J. I. Rodale

Rodale was born in Manhattan, New York City, on August 16, 1898, the son of an Orthodox Jewish grocer who immigrated from Poland, and was raised in tenements on the Lower East Side. Due to a poor relationship with his father, whose last name was Cohen (originally Lachofsky), he changed his surname to Rodale as an ode to his mother's maiden name, Rouda.

He worked as an accountant for New York City from 1917 to 1920 and worked for the Internal Revenue Service from 1920 to 1921.

Rodale and his brother Joseph co-founded Rodale Manufacturing, a maker of electrical equipment, in New York City in 1923. He married Anna Andrews in 1927; she died in 2000 at 95. They had three children: Robert Rodale (1930–1990), Nina Rodale, and Ruth Rodale.

Rodale was already concerned with his health at this time, since he had heart murmurs and had been rejected from the U.S. Army in World War I for poor eyesight. To improve his health, he read the works of Bernarr Macfadden and invented an exercising device. The Rodale brothers moved Rodale Manufacturing to Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in 1930 to cut costs during the Great Depression. That same year, he founded Rodale Press, which marketed books and magazines.

Inspired by his encounter with the ideas of Albert Howard, Rodale developed an interest in promoting a healthy and active lifestyle that emphasized organically grown foods, and established the Rodale Organic Gardening Experimental Farm in 1940.

In 1942, Rodale Press started publishing Organic Farming and Gardening magazine, which promotes organic horticulture; it was later retitled Organic Gardening. In 1945, he wrote "Pay Dirt", the first American book on organic gardening. To Rodale, agriculture and health were inseparable. He felt that soil required compost and eschewed pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and that plants grown in such soil would help people stay healthier.

One of Rodale's most successful projects was Prevention magazine, founded in 1950, which promotes disease prevention rather than trying to cure it later. It pioneered the popularization of whole grains, unrefined sweets, avoiding fat in food preparation, folk cures, herbal medicines and breastfeeding. It also promoted the consumption of higher than typical amounts of nutritional supplements and forgoing nicotine and caffeine. Rodale opposed the consumption of milk and sugar, which he blamed for many diseases. He was not a vegetarian and frequently denounced vegetarianism. Rodale once stated "I'm going to live to be 100, unless I'm run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver."

Rodale was also a playwright, operating the Cecilwood Theater in Fishkill, New York and the Off-Broadway Rodale Theater at 62 East Fourth Street in the East Village of New York City. His plays included Toinette (1961) and The Hairy Falsetto (1964).