Pritikin Son Carries On Crusade : A Firm Believer in Diet’s Influence on Heart Health

Just before health and fitness crusader Nathan Pritikin killed himself in an Albany, N.Y., hospital in February, 1985, he was on the telephone with his son Robert in California. The elder Pritikin, who was suffering from terminal leukemia, “asked me what I would do if he died,” Robert recalled.

Despite his son’s protest that he still had a lot of years left, Nathan Pritikin outlined various future plans for his nationwide health program. “He gave me no inkling of what was going to happen,” Robert said. “We even cracked a few jokes.”

2,000 Condolence Calls

An hour later, Nathan Pritikin was dead. Within the next two weeks, according to estimates by Pritikin officials, more than 2,000 condolence calls came into the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica. And soon after, more than 700 people packed into the center for a memorial service, at which former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern eulogized Pritikin as a man who “boldly asserted” his beliefs “in the face of official skepticism, public ridicule and professional rejection.”

Today, as director of Pritikin Programs Inc. and head of the Pritikin Research Foundation, Robert Pritikin, 35, is his father’s anointed successor. He has inherited the leadership of an almost messianic campaign to turn the tide against heart disease and other degenerative diseases through a strict regimen of diet and exercise.

Robert Pritikin seems very different from his crusader father. Whereas the elder Pritikin was intense and single-minded, Robert exudes a playful, easygoing charm. Yet when he speaks about his efforts to carry on his father’s work, he turns very serious, discussing the latest research into the causes of heart disease with impressive expertise.

Wilma Keller, former development director of the Pritikin Research Foundation and one-time secretary to Nathan Pritikin, said, “Nathan was an idealist, a visionary, whereas Robert is a pragmatist, pretty much nuts and bolts. Where Nathan had a vision, Robert is carrying forth that vision.”

Nathan Pritikin’s vision--that heart disease and other degenerative diseases could be prevented and possibly even cured--is now shared by most members of the medical profession. But Pritikin’s recommended diet, which is very low in both fat and protein while high in complex carbohydrates, was controversial when first proposed in the early ‘70s. In recent years, however, health professionals have become increasingly convinced that good eating habits can reduce the risk of disease, and the Pritikin program has remained popular while many other fad diets have faded into oblivion.

Since his father’s death, Robert has worked to continue projects already on the drawing board as well as developing some of his own. As head of the Pritikin Research Foundation, he oversees a number of research efforts designed to gather evidence in support of the Pritikin program. Recently, for example, he has been involved in a study with Dr. Peter Dau of Evanston, Ill., investigating whether the atherosclerotic plaques obstructing the coronary arteries of heart patients can be reduced by filtering cholesterol out of blood through a process called plasmaphoresis.

‘Very Diplomatic’

Dau, head of the division of immunology at Evanston Hospital and an associate professor at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, said Robert’s role in the study is to manage patient diet and exercise programs. “Robert is very diplomatic in dealing with all the physicians,” Dau says. “He can talk to them on their own level. And he’s very enthusiastic, and has a very good effect on the patients.”

Robert also speaks proudly of a joint venture he and other Pritikin officials recently negotiated with Los Angeles-based Maxicare, the nation’s largest publicly held health maintenance organization. Under the arrangement, the Pritikin operation is expanding into a nationwide network of health centers, and Robert says he hopes the relationship with Maxicare will eventually lead to insurance reimbursement for patients whose doctors refer them to a Pritikin center.

Robert Pritikin, the oldest of Nathan and Ilene Pritikin’s four children, was only 4 years old when the family moved to Santa Barbara from Chicago in 1955. Nathan started an electronics business, eventually developing numerous patents for corporations such as General Electric, Honeywell and Bendix. He began to develop his health program in the late ‘50s when he was diagnosed as having heart disease. After studying the eating habits of societies with low heart disease rates, he concluded that the ideal diet was one in which 10% of the calories came from fat, 10% from protein and 80% from complex carbohydrates such as those found in grains and vegetables. This is a radical departure from the typical American diet, which ranges between 40% and 45% fat.

Father’s Research Assistant

Robert says that because his father had no training in medicine, he was “considered to be out of his field, to put it mildly.” But influenced by his father, Robert had become interested in science while a young boy, and when he began going to college he essentially became Nathan Pritikin’s research assistant.

By 1973, when Robert graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a bachelor’s degree in biology, Nathan had begun lecturing on his new theories. Robert began collaborating with his father on his first attempts to put the theory into practice. Working with a cardiologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach, the pair rented a house and enrolled 19 veterans suffering from heart disease or diabetes into a six-month experimental program consisting of the Pritikin diet and regular exercise. Although the study’s validity was later challenged by several specialists, the results--published in a medical journal in 1975--showed a seemingly dramatic improvement in the patients’ physical condition.

As a result of media coverage of the study, Robert says, thousands of people wrote to ask how they could get into the program. Twelve were chosen, and Nathan “rented 12 rooms at the Turnpike Lodge in Santa Barbara.” Ilene Pritikin became the first chef, and a cousin became the program’s first physician.

In 1976, when Nathan Pritikin opened his first longevity center in Santa Barbara, he asked his son to run it. But Robert said he turned down the offer. “It was a very trying time for my father, and I hadn’t had a day off in eight or nine months. I was working 14 hours a day. And you always did things my dad’s way, be they right or wrong. He was a brilliant guy, and I was not one to contest it. But I needed some breathing room.”

Started Own Firm

His father was by then liquidating his electronics business. Robert took one of Nathan’s inventions and, with a partner, started his own firm in Gardena, making components for semiconductors. During this time he married Christine, with whom he lives in Los Angeles.

After several years, Robert discovered he was “terrible at running a business,” sold his interest in the firm and began work on a master’s degree in business administration at UCLA, which he received in 1983. At the same time, he also began working part-time at the Santa Monica center when “my dad was trying to phase out of the business altogether.”

And as Nathan’s health began to fail, Robert assumed many of his father’s responsibilities.

In 1978, the entire operation moved to a converted beachfront hotel in Santa Monica, and later longevity centers were also opened in Downingtown, Pa., and Surfside, Fla., each with full-time medical staffs. According to Pritikin officials, about 20,000 people have now gone through the 13- or 26-day live-in programs offered at the centers.

Although a number of medical authorities have raised questions about the Pritikin regimen, their criticisms are generally much more reserved than those aimed at crash weight-loss diets, which can lead to severe nutritional deficiencies.

“I would much prefer everyone in the United States on the Pritikin diet than eating the way they’re eating today,” says Dr. Lindsey Henson, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA Medical Center’s Weight Management Program. “On the other hand, it’s not clear that everyone needs to be on that diet.”

New Guidelines Hailed

Nevertheless, Pritikin officials hail the latest dietary guidelines from the American Heart Assn., released in late August, as further vindication of their approach. The new guidelines, for example, call for limiting cholesterol to 100 milligrams per 1,000 calories of food intake. The Pritikin diet limits cholesterol intake to a total of 100 milligrams per day. “They are coming dangerously close to us,” Robert Pritikin said with satisfaction.

Spurred by its growing acceptance by much of the medical community, the Pritikin empire continues to grow at a rapid rate. In 1984 the first day facility, called the Pritikin Fitness Center, opened in Pacific Palisades, followed more recently by fitness centers in Torrance and Sherman Oaks. The day centers are similar to other health clubs--facilities include weightlifting rooms, aerobics classrooms and Jacuzzis--but patrons also receive lectures and counseling in the Pritikin theories of diet and exercise.

According to Pritikin spokesperson Erin Sullivan, three more day centers will open by January, 1987, two in New York and one in Orange County. Other centers are planned for Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Chicago, Scottsdale, Ariz., and other cities.

In large part, the popularity of the Pritikin message was due to the evangelistic approach which Nathan used to sell his health program. Robert Pritikin admits that filling his father’s shoes will be a challenge, but says that when his father died “people didn’t stop believing in the program. All of Dad’s charisma would not have meant a hoot if he hadn’t backed it up. I’m not as charismatic, but people know me.”