As Mayer’s political influence grew through the 1960s, his prominence and his proselytizing contributed to the belief that his hypothesis had both been proven true and was widely accepted. In 1966, when the U.S. Public Health Service advocated increased physical activity and diet as the best ways for us to lose weight, Mayer was the primary author of the report. Three years later, Mayer chaired Richard Nixon’s White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health. “The successful treatment of obesity must involve far reaching changes in life style,” the conference report concluded. “These changes include alterations of dietary patterns and physical activity….” In 1972, Mayer began writing a syndicated newspaper column on nutrition that clearly did not hold to the standards of a serious scientific publication. Sounding suspiciously like a diet doctor selling a patent claim, Mayer said that exercise “makes weight melt away faster.” “Contrary to popular belief,” Mayer asserted, “exercise won’t stimulate your appetite.”

The current culture of physical exercise in the United States emerged in the late 1960s, coincident with Mayer’s crusade and accompanied by a media debate about whether exercise is or is not good for us. “While it is generally agreed that exercise programs can improve strength, stamina, coordination and flexibility and provide an overall sense of well-being, two crucial questions remain,” a 1977 New York Times Magazine article observed: “(1) Does exercise prolong life? and (2) does it give any protection against the modern scourge, heart disease?” A handful of observational studies had linked exercise to greater longevity—the most famous being a study of seventeen thousand Harvard alumni published by Ralph Paffenbarger in 1978—but these didn’t reveal whether this effect was due to the health benefits of exercise or the fact that healthier people are more likely to exercise. Those who exercised regularly also tended to smoke less and pay more attention to their diets.