistent with Seventh-day Adventist messaging at the time, Dr. George Harding III was committed to a vegetarian lifestyle. This commitment along with his work as a physician led Harding to organize a health food company in 1939. The market for vegetarian food was not new among Seventh-day Adventist adherents, but the large-scale commercial production of vegetarian meats was relatively undeveloped. Vegetarian foods were primarily used institutionally, within SDA schools, colleges, hospitals, and sanitariums, not sold commercially. Harding seems to have understood the potential for a national brand that Adventists would recognize from coast to coast. Except for during World War II, when there was meat-rationing, the brand that Harding created would continue to target Seventh-day Adventists for much of the next forty years. Adventists were, a later CEO claimed, Worthington’s raison d’etre even into the 1970s. Harding initially marketed these vegetarian products under the name Special Foods.

Early History

Dr. Harding enlisted Bill Robinson and Elwin Knecht to open and manage the new Special Foods vegetarian foods company. Although Special Foods was new, Harding, Robinson, and Knecht already had experience with producing meatless products. Harding had served on the board of directors at Madison College in Tennessee where, in Nashville, the school produced its own meat analogs.⁵ Knecht and Harding had been classmates at Loma Linda University, in Southern California. Knecht was a graduate dietitian in Loma Linda and worked in analog meat production at the Loma Linda Sanitarium. By 1938, Knecht was the food service director at Harding Hospital which was producing meat analogs as a precursor to Special Foods. The third man, Bill Robinson, had been a patient of Dr. Harding’s and had also worked in sales for the Battle Creek Food Company. Although Harding’s business was new, all three of the men he hired to run Special Foods had experience with other Adventist health food manufacturers.

Robinson was initially the only employee of the new company. Knecht and Harding presumably continued working at Harding Hospital while also collaborating with Robinson on the Special Foods product line. At the start, Special Foods offered only a few products, and the first advertisement for a Special Foods product in Adventist publications appears to have been in July 1939.⁶ The product advertised was Beta Broth, “a new granulated bouillon made from yeast extract and vegetables.” It may not have been their first product, but it was at least the first that they marketed outside of their local hospital and Adventist community. Those first adverts in July 1939 were part of a marketing blitz for Beta Broth that appeared in all the regular regional denominational publications in the United States. Seventy servings of Beta Broth could be purchased in a “large tin” at the “introductory price of just $1 postpaid.”⁷

In the early years, Robinson, Harding and Knecht developed products in the Harding Hospital kitchen. According to Allan R. Buller, a later president of the company, Robinson, Harding, and Knecht were attempting to produce “a vegetarian steak-like food similar to one that Dr. Kellogg had invented and was producing” at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.⁸ One of the products they developed was a wheat gluten patty, meant to replace a burger patty. The nameless gluten patty made its debut during a dinner at the Harding’s home. Robinson and Knecht sent over samples to Harding’s wife, who prepared them for dinner in 1939. Although the exact date is unknown, it was probably after July.⁹ According to company oral tradition, while discussing what to call the new product over dinner that evening, ten-year-old George Harding IV suggested the name Choplet.¹⁰ The name stuck.

Much of the early history of Worthington is known only anecdotally or by oral tradition, which leaves dates and details somewhat obscure. Based on that tradition, the Choplet was originally offered only to employees and patients of the sanitarium. According to Buller, Choplet proved so popular at the sanitarium that plans were put in place to move Special Foods production out of the hospital kitchen and into a factory.¹¹ By December 1940, the Choplet had made its public debut. In that initial advertisement thirty ounces of Choplet could be bought for .60 cents.¹²

Once the decision was made to move production out of the hospital, a house in Worthington, on Proprietor’s Road, was purchased for $2,000 and repurposed into a factory. This was near where the Harding home was also located. The basement was for production, the first floor was used as office space, and the second floor was used for ingredient and food packaging storage.¹³ This new facility was opened by 1941, and, with the new production facility, additional staff hirings were planned. Elwin Knecht’s brother, Bernath J. Knecht, was hired as the engineer. Elwin Knecht continued to develop products, and Bill Robinson sold them. Primarily a salesman, not an administrator, in 1941 Robinson convinced an old college friend, James L. Hagle, to join Special Foods. Hagle was working as an administrator–a credit manager–for Hinsdale Hospital, near Chicago, when Robinson reached out to him. Hagle joined Special Foods as the General Manager.¹⁴ Shortly after Hagle moved to Worthington, Robinson left Special Foods. By the end of 1940, Special Foods had expanded their line to include Numete, Proast, Tastex, and Choplets.¹⁵

With the arrival of Hagle, sales improved dramatically. Whether that was a credit to Hagle’s business prowess or to World War II food and meat rationing that began in May 1942 cannot be determined with certainty. According to Dale Twomley, a later Worthington president, Hagle’s strength was in sales and marketing. So perhaps the increase in sales was due to both marketing and wartime meat rationing. Food rationing provided Worthington Foods with a new market of non-vegetarian consumers. These products were protein dense meat substitutes and, unlike meat products, were not subject to rationing.

During this same period, Special Foods changed organizationally. Shortly after Hagle joined the company, the organization changed from what may have been a sole proprietorship – owned by George Harding – to a partnership. That partnership included Harding, Hagle, Warren G. Harding (George’s brother), and two of George’s brothers-in-law, Philip Hoffman and Dr. Harrison Evans.¹⁶ The transition included adopting a new name - Worthington Foods. Although the Worthington Foods name appears in advertising material as early as December 1940, the company formed as a partnership as Special Foods, and the name continued to appear (with the new Worthington Foods branding) in advertising material until 1946. In 1946, the Special Foods branding was permanently retired.¹⁷

Worthington, like all Americans and American companies, adapted its production abilities to the war effort in 1941. This included shipping product in glass jars rather than tin or aluminum cans. Special Foods was unable to purchase enough yeast for its products. They had been previously purchasing yeast from Germany. Instead, Worthington purchased these from Anheuser-Busch.¹⁸ Americans were still recovering from the Depression, and many homes were still struggling financially. Sensitive to this, Worthington advertised, “Worthington Foods are so economical that they are within the reach of nearly everyone.”¹⁹ Although the price of Worthington products did increase during the first few years of the war, those increases were lower than the rate of inflation in the United States overall. Cumulative inflation during the war was between 21% to 25% over the four years.²⁰ Choplets’ prices also increased yet not as steeply. The price for a 17 ounce can of Choplets at the end of 1940 was .35 cents, while at the end of 1943 the price had risen to .37 cents for 16 ounces.²¹ By the end of the war, the company had increased profits twenty-five-fold over the previous five years.²² With the war’s end in 1945, however, rationing also ended. Families and returning soldiers could now buy all the meat they wanted, and some of customers gravitated back to non-vegetarian products.

Late 1940s and 1950s

In late 1946, after serving four years in the Army during World War II, a new executive was hired. Allan Buller had been recruited during the war.²³ Buller would eventually take over as president of the company and oversee a multi-million-dollar budget with hundreds of employees, but when Buller joined the company in 1947, it had less than thirty employees.²⁴ In the immediate post-war years, Worthington experienced a precipitous drop in sales. At this time, the company created their first sales team. Instead of proceeding with caution, the newly renamed Worthington Health Foods (WHF) responded to the drop in post-war sales by not scaling back their production and saw a net operating loss in 1947.²⁵

The next decade was one of growth, change, and acquisition for WHF. In 1948, after seven years with the company, Hagle stepped back from his position as president, and Buller took on the role as president.²⁶ Hagle remained with Worthington, and the two were a “dynamic duo,” according to Twomley; “Jim [was] the visionary and strategic businessman, and Alan [Buller] the organizer and executioner.”²⁷ Hagle remained with Worthington for more than forty years and served as chairman of the boards of both the Harding Hospital and WHF until his death in October 1990.

In 1950, the company bought Dr. Harry Miller’s International Nutritional Laboratories in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. With the purchase came the rights to produce Miller’s products, except for Soyalac, a dairy-free baby food alternative, which was sold to Loma Linda Foods.²⁸ The catalog after the purchase of International Nutritional Laboratories included products from both Miller’s company and from WHF. Among its regular WHF products the catalog now included Miller’s Cutlets (later renamed Vegetarian Cutlets) and meatless wieners.²⁹ The meatless wieners presumably had not yet been named, and the newly named Veja-link appears as “something new” in advertising material in October 1952.³⁰

In 1956, a major development permanently altered the analog meat market. Buller met with Bob Boyer. Without an appointment, Boyer walked into Buller’s office one day and explained that he had worked for Ford during the war and was tasked with developing a spun fiber replacement for wool, for the seats of vehicles. Wool had been rationed during the war, and Ford had been trying to develop a replacement so that its production lines could operate continuously, without stopping to wait for materials. After the end of the war, wool was no longer rationed, and synthetic spun wool was no longer in need. But the spun fiber technology that Boyer had created was applicable, he thought, to spinning vegetarian meat fiber products. No such spun fiber meats were on the market.³¹ Hagel tasted a sample of the spun fiber vegetarian meat and told Boyer, “The texture is right but it’s terrible. No one will eat this.”³² WHF, nonetheless, embraced Boyer‘s idea. They did not have the production facilities to make a spun fiber product, and the machinery was considered too costly to purchase.³³ This was solved by contracting with Ralston Purina to make vegetarian meat from spun fiber. Ralston Purina continued to make WHF‘s spun fiber soy protein foods for more than two decades. At about the same time, WHF entered the frozen foods market. At the time, there was very little frozen food in stores, and vegetarian frozen foods had to wrestle with non-frozen, and non-vegetarian foods for delivery space on trucks and store shelf space.

Decades of Growth: the 1960s and 1970s

The 1960s and 1970s were decades of continued growth. In 1960, WHF acquired Battle Creek Food Company and for the first time topped one million dollars in sales.³⁴ In 1964, WHF built a new research center. The publication of multiple studies starting in the early 1970s that demonstrated a high correlation between a diet high in animal fats and the accumulation of cholesterol in arteries sparked a cultural and industrial shift toward vegetarian foods.³⁵ Subsequently, food manufacturers sought to market healthier foods.

As a response to this research, non-analog meat food manufacturers approached WHF about acquiring the company. At least four other food companies were looking to enter the market: Beatrice Foods, Hershey, Coke, and Staleys. Initially, WHF was not interested.³⁶ However, Worthington did plan to expand and needed capital to build a new plant. A merger could provide that capital, so WHF began negotiating a deal with one of the smaller companies, Miles Laboratories (ML), a company based in Elkhart, Indiana, that had expressed interest in joining forces with WHF. Yet what began as negotiations about a merger evolved into talks of an acquisition. By the end, Miles Laboratories owned WHF, after the merger renamed Worthington Foods (WF).³⁷ As part of those negotiations, Miles Labs accepted Worthington’s sabbath-keeping ethos and that Adventists would remain their primary marketing target. Miles also resolved to keep meat-derivatives out of all WF products.³⁸ Worthington executives were committed to the vegetarian lifestyle, and Hagle argued for this on environmental grounds. Writing in Ministry, he stated that, “Domestic animals compete with man for the nutritious vegetation that the land can produce. Dependence upon animals as ‘factories’ to convert vegetation to hu­man food is increasingly uneconomical. Di­rect conversion to human food is at least three or four times more efficient.”³⁹ Miles Labs (ML) also agreed to build a new plant for WF. A deal with ML was finalized in 1970, and by October of that year construction on the new plant had begun. By March 1971, an expansion of that plant was underway.⁴⁰

By this stage, Worthington Foods had become the largest producer of vegetable protein foods in the United States. Prior to the merger with WF, ML had not produced analog meats, but they had shifted toward developing substitute products for eggs and meats. Miles’ CEO Walter Compton believed WF had significantly more market potential than was being tapped by WF executives because, after World War II, they had focused almost solely on the niche Seventh-day Adventist market. As the market strategy developed, it was determined that ML would develop heretofore underserved potential markets for WF products, that served the general public, like supermarkets. Worthington Foods, meanwhile, would serve private institutions and health food specialty stores. The Adventist community had been WHF’s raison d'être.⁴¹ At that time, ML produced primarily non-food products and was not interested in the niche Adventist market. Its product line included One-a-Day vitamins, Alka-Seltzer, and SOS Pads. Because ML was focused on wide public consumption, which had not been WF’s market, sales expanded.

Part of the increased sales were due to new product offerings, including the Morning Star Farms brand, which exponentially increased Worthington’s sales.⁴² Overall, from 1960 to 1970, production volume increased by more than 1,000 percent, and from 1970 to 1980 it increased, in real dollars, more than the prior decade. Buller reported that this was also true for the 1980 to 1990 decade.⁴³

In 1978, just eight years after Miles Labs purchased WF, another company, Bayer AG, a German chemical and pharmaceutical company, was attempting to break into the American market and purchased Miles Laboratories. But Bayer AG was not interested in the food market. When WF executives approached Bayer, exploring the possibility of purchasing the company from Bayer, Bayer immediately accepted. Unprepared for an immediate response, Worthington Foods executives in turn asked Bayer for time to conduct a valuation of the company. Bayer responded by offering WF executives their own valuation reports, which they had just completed. As a starting point, Worthington executives proffered a low offer, and, to their surprise, Bayer accepted the offer almost immediately with no negotiation.⁴⁴ Twomely wrote that former Miles Lab colleagues were still friendly with both Hagle and Buller and offered them a deal that was “pennies on the dollar.”⁴⁵

The 1980s and 1990s

The sale happened so quickly that Worthington executives did not have the money, nor did they know where they could secure the funding, so WHF asked Bayer for time to secure funding. Although WF executives were able to find loans for part of the purchase price, the senior executive leadership – Buller, Harding IV, and Hagel – found investors, many of which were Seventh-day Adventists. Hagel and Buller were instrumental in securing funding from the bank, and Hagel was the largest shareholder. Several took on personal risks to make this investment. Seeing the potential for growth, Buller invested his personal retirement fund and remortgaged his home.⁴⁶ These investors provided WF with enough cash to make the purchase. Under the Bayer purchase, WF owned a much larger company than had been sold to ML just a decade before. In 1982 the sale was complete. Worthington Foods did see a small net operating loss that year.⁴⁷

Under Bayer AG, Miles Labs was going to end its frozen foods line. This section of ML was included in the sale to Worthington Foods. As a result, all of the public supermarkets and other sales channels that ML developed, independent of WF and their niche Adventist markets, would now belong to Worthington Foods. Obtaining this sector of ML required WF executives to think outside of their Adventist network. Worthington had to expand their sales and marketing team.⁴⁸ Part of that transition meant a change in leadership. In 1983, shortly after WF executives purchased the company from Bayer AG, Buller retired, and Dr. Dale E. Twomley was appointed president and CEO. Twomley resigned his position as dean of the business department at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist university in southwestern Michigan.⁴⁹

In the first decade after Twomley took the helm, Worthington Foods continued to expand. In 1992, the company went public. In 1994, the company’s sales grew, and in 1995, the product line expanded with the introduction of the Spicy Black Bean Burger, Better ‘n Burger, and Ground Meatless. WF entered the institutional food service and the restaurant market at the same time. This growth meant new production facilities were needed. In 1996 a new factory was built, and automated processing and computer controls were introduced. All signs pointed to continued growth.⁵⁰

In the mid-1990s, Worthington Foods controlled approximately 55 percent of the vegetarian meats market. But executives understood the market, and, as then-CEO Dale Twomley described it, the “competition from several major food companies was eminent. We concluded that it would be difficult to compete against the major players in this hot category, and decided it would be best for shareholders and employees to divest the company.”⁵¹ Worthington ultimately negotiated a deal with Kellogg’s. On December 1, 1999, the strategic acquisition was complete, and Kellogg’s owned Worthington Foods. This purchase included the Loma Linda labels and products, which WF had purchased in 1990. At the time of the Kellogg’s purchase, WF had more than five hundred employees.⁵²

More Recent Developments

By 2005, Kellogg’s had moved WF operations to Zanesville, Ohio. In 2014, Kellogg’s sold some Worthington labels to North Carolina-based Atlantic Natural Foods (ANF), and this purchase included the Loma Linda canned items.⁵³ Kellogg’s kept the Worthington frozen food line, including MorningStar Farms. The remaining Worthington items and branding remained with Kellogg’s.

In 2009 Heritage Health Foods (HHF) was started by an Adventist businessman, Don Otis. Otis had worked with Worthington Foods until its acquisition by Kellogg’s in 1999. Otis remained with Kellogg’s and served as director of Natural & Specialty Foods until 2009, when he left Kellogg’s and created HHF. At HHF, Otis began to purchase Adventist legacy food brands, including Loma Linda. With the sales of Worthington products owned by Kellogg’s shrinking and much of the WF line disappearing from store shelves, Otis approached Kellogg’s about purchasing their remaining WF products. In 2016, HHF purchased Worthington (and Loma Linda and Cedar Lake Foods).⁵⁴

Atlantic Natural Foods continued to produce separate WF labels under completely different management and production facilities from Kellogg’s or HHF. In another acquisition of the Worthington label, in 2021, it was announced that Canada-based Above Foods would purchase Atlantic Natural Foods. In May 2023, Above Foods announced that it would join Bite Acquisition Corp., in a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, to purchase Atlantic Natural Foods and all of its subsidiary brands.⁵⁵ Currently, Atlantic Natural Foods and Above Foods continue to produce Loma Linda Foods labels, and Kellogg’s still produces MorningStar Farms. In May of 2023, Kellogg’s announced it would divide its products into a cereal division and a snacks division. The snacks division was named Kellanova and at the time of publication is the home of MorningStar Farms.⁵⁶

Historical Legacy

Worthington was a relative latecomer to the plant-based meat market within the Seventh-day Adventist community. Outside of that community, it was a pioneer, developing early versions of a vegetarian hot dogs, meats from spun fiber protein, and creating with Miles Labs a leading frozen foods brand, now known as MorningStar Farms. By the mid-1990s, Worthington Foods controlled over half of the vegetarian foods market share, and other Adventist-owned companies like Cedar Lake, Loma Linda, and Battle Creek Foods, had either been sold to Worthington or controlled only a small portion of the market share in the United States.⁵⁷

Worthington cultivated a market for vegetarian foods that then were primed and ready for companies like Impossible and Beyond. Dale Twomley believes that the key to success for some of these later products was branding, particularly the industry coalescing around the “plant-based” descriptor.⁵⁸ Yet the “plant-based” positioning is not all these companies did right. Twomley writes that they “developed vegetarian products with good taste and texture with a clean label… [and] had crazy financial resources for R&D and marketing.”⁵⁹ Worthington knew they did not have the resources to compete with the bigger companies, resulting in Worthington’s sale to Kellogg’s in 1999.Worthington demonstrated to other companies like Impossible and Beyond that success in the vegetarian meat business was attainable.

Although today many of the Worthington products are either harder to find or are no longer produced, from 1939 through the 1990s, generations of vegetarians, particularly Seventh-day Adventists in North America, consumed Worthington Food products. The plant-based meat market has seen significant growth in the first two decades of the 21st century. Seventh-day Adventists who once were corporate pioneers of plant-based foods are no longer industry leaders, yet companies like Worthington persisted over the decades and demonstrated that a market for vegetarian meats existed and that plant-based businesses could be successful.

List of name changes and acquisitions

Year	Name
1939 to 1944	Special Foods
1944 to 1970	Worthington Health Foods Company
1970 to 1983	Worthington Foods (owned by Miles Laboratories)
1983 to 1999	Worthington Foods
1999 to 2014	Worthington Foods (owned by Kellogg's)
2014 - 2023	Worthington Foods (owned by Atlantic Natural Foods)
2023 -	Worthington Foods and Atlantic Natural Foods (owned by Above Foods and Bite Acquisition Corp.)

Sources

“Advertisements.” Atlantic Union Gleaner 38, no. 27 (July 1939).

Best, Dean. “Above Food’s planned takeover of Atlantic Natural Foods Confirmed.” Just Food Online. Published May 3, 2023. https://www.just-food.com/news/above-foods-planned-takeover-of-atlantic-natural-foods-confirmed/?cf-view.

Buller, Allan R. Making the Inside of a Sheep: My Life at Worthington Foods. Teach Services, Inc., 2017.

“Buller Locates Family Here.” The Worthington News, December 6, 1945, 1. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll97/id/8735/rec/1.

Byrd, Alita. “50 Years Selling Choplets.” Spectrum Magazine, June 8, 2009. https://spectrummagazine.org/article/interviews/2009/06/08/50-years-selling-choplets.

Byrd, Alita. “Kellogg’s Sells Worthington and Loma Linda Brands.” Spectrum Magazine, October 9, 2014. https://spectrummagazine.org/article/alita-byrd/2014/10/09/kellogg-sells-worthington-and-loma-linda-brands.

Encyclopedia of Small Business. “History of Worthington Foods, Inc.” Accessed February 4, 2024. https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/62/Worthington-Foods-Inc.html.

“Expansion of R&D Facility Begun at Worthington Foods.” Worthington News, March 25, 1971.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “Consumer Price Index, 1913 - : Historical Data from the Era of the Modern U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI).” https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-.

Hagel, James L. “Adventist Food and Technology.” Ministry, July 1967. https://cdn.ministrymagazine.org/issues/1967/issues/MIN1967-07.pdf.

Harding Hospital. Harding Hospital: Seventy-five Years, 1916-1991. 1991. VHS. http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/scrapbook/videorecordings/harding-hospital.

“Kellogg Company Announces Separation of Two Businesses as Bold Next Steps in Portfolio.” News Room Kellenova, June 21, 2022, see here. 

Lucas, Amelia. “Beyond Meat Surges 163% in the Best IPO so far in 2019.” NBC Online, May 2, 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/02/beyond-meat-ipo.html.

“The 1935 ‘Life and Health.’” Central Union Reaper 3, no. 50 (December 1912). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/CUR/CUR19341211-V03-50.pdf.

“Meatless Company Far from Vegetating. Chicago Tribune. December 12, 1988, https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/12/12/meatless-company-far-from-vegetating/.

Ohio State Harding Hospital. “Celebrating a Century,” medicine.osu.edu, see here. 

Poinski, Megan. “Above Food to buy Atlantic Natural Foods for more than $30M.” Food Dive Online, October 26, 2021. https://www.fooddive.com/news/above-food-to-buy-atlantic-natural-foods-for-more-than-30m/608843/.

Shurtleff, William, and Aoyagi, Akiko. History of Soybeans and Soyfoods: 1100 BC to the 1980s. Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center, 2014. https://www.soyinfocenter.com/pdf/179/MAL.pdf.

Shurtleff, William, and Aoyagi, Akiko. “Worthington Foods (1939-),” In “History of Soybeans and Soyfoods: 1100 BC to the 1980s.” Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center, 2004. https://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/worthington_foods.php.

Worthington Foods. Advertisement. Life and Health: The National Health Journal 57, no. 6 (June 1942). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19420601-V57-06.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22.

Worthington Foods. Advertisement: “Something New!” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 67, no. 10 (October 1952). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19521001-V67-10.pdf#search=veja%20link.

Worthington Foods. Advertisement: “Tastex: Worthington’s Famous ‘Choplets’ Flavor.” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 58, no. 10 (October 1943), see here.

Worthington Foods. Advertisement: “Vitamins for Victory.” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 57, no. 10 ( October 1942). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19421001-V57-10.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22.

Worthington Foods. “Just a Sip of Beta Broth Sells You on It.” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 55, no. 12 (December 1940). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19401201-V55-12.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22.

Worthington Foods. “Worthington Price List and Order Blank.” Ca. 1950. http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/scrapbook/text/worthington-foods-price-list-and-order-blank.

“Worthington Foods Breaks Ground for Multimillion Dollar Expansion.” Worthington News, October 8, 1970.

“Worthington Foods Buys Battle Creek Food Company Rights.” The Worthington News, October 6, 1960. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll97/id/18644/rec/1.

“Worthington Health Foods.” Canadian Union Messenger 15, no. 5 (August 1946). https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/CUM/CUM19460821-V15-04.pdf.

Notes

1. Ohio State Harding Hospital, “Celebrating a Century,” medicine.osu.edu, see here.↩

2. Ohio State Harding Hospital, Celebrating a Century.”↩

3. “The 1935 ‘Life and Health,’” Central Union Reaper 3, no. 50 (December 1912): 8, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/CUR/CUR19341211-V03-50.pdf.↩

4. Harding Hospital, Harding Hospital: Seventy-five Years, 1916-1991, (1991), VHS. http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/scrapbook/videorecordings/harding-hospital.↩

5. In the early days of vegetarian meat products, they were called “analog,” which meant that they were vegetarian or vegan substitutes for meat products.↩

6. “Advertisements,” Atlantic Union Gleaner 38, no. 27 (July 1939): 7, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/ALUG/ALUG19390712-V38-27.pdf.↩

7. “Advertisements.”↩

8. Allan R. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep: My Life at Worthington Foods (Teach Services, Inc., 2017), 15.↩

9. William Shurtleff, and Akiko Aoyagi, History of Soybeans and Soyfoods: 1100 BC to the 1980s (Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center, 2007), 7, https://www.soyinfocenter.com/pdf/179/MAL.pdf; Dale Twomley email to the author, October 5, 2023.↩

10. In an earlier interview with Alita Byrd, published in Spectrum Magazine, Buller indicated that George Harding IV was ten years old. Harding IV was born in January 1929. The Choplet was not introduced publicly under the name Special Foods until a few months later, so the 1939 date must be referencing when the product was developed, but prior to its public offering outside of the hospital where it was first created. See, Alita Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets,” Spectrum Magazine, June 8, 2009, https://spectrummagazine.org/article/interviews/2009/06/08/50-years-selling-choplets. In the Buller book cited above, written twelve years after the interview cited here, Buller wrote that George IV was twelve, not ten.↩

11. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 16.↩

12. Worthington Foods, “Just a Sip of Beta Broth Sells You on it,” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 55, no. 12 (December 1940): 19, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19401201-V55-12.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22.↩

13. William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, “Worthington Foods (1939-),” in “History of Soybeans and Soyfoods: 1100 BC to the 1980s” (Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center, 2004), https://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/worthington_foods.php;

    also see, Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 17.↩

14. Shurtleff and Aoyagi, “Worthington Foods (1939-);” Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 17.; Alita Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets.”↩

15. Worthington Foods, “Just a Sip of Beta Broth.”↩

16. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 17. Whether Harding Hospital, the institution, owned any interest in Special Foods is unknown. No mention could be found of the hospital owning an interest.↩

17. Worthington Foods, “Advertisement,” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 57, no. 6 (June 1942): 29, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19420601-V57-06.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22. By December 1940, they were using both names in advertising.↩

18. Encyclopedia of Small Business, “History of Worthington Foods, Inc.,” https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/62/Worthington-Foods-Inc.html.↩

19. Worthington Foods, Advertisement: “Vitamins for Victory,” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 57, no. 10 ( October 1942): 21, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19421001-V57-10.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22.↩

20. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Consumer Price Index, 1913 - : Historical Data from the Era of the Modern U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI),” https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-.↩

21. Worthington Foods, Advertisement: “Tastex: Worthington’s Famous ‘Choplets’ Flavor,” Life and Health: The National Health Journal 58, no. 10 (October 1943): 35, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19431001-V58-10.pdf#search=%22worthington%20foods%22; Worthington Foods, “Just a Sip of Beta Broth Sells You on it.”↩

22. Shurtleff and Aoyagi, “Worthington Foods (1939-).”↩

23. “Buller Locates Family Here,” The Worthington News, December 6, 1945, 1, https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll97/id/8735/rec/1.↩

24. Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets;” “Worthington Health Foods,” Canadian Union Messenger 15, no. 5 (August 1946): 7, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/CUM/CUM19460821-V15-04.pdf.↩

25. Encyclopedia of Small Business, “History of Worthington Foods, Inc.”↩

26. “Fifty Years Selling Choplets.”↩

27. Dale Twomley, email to the author, March 11, 2024.↩

28. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 98.↩

29. Worthington Foods, “Worthington Price List and Order Blank,” ca. 1950, accessed February 4, 2024, http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/scrapbook/text/worthington-foods-price-list-and-order-blank.↩

30. Worthington Foods, “Skinless Vegetarian Frankfurters,” Life and Health: The National Health Journal (October 1952): 2, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LH/LH19521001-V67-10.pdf#search=veja%20link.↩

31. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 35, 36.↩

32. “Meatless Company Far From Vegetating,” Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1988, https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/12/12/meatless-company-far-from-vegetating/.↩

33. “SoyInfo Center.”↩

34. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 99-100; “Worthington Foods Buys Battle Creek Food Company Rights,” The Worthington News, October 6, 1960, 1, https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll97/id/18644/rec/1.↩

35. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 105. Buller states that it was a Stanford University study, but that study could not be located for this article. Other studies had similar results as those that Buller cites. For example, see, Nina Teicholz, “A Short History of Saturated Fat: The Making and Unmaking of a Scientific Consensus,” Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Obesity 30, no. 1 (2023): 65-71, doi:10.1097/MED.0000000000000791; Ancel Keys and Margaret Keys, How to Eat Well and Stay Well – The Mediterranean Way (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975).↩

36. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 58, 72, 73.↩

37. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 73.↩

38. “Fifty Years Selling Choplets.”↩

39. James L. Hagel, “Adventist Food and Technology,” Ministry, July 1967, 23, https://cdn.ministrymagazine.org/issues/1967/issues/MIN1967-07.pdf.↩

40. “Worthington Foods Breaks Ground For Multimillion Dollar Expansion,” Worthington News, October 8, 1970, 1, http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/news/worthington-news/1970-10-8/worthington-foods-breaks-ground-multimillion-dollar-expansion; “Expansion of R&D Facility Begun at Worthington Foods,” Worthington News, March 25, 1971, 1, http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/news/worthington-news/1971-3-25/expansion-r-d-facility-begun-worthington-foods.↩

41. Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets”; Buller, 75.↩

42. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 75↩

43. Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets.”↩

44. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 84.↩

45. Dale Twomley, email to the author, March 11, 2024.↩

46. Dale Twomley, email to the author, March 11, 2024. Much of this paragraph comes from correspondence with Twomley. Buller’s book does not detail Hagel’s involvement, and Twomley was clear that Buller was essential to the company’s success, but that Hagle was the “driving force” behind securing the funding. Unfortunately, board meeting minutes that would provide a better picture were not found during this research.↩

47. Encyclopedia of Small Business, “History of Worthington Foods, Inc.”↩

48. Buller, Making the Inside of a Sheep, 108-109.↩

49. Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets.”↩

50. Encyclopedia of Small Business, “History of Worthington Foods, Inc.”↩

51. Dale Twomley, email to the author, December 27, 2023; Byrd, “Fifty Years Selling Choplets.”↩

52. Byrd, “50 Years Selling Choplets;” Dale Twomley, email to author, December 27, 2023.↩

53. Alita Byrd, “Kellegg’s Sells Worthington and Loma Linda Brands,” Spectrum Magazine, October 9, 2014, https://spectrummagazine.org/article/alita-byrd/2014/10/09/kellogg-sells-worthington-and-loma-linda-brands.↩

54. Jon Fish, phone call with the author, March 18, 2024; Don Otis via Jon Fish email to the author, March 25, 2024. Fish is the VP of Marketing for Heritage Health Foods. As part of the WF acquisition, HHF also purchased the Cedar Lake Food Company product line and production facilities. Cedar Lake was another heritage vegetarian food brand. Heritage Health Foods purchased Loma Linda brands at the same time, from Adventist church ownership.↩

55. Megan Poinski, “Above Food to buy Atlantic Natural Foods for more than $30M,” Food Dive Online, last modified October 26, 2021, https://www.fooddive.com/news/above-food-to-buy-atlantic-natural-foods-for-more-than-30m/608843/; Dean Best, “Above Food’s Planned Takeover of Atlantic Natural Foods Confirmed,” Just Food Online, last modified May 3, 2023, https://www.just-food.com/news/above-foods-planned-takeover-of-atlantic-natural-foods-confirmed/?cf-view.↩

56. Megan Poinski, “Above Food to Buy,;” Dean Best, “Above Food’s Planned;” “Kellogg Company Announces Separation of Two Businesses as Bold Next Steps in Portfolio,” News Room Kellenova, last modified June 21, 2022, see here. ↩

57. Outside the United States there were vegetarian food factories at many mission compounds and schools, and many pre-dated Worthington. Like Worthington, these were operated to support a specific ministry, a school, or a hospital. Many of them did not outlive their host school or hospital, particularly in Asia, specifically in China and Japan.↩

58. Dale Twomley, email to the author, February 27, 2024.↩

59. Ibid.↩